It's a nice idea. But what makes it even more compelling to those who pay up to $725 to hear him speak at retreats is that Walsch, 56, says his assertions come directly from God. "He's talking to all of us," says Walsch. "The question is why more of us haven't listened."
Convinced in 1992 that God wanted him to write a book, Walsch began composing Conversations with God, a trilogy that has sold more than 3 million copies. His latest book, Friendship with God, was published in October and within weeks became a New York Times bestseller. The portrait Walsch paints of a loving, nonjudgmental divinity has led some to call him a prophet, or at least wise. "Mr. Walsch's books are commonsensical, guilt-freeing and human," says actor Ed Asner, who reads God's lines on the audio version of Conversations. Others find Walsch's Godspeak indistinguishable from the author's own New Agey purrings. "The sense I get is that he is a genuine megalomaniac," says Wendy Kaminer, author of Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials, a critique of New Age culture. "But you don't lose money by telling people what they want to hear."
As he sits in the sunny living room of the hilltop mansion he owns near Medford, Ore., Walsch vividly recalls the night in 1992 when he rose at 4 a.m. and began scribbling his frustrations on a yellow legal pad. He remembers feeling suicidal over finances, shaky health and a broken love affair. Then, he says, he heard a voice behind him: Neale, do you really want answers to all of these questions, or are you just venting?
As their conversations developed, God urged Walsch to forgive his own sins and said everyone—even Adolf Hitler—was welcome in heaven. (Walsch explains that he doesn't condone Hitler but that God cherishes all of us.) "He's a friend," Walsch says of God, "lighthearted, eminently reasonable and unconditionally loving."
A perfect father, in other words, which is something Walsch—the youngest of three sons born to Alex Walsch, a Milwaukee insurance salesman who died in 1990, and homemaker Anne, who died in 1972—might have wished for. His own father discouraged Neale's ambition to become a priest and took a sledgehammer to the boy's treasured piano, a gift, because it took up too much room.
That upbringing may have left its mark on Walsch in the form of unstable relationships and career troubles. Walsch produced nine children—aged 8 to 32—with three wives before settling down with fourth wife Nancy Fleming, a registered nurse, in 1994. The University of Wisconsin dropout also bounced between jobs as a radio talk show host, journalist and publicist. Once homeless and living in a campground for two months, Walsch was on the verge of being fired from a radio job in Medford when he heard the sacred voice. Since then he has earned millions writing not only about God but also about relationships, holistic living and his philosophy that good and evil are mere illusions.
Walsch's books, he freely acknowledges, have made him an easy target. Not everyone wants to hear from a God who makes George Burns-style jokes. ("What do you want from me?" Walsch quotes God. "I'm old!") And some find it too convenient that a man who admits to doing "every selfish, insensitive, uncaring thing one can do" now says God has told him there's no distinction between right and wrong.
But Walsch refuses to feel guilty. Instead, he focuses on his writing and on his ReCreation Foundation, whose 15-member staff organizes Walsch's lectures and retreats and publishes a monthly newsletter. "God's main message," he says, "is you got me all wrong." That's a message Walsch is happy to deliver.
Peter Ames Carlin
John Hannah and Johnny Dodd in Medford
- Contributors:
- John Hannah,
- Johnny Dodd.
