Characters of The Arc of Joan

 

Pastor Joan Moore believes God has sought her out to lead his people to the holy land. Joan is the second coming of Tammy Faye Baker. She is known for her wild sermons, speaking in tongues, and healing the sick. After her parents passed away she inherited a run-down family farm that she converted into the Grace Temple Prophecy Church (GTP). Joan’s first husband helped Joan build the original church and her second helped remodel it, before he pilfered the church coffers and died in a car accident. Her third husband Tom, however, has established the gay re-education compound which has lifted more than a few eyebrows around town. When faced with a moral dilemma Joan will misquote the Bible and can twist the phrase, ‘what can I do to help’ to also mean ‘how can your needs help me’. Her motto is Give to Get.

 

Beth Shipman, Joan’s niece, is an atheist. She is the daughter of Joan’s deceased sister, who died of breast cancer; we don’t know who her father is. Beth is smart but she was naïve. She won a math scholarship to LSU and after finishing with top grades she took a job in NYC a few years before the financial crisis of ’08.  After the crash she and her “roommate” moved to Chicago and found new jobs with a sketchy accounting firm that landed both of them in jail. The roommate had set Beth up in a fraud scheme and luckily, with the help of the FBI, Beth was able to show how she couldn’t have known about the scheme but that fact also left the “roommate” holding the bag and put her in jail for 15 years. Out of money, she’s landed where she started out, on her family farm. With her recent past in tatters, she’s thrown herself into her work making sure her Aunt and the business church is above board financially.

 

Nina Jackson, Music Minister. Nina is the epitome of a good Christian and it would be nice if everyone would acknowledge this truth.  But with prayer, she can forgive you for thinking otherwise. Nina and Joan have known each other for 30 years. They started out spreading the gospel together in various churches traveling and sleeping in a car and eating out of gas stations as they perfected their show min

istry. Nina’s choir and musical ministry is a cornerstone of Grace Temple.

 

Youth Minister, Justin McDuffin. Known as Y.M., Justin is in it to win it! He is out to indoctrinate the youth masses. He sees no irony or blasphemy in his money grubbing. He sees himself as the future of this church and the heir apparent.  He has to have the newest and latest cool things in order to attract as many of the youths as possible. But alas he is lazy and is always trying to get people to do his work. He thinks being the “boss” means you do less work. Much like Joan’s rival Joseph Paul he believes in the gospel of money and God wants you to be rich.

 

Joseph Paul, Reverend of National Evangelical. It is a mega-church in the next larger town over.  It’s not enough for Jo to have a large, wealthy church but he often finds the time and energy to deride Joan. His ego is connected directly to the money and amount of people that attend his church. He has recently acquired his own Sunday Morning television show.

 

Tom Olmsted.  Joan’s third husband. He runs the gay re-education compound ‘out in the sticks’. He too was gay, but after meeting Joan, is now heterosexual thanks so the re-education though Jesus. He is now an out and proud heterosexual. Using his former ‘education’ as an orderly at a mental health facility added with his new expertise of Jesus through his wife’s bible knowledge. He’s trying to do ‘up marketing’ for his heterosexual education business because he keeps getting caught in gay bars looking for people to re-educate.

 

Tilly Cox. Outreach Director. Tilly is just out of high school. She’s a social media/ internet savant but couldn’t find work because she had been expelled from high school for hacking the superintendent’s emails, changed the grades in the school server, and then she hacked the school budget’s revealing the teacher’s pay grades. Instead of seeing the brilliance it took to accomplish this she was expelled and deemed a misfit. She is socially awkward and comes off as an air-head.  In an effort to modernize GTP, Tilly is hired by Beth to lead the internet/social media department for the church.

 

Reverend Doctor Allan Peabody. Associate Pastor. Joan brings Allan into the GTP family from her connections in Evangelical England. Allan is pure stiff upper lip London but dreams of one day being able to preach as Joan does and receiving call backs of ‘preach!’ and 'Amen!’ from the congregation. Beth calls him Joan’s consiglieri, due to his vast biblical education, and because he adds an international panache that Jo Paul does not have. But upon meeting Nina, Allan falls madly and deeply in love with her.

 

Muriel Paul. Youth minister. Muriel is Joseph Paul’s niece. She was also Tilly’s nemesis in high school. Muriel was a popular girl and bullied Tilly, calling her Tilly Turd. However, Muriel has seen the error of her ways and now thinks Jo Paul’s ministry is a false idol and has joined GTP. She has dedicated herself to saving Tilly’s soul from the dark web and stopping school bullying. She is slowly remaking herself in Joan’s image. Since joining GTP she has been thrown out of the Paul family and is currently living under the choir stalls at GTP.