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Peter Jenkins began a five-year, 4,500-mile walk across America in October of 1973. First published as two articles in National Geographic, his memoirs then led to two best selling books, A Walk Across America and his most recent book now available in paperback, Looking for Alaska (St. Martin's).

"On that original walk across the U.S., however, Jenkins found something else—faith. Two years into the journey, he stumbled into an Alabama revival and accepted Christ.

How did you end up in a Southern revival service?

I grew up in Connecticut in a very quiet, official, East Coast Presbyterian church. My parents believed, and they made their six children go to church and Sunday school.

In 1973 I had started walking from upper New York State. A year and a half later, I found myself in Mobile, Alabama. It was just as radically different as any place I'd ever been.

I was working as a tree surgeon and some people had invited me to go to this party. I knew it would be a typical dope-smoking party where you just sit and listen to The Allman Brothers. [On my way there,] I saw these big billboards advertising a revival.

I had no idea what a revival was.

Were you looking for a religion?

I wanted a religion that had emotion in it. I wanted a religion that had life, action, and the kinds of things I found in the kind of music I loved. Prior to this, I had lived in North Carolina with a black family. And that sort of set the stage. I had realized in that black church that you can have emotion and you can express yourself. You can even dance and sing for three hours. You can shout. You can be mad.

In all of our lives we're on this spiritual quest. As you go, you can see how things are set up, just like they are in a good movie. The scene is set.

The scene is set for you to go to the revival that night?

Yes. Instead of just sitting [at that party] I went to this revival. I walked in and there were thousands of people there. I had to go to the front to take pictures. I looked at it as a sociological experiment. I was actually working for National Geographic at the time, so I'd read about various spiritual events over in Africa and Tibet. And the Deep South was like being in a foreign country to me at the time.

When the revival begins, this guy from Texas named James Robison comes out screaming and preaching and throwing his arms around. And I was thinking, "Wow man, these are great pictures I'm getting." There was sweat dripping and everything. He was dressed in a three-piece suit and cowboy boots.

The two of us could not have more unalike. I was this young man with sun-bleached reddish hair down to his shoulders and an unshaven beard.

He later told me that he wanted to scream, "Hippie, stop shooting those pictures and get away from me." But God told him to stop. I probably would have never ended up becoming a Christian that night if that had happened.

He kept preaching. I dropped the camera and started paying attention. And I honestly felt like when he was preaching the gospel, a huge sword was slicing me into a whole bunch of pieces.

Do you remember what he was saying that night?

He was saying, "Joining a church won't make you a Christian anymore than joining a Lion's Club will make you a lion. From the day you were born, you wanted to do your own thing and you were rebellious against God. If you really want to really know God, you've got to repent of this rebellion which the Bible calls sin."

I could really relate to that. I thought I was a really pretty good person. I thought I was in search of the truth. The more I heard this stuff, [the more I realized that] religion is not the answer, salvation is. You just have something inside of you that knows when you hear the truth.

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January (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47