In October 2015, a vehicle arrived at an emergency room in central New York with a severely beaten young man inside. Lucas Leonard had died before he was brought to the hospital by family members and those in his church community. Hospital employees knew right away that something was off about the stories they were told, so they called the police. The facts that emerged were shocking and frightening: the fatal beating of Lucas occurred at the hands of his parents, sister and others in his church. In WITHOUT A PRAYER, journalist Susan Ashline tells the story of the Word of Life Christian Church in Chadwicks, New York, and how it grew increasingly controlling, dangerous and eventually violent.

The church, originally founded and led by Pastor Jerry Irwin, was a conservative Bible-based congregation. It opened its doors in a former school building, hopeful to fill all the seats in the large sanctuary. Bruce and Deborah Leonard, along with their three children from previous marriages and four together, were there just about from the start and were one of the most devoted families. The Leonard kids were mostly educated in the church’s school, as the church was the center of their lives. Over the years, the Irwin family became more and more god-like in their power and authority, controlling the Leonards in a variety of ways.

"WITHOUT A PRAYER is a powerful and absorbing contribution to the libraries of true crime, sociology and long-form journalism."

After the frankly bizarre death of Jerry, his daughter Tiffanie became the Pastor of the church. With her ascension, the culture at Word of Life became even more extreme. Believed by her flock to be a prophet of God, Tiffanie’s sermons stretched out for hours, and she began publicly humiliating her congregants and pitting them against each other. She was supported by her mother and often flanked by her two brothers, who physically intimidated those in the church.

Ashline does a great job describing the slow, and then incredibly rapid, Word of Life transformation from a church to a cult. Because the Irwins documented everything they did, she was able to draw from hours and hours of videos, text messages, journals and more. These same resources helped the police and lawyers understand what led to Lucas’ fatal beating and the near-fatal beating of his younger brother, Christopher.

WITHOUT A PRAYER is terrifying stuff, and Ashline’s clear journalistic narrative style never gets in the way of the story she is telling. There are a lot of characters here and a great deal of action, not to mention the steadily increasing tension that is key to the events. Ashline has control of it all, resulting in a fascinating, heartbreaking and fraught page-turner. The moments in which the book slows down or becomes repetitive are few and far between. More exploration of the distinction between churches and cults would’ve been useful. Still, because Lucas is kept at the center of the book, it remains cogent and cohesive.

In the U.S., religion is both foundational to identity when it is one’s own and suspect when it belongs to someone from another tradition. The story of the Word of Life Christian Church is so compelling because it seems at once familiar enough and yet totally other. How can something as normal and even comforting as a faith community act so horrifically, with such hatred and violence? Ashline avoids easy judgments in favor of letting the story unfold and the evidence speak for itself.

Overall, WITHOUT A PRAYER is a powerful and absorbing contribution to the libraries of true crime, sociology and long-form journalism.