History is filled with stories of deathbed conversions. Some are reasonably well-attested, others disputed, and still others plainly legendary. Constantine delayed baptism until near death after a life marked by political power and violence. Oscar Wilde is often said to have received Catholic rites at the end of his life, a claim treated cautiously by biographers. Some accounts also suggest that Albert Camus engaged seriously with Christianity shortly before his death in a 1960 car accident, though this claim, drawn largely from a minister’s later testimony, remains debated.
Figures such as Rock Hudson, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Buffalo Bill are cited as documented late-life receptions into the Church, while unconfirmed or explicitly denied stories continue to circulate about David Bowie, the neo-atheist Christopher Hitchens, and the infamous satanist Anton LaVey, revealing how easily final beliefs are mythologized when they serve ideological ends.
But not every deathbed narrative points toward reconciliation. One often repeated account of Joseph Stalin describes him suddenly sitting upright and clenching his fist toward the heavens as if in defiance shortly before death. Although not an established historical fact, it functions well as an inversion of conversion narratives.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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The oft-repeated line, “It’s great to live as
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