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In his 2006 memoir, The Discomfort Zone, Franzen writes of Mutton with admiration, recalling “his violent allergy to piousness” and his gruff authority.

They expressed their spirituality through their actions by cultivating “authentic relationships” with one another and working with the poor.

Though Fellowship was affiliated with the First Congregational Church, its members rarely prayed or consulted the Bible. They flocked to Sunday evening meetings, where they blindfolded one another and performed trust exercises, palpated one another’s faces with their fingers, and practiced radical honesty in drawn-out sessions of uncomfortable truth telling.Ī member for six years, Franzen spent his adolescence immersed in the group. Emulating his style, his followers grew their hair long, dressed in their most worn-out clothes, smoked cigarettes, and played guitar. The reason was Fellowship, a rapidly growing Christian youth group, and its edgy leader, Bob Mutton-a youth pastor with a “tormented Jesus” look about him. Louis Globe-Democrat reported that parents in his town were worried: high school kids in Webster Groves were spending too much time at church. In 1972, when Jonathan Franzen was thirteen, the St.