Theologically, father and son were on roughly the same page. They preached damnation for the unsaved, the wickedness of homosexuality, and what the son, looking back later, would call "a general hopelessness about the world," one salved only by the promise of an imminent, cataclysmic Second Coming.
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There was no shattering epiphany, no Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment. It was a slow drift from his father's booming certainties to a universe of questions with murky answers.
About the time he opened a church in Dana Point in 1975, Smith Jr. began reading widely, making friends with Christians of different backgrounds. He began to consider that when Jesus spoke of the kingdom of heaven, he was referring to the rewards of a selfless life, here and now -- that the Gospels' core message was real-world compassion, not preparation for the afterlife.
For years, Smith Jr. said, he had preached about hell uncomfortably, half-apologetically, because he couldn't understand why a loving God would consign his children to eternal flames. It felt like blackmail for a pastor to threaten people with hell-scapes from the Middle Ages to induce piety.
Now, he came to believe that the biblical images used to depict hell's torments -- such as the "lake of fire" and the "worm that does not die" -- were intended to evoke a feeling rather than a literal place.
He also grew disillusioned with the Rapture, the notion that believers in Jesus will be whisked to God's side during Armageddon. His father had predicted the end of the world would arrive in the 1980s, based on his reading of the Book of Revelation. He has continued, year after year, to announce its imminence with absolute confidence.
The father: "Every year I believe this could be the year. We're one year closer than we were."
The son: "To use [the Book of Revelation] for prognostication, to me, is just ridiculous.... I knew of a guy who was racking up debt because he just assumed he was going to get raptured and wouldn't have to pay for it."
During the 1980s, as an AIDS pandemic exploded, Smith Jr. embraced members of the gay community from nearby Laguna Beach.
The father on homosexuality: "It is the final affront against God."
The son: "I met homosexuals who were trying to live celibate lives or be heterosexual, and I heard all about their struggles, and I never wanted to exacerbate that. My heart went out to them. Listening convinced me that homosexual orientation is not something people chose."
