The Messiah Complex

Randall Scott Johns, a lawyer, took a case before the US District Court for the Virgin Islands with the aim of opening federal courtrooms to broadcast media, so the public could see what he considered the intellectual dishonesty of the judicial system. The legal profession and the federal bench responded by holding him in contempt and stripping his right to practice law in the Virgin Islands. He carried the contempt ruling on appeal all the way to the US Supreme Court.

Around the same period, Johns fell in love with a woman born in the Virgin Islands. Because he had been baptized in the Evangelical United Brethren Church while she had been baptized in the Roman Catholic Church, he needed the bishop of Saint Thomas to approve his receiving Holy Communion at their wedding. The bishop agreed, and Johns continued to take communion afterward. Later, a new bishop of Saint Thomas publicly declared that non-Catholics were not welcome at the Eucharist, and Johns fell out with him. After correspondence with the Vatican, Johns travelled to Rome and asked for an audience with the pope.

The Messiah Complex is Johns's account of these events and of the lessons he drew from them. He also explores how society might connect the linear reasoning of everyday worldly life with the abstract reasoning found in religion and natural law.