The Trials and Tribulations of Hashmel Turner

He was to be a plaintiff.

WHEN WORD FIRST SPREAD AMONG FREDERICKSBURG CHURCHGOERS that the reverend on the City Council was in a bind, a number of people offered Turner the same suggestion: Call John Whitehead.

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John Wayne Whitehead has been defending Christians in court for 25 years. His Charlottesville-based Rutherford Institute helped pioneer the Christian legal movement, though Whitehead remains better known for representing Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton. Yet, despite his conservative credentials, Whitehead hardly marches in lockstep with his fellow conservative Christians. He describes the much-hyped war on Christmas as "absurd" and calls the Bush administration "the worst free speech regime since, well . . . ever."

He's as much a contrarian as he is a Christian. For a while, Rutherford published a magazine called Gadfly that showcased Whitehead's admiration for aspects of popular culture that some Christians find anti-religious: the music of the Sex Pistols, the gruesome paintings of Francis Bacon, the movies "Dr. Strangelove" and "Blood Simple." Whitehead got a lot of criticism for the magazine, but he says publishing it was one of the most exhilarating experiences of his life.

"If you believe God created people, he created creative people," says Whitehead, who has always identified with outcasts and people who push the envelope of what's acceptable. "Christians might say, 'We don't like this person or that person,' but I say these are the kinds of people Jesus hung around with, the people who certain classes of people despised."

He's been on the fringe for much of his own life. Less than a decade before founding the Rutherford Institute in 1982, Whitehead was a self-described "Marxist left-wing radical" who subscribed to the Daily Worker, worked for the ACLU and had accepted sandwich bags of homegrown pot in lieu of payments from clients. The lanky Southerner says he was so hostile to Christianity that he wouldn't let his church-going wife, Carol, mention Jesus in their house. But things changed dramatically in 1974, when Whitehead, a science fiction and fantasy fan, bought a copy of The Late Great Planet Earth, a bestseller by evangelical writer Hal Lindsey that predicted the apocalypse through war with Russia. Whitehead was fascinated by the notion of apocalypse -- something urgent, revolutionary and, for him, transformational. "I was a '60s radical, so it was like, okay, let's get this moving; let's have a revolution." Within a week of reading the book, Whitehead gave himself to Christ and moved to California to study with Lindsey, and he embraced his new faith with a ferocious militancy.

"At one time Christians had command of the United States. Through toleration they receded until the non-Christians grew too strong to combat any longer. Once the non-Christians were in power they began eliminating Christianity from the system . . . This land can once again be a Christian nation. A reformation is at hand. All that is needed is the dominion-oriented Christian man," he wrote in his book The Separation Illusion: A Lawyer Examines the First Amendment in 1977.

His beliefs have evolved in the last three decades. He is still a strong Christian, he says, but doesn't belong to any denomination or church. "The farther I got away from [Lindsey's book], things started looking a little gray. It's like waking up from a three-day drunk." Now, he says, "I just focus on what Jesus taught. When Christians call me, I say, 'Have you read the New Testament?'"

Turner, who works as a driving instructor at Fort A.P. Hill Army installation, didn't know that much about Whitehead when he called him in 2003 to seek his advice. Do I have the right to ask aloud for Jesus's blessing on City Hall proceedings? Turner asked.

Absolutely, Whitehead assured him.

The two talked by phone on and off for months. Whitehead was struck by Turner's humble style. The minister didn't want his speech censored, but he didn't want to cause a fuss, either. He didn't want to put his own needs above anyone else's, Whitehead recalls.

"He wanted to be a good Christian," Whitehead says. "I told him, 'I know a lot of good Christians who fight.'"