Religious writers and audiences

brunians at brunians.org · 06 Jun 2010, 01:38 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: brunians at brunians.org (brunians at brunians.org)
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2010 21:38:15 -0400
Subject: (urth) Religious writers and audiences
In-Reply-To: <4C0AFBCB.1050908 at gmail.com>
References: <SNT123-W17F478B464F0A2A2D619BECFD10 at phx.gbl>
	<AANLkTin3rMIbdFlB_Ts9oQg54a5xHmUMyoxL-4Rly5wb at mail.gmail.com>
	<COL105-W6B0E3F09D93E0A7430DAF85D10 at phx.gbl>
	<07e417fccdd43f81f01ae6443657010a.squirrel at brunians.org>
	<COL105-W6542F88CE562742D51698485D10 at phx.gbl> <4C080BAA.9010607 at io.com>
	<810694.75476.qm at web50702.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
	<F7BD5858-DAB4-43C1-B10A-80DDDBC14E03 at io.com>
	<380869.45950.qm at web50705.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
	<AANLkTimS1tZxSsrbSuR2k4lhufvHSSADWlTvG1FXLjW8 at mail.gmail.com>
	<230974.97402.qm at web50708.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
	<AANLkTimfrrgWQyeAkO2qLIHZO8sDvU7p7DdamvgtIYxq at mail.gmail.com>
	<4C098D23.4010800 at io.com>
	<AANLkTilfqgNsRsyEvNoURxC0DuC2SsqGfpKQTRU-EMEX at mail.gmail.com>
	<AANLkTim6qoypcXaggp4NErK5X9SHekj2TnpH4LJ_5qdE at mail.gmail.com>
	<454980.67983.qm at web37602.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<4C0AFBCB.1050908 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <538d6654dd609d0bdc5fcdf7955c0f2f.squirrel at brunians.org>

His books are masterful works of high propaganda.

.


>
>> _The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia_ by Laura
>> Miller. Basically: young girl loves Narnia, clueless about the
>> religious aspect. Grows up, eyes open, feels betrayed by the allegory.
>> Gets even older, comes to terms with loving a book that she does not
>> at all "believe."But it brings to mind two questions about Wolfe:
>> 1) In what sense do people feel that his books are "allegorical" (even
>> in the loosest sense) of his (or any) religious views? I take it here
>> that allegorical means more than being informed-by-religion and
>> actually instructive-of or apologetic-for a certain theology, as Lewis
>> apparently wanted Narnia to be?
>
> 1) Sometimes his work is apologetic and sometimes it isn't. The Sun
> Cycle --the setting and heroes-- are Christian Gnostic. Actually, the
> setting of the Wizard Knight is Gnostic as well with it's layers of
> aeons each ruled by an archon. I doubt Wolfe is Gnostic. When Silk talks
> about gun control, I presume Wolfe concurs. The way Able makes Disiri
> human is I presume a Christian figure. When Wolfe, (as I believe)
> creates a Rajan character who is father, son, and spirit, three-in-one,
> he is probably rationalizing the Trinity. But it is all an extremely
> light touch. If anything IMO associating the characters Severian with
> Jesus (as Wolfe certainly does) would be blasphemous if it were intended
> as Christian allegory (however loosely).
>
>> 2) How do his non-Catholic readers react to the overt theologizing and
>> moralizing that is obviously there at times? (This would go for even
>> Catholic readers who might find something non-orthodox.)
>
> 2) I'm not Catholic. How do I react to the Catholicism that *does* arise
> in his stories? Let me put it this way. I have zero sympathy for anyone
> who discovers that there is a Christian theme in the Narnia books and
> feels "betrayed". I consider that ignorant bigotry. They are no
> different from the Christians who have spoken to me against the
> "unChristian elements" in Narnia and Tolkien and said their stories were
> unsuitable for youth.
>
> The shelves of libraries are full of stories that are condescending or
> hostile to observant Christian belief...I mean the kind of fervent
> belief that causes people to pool their money to send missionaries to
> tell about on 12000 miles away. Those books reflect the worldview of 30s
> Intellectualism (which originally was a specific movement that was
> politically pro-socialism and religiously materialistic) which --for
> decades-- darkly overshadowed the publishing industry. The Great Books
> are full of moralizing and theologizing from that angle. Should
> observant Christians feel betrayed by that? Overt liberal democracy is
> pretty rare in science fiction. If the governance of the societies are
> defined at all, they are typically centrally planned either by a
> bureaucratic government or a military order. Should I feel betrayed by
> this or just allow myself to follow along the story the author chooses
> to weave?
>
> As for Narnia, if people didn't continuously and erroneously INTRODUCE
> people to the books as "Christian allegory", not that many people would
> catch on to the Christian themes mixed in there -- not until the final
> volume if at all. Lewis noted that most did not and those that did were
> usually children. I have had very astute readers tell me that they
> didn't note any Christian themes in "Til We Have Faces" until *I* began
> discussing them. Anyway, Narnia is not nearly so crudely apologetic as
> Pullman's answer to it.
>
> J.
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net