Vonnegut was and is an American icon.  His wildly popular books include classics such as Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle, and Timequake.  His style is unique, random, and wildly popular among young people even today.

To find out why he is so well-liked, I picked up Breakfast of Champions.  I finished in a matter of hours; it was smooth and easy reading (at least, so far as the grammar was concerned).  The story begins… well, no, it does not at first.  Vonnegut starts by sharing random things about his life, people he knew and appreciated, topics that interest or annoy him.  For a fan of classic fiction such as myself, it was downright weird.  It would only get worse.

The story does eventually start, but it reads like the most unfocused person you can imagine speaks.  Yes, somewhere in there is a plot about one old man traveling to a convention.  Meanwhile, another old man likes the first man’s stories, and he is also going crazy.  In the end he hurts a bunch of people.  The end.

Plot comes through in bits and pieces, each portion launching long digressions into stories, commentary, and personal perspective on the state of things.  One moment he gives a condescending discussion of the pornography industry and its regulators, the next he describes an imaginary story of Hawaiian natives forced to hang from helium balloons because the “owners” of their land refuse to let them live there.  He draws pictures of underpants and guns and lambs and Holiday Inn signs.  In short, it seems an exercise in randomness.  Here is an example, found in a scene when one of the main characters is having an affair with his secretary:

“You know what I keep thinking?” said Francine.  Dwayne snuffled.  “This would be a very good location for a Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.”

Dwayne’s relaxed body contracted as though each muscle in it had been stung by a drop of lemon juice.

Here was the problem:  Dwayne wanted Francine to love him for his body and soul, not for what his money could buy.  He thought Francine was hinting that he should buy her a Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, which was a scheme for selling fried chicken.

A chicken was a flightless bird which looked like this:

(Here Vonnegut drew a felt-tip pen picture of a chicken)

The idea was to kill it and pull out all its feathers, and cut off its head and feet and scoop out its internal organs- and then chop it into pieces and fry the pieces, and put the pieces in a waxed paper bucket with a lid on it, so it looked like this:

(Here Vonnegut drew a felt-tip pen picture of bucket of fried chicken)

Impressively, Vonnegut takes this sort of stuff (though generally of a more vulgar variety), weaves it together, making random comments in one place that helpfully explain a joke ten chapters later.  This flavor of brilliantly interconnected language, nonsense, and sarcasm pervades his writing.  However, that is a mild example.  The primary reason for the digressions is criticism; Vonnegut uses his powers of description and satire to pick on authority in general, whether it is government regulators, perpetuators of war, businesses that pollute the earth, leaders who fail to feed the hungry, property owners, or white people.

It is here that Vonnegut is at his most effective: satirical critique.  He has a powerful way of oversimplifying problems in ways that make authority figures look like jerks and those not in authority look like victims.  It is a humanistic, victimized, classist worldview.

So here is my question: how should Christians respond to his writing? Yes, there is a time to stand up to the abuses of authority.  Yes, we should be more conscientious about the impact of our economic and governmental policies.  But does that automatically make Vonnegut right in his relentless satire?

I say no.  Vonnegut’s morality finds its identity in critique.  He desires a world of unity and compassion and equality, but seems unable to acknowledge the possibility that human problems come from humans, not from problems.  He is a more bitter version of Mark Twain (which is saying something!), highlighting the ways normal people are depressed and hamstrung by the foolish authorities over them.

Christians can appreciate the fiction, but there is danger of victim-hood and cynicism.  Satire carries components of self-righteousness and distrust of authority.  One has to question whether this type of criticism carries more danger for the critic than the criticized.

Here is another quote from Breakfast of Champions, when the main character answers the question of the purpose of life (asked, naturally, on the wall of a gas station bathroom):

To be:

The eyes

And ears

And conscience

Of the Creator of the Universe,

You fool.

Is Vonnegut a prophet and a satirical conscience for Western materialism, or is he a self-righteous socialist, convinced that the rich are eternally oppressing the poor?  His work is powerful and funny, but requires careful thought and discernment from the Christian.

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• Why Vote When You Can Laugh? The Daily Show and Complacency

It’s finally out . . . the book that will provide all the answers teen readers have been anxiously anticipating since, well, 2005. (But, hey, three years is a long time when you’re 15.) Will Bella become a vampire? Will she stay with vampire Edward, or will werewolf Jacob somehow get a chance to cut in? Or will Jacob “imprint” on someone else, thus neatly resolving the love triangle? And what is the mysterious second literary inspiration for Breaking Dawn (Meyer already revealed that the first inspiration was A Midsummer Night’s Dream)?

Unfortunately, I can’t really say much about the ultimate value of the Twilight Saga without resorting to SPOILERS, so consider yourself warned.

First, the immortality question. I attended a midnight release party for Breaking Dawn (entirely for cultural relevance purposes, I assure you) at our local bookstore, and one of the activities there included casting a vote about Bella’s future by placing a bead in a cup labeled “mortal” or “immortal.” The “immortal” cup was definitely more than half full when my turn came to vote, and not a single bead was in the “mortal” cup—until I placed mine there. It’s clear that young fans desperately want Bella to be immortal, to be a vampire. Why? Is it just a fascination with being forever young? With eternal love? I honestly don’t know, but I find it a little disturbing.

The young fans were right with their prediction; I was wrong. Bella does indeed become an immortal vampire, though under last-resort, near-death circumstances that help to pacify naysayers like me. You might think Bella’s transformation would be the climax of the story, but it comes less than halfway through. Meyer’s clearly playing with our expectations: she begins the book with a wedding (Bella’s and Edward’s), that occasion that brings so many books to a close. But it’s pretty clear, even at that point, that the rest of the book is not going to be “Mr. and Mrs. Vampire Keep House.”

So what leads to Bella’s lying near death? Well, there’s a honeymoon, and then there’s a pregnancy. It’s been known to happen before, though usually not with half-vampire spawn that grow at a supernatural pace and demands blood while still in the womb. The baby, evidently having inherited its father’s super-strength, is born in a rather traumatic process for all, breaking Bella’s spine, among other things. It’s only at that point that Edward makes her a vampire.

Oh yeah, and before Bella loses consciousness, she names the baby human-vampire girl “Renesmee.” Thank you, Stephenie Meyer, for reminding us that 18-year-olds shouldn’t be allowed to name children.

Over the past few days, the interwebs have been exploding with vehement reactions, both pro and con, to Bella’s becoming a mother (which evidently is a bigger issue than Edward becoming a father). There’s the obvious “She’s only 18!” complaint, but the Twilight series is fantasy, and nothing in Bella’s and Edward’s relationship is precisely what one would call normal. They now have a child who, due to her accelerated development, will reach maturity in 7 years, before ceasing to age at all. And then there are those who object to Jacob’s imprinting on the infant Renesmee, which is, yes, pretty creepy, but Meyer definitely worked to prepare us for that one. Evidently imprinting (an exclusively werewolfian phenomenon) doesn’t develop into romance until both parties are mature. I’m less upset by the creep factor and more upset that it seems like an easy-out narratively—it would have been too easy a solution, no matter on whom Jacob imprinted, so at least the Jacob’s-sort-of-in-love-with-a-baby factor makes it a little more challenging for Meyer to sell.

The climax of the story involves a confrontation with the Volturi, the Italian law enforcement of the vampire world, who think that the Cullens have broken the rules by creating (through biting a human baby) an immortal child, rather than giving birth to a hybrid (thought to be impossible). And here’s where the second literary inspiration comes in. The big “I can’t reveal it because it’s too much of a spoiler” book is . . . wait for it . . . The Merchant of Venice. Let me repeat that again: The Merchant of Venice. A play most people have never read. A play about which even I, a Ph.D. in English, can remember extremely little. “A pound of flesh”? That’s about it. I wonder if Meyer’s real motivation in keeping it secret was to keep people from assuming, out of context, that she was incorporating the anti-Semitic elements of the play (she doesn’t).

The Merchant of Venice does have a happy ending, though (for everyone except Shylock), so I suppose knowing that might tell you the tone of Breaking Dawn’s ending. I should mention now that I am aesthetically and theologically opposed to unqualifiedly happy endings in fantasy works. On aesthetic grounds, I don’t want things to be too neatly wrapped up. The theological grounds are a bit more difficult to explain, but, basically, if a book ends within this life (that is, not in heaven), it shouldn’t be entirely happy. There should still be a sense of something missing, that sense that we are never completely fulfilled until we see Jesus’ face. On these grounds, the twenty endings of The Lord of the Rings are perfect. On a less sublime level, I was pretty happy with the bittersweet ending of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Narrative dilemmas can’t be satisfactorily wrapped up without some sacrifice on the part of the characters. At least, in Breaking Dawn, Bella and Edward think that they’re going to lose everything before they arrive at their happy ending. But they don’t have to give up anything at all in the end. Maybe, for Meyer, the significance is all in the being willing.

The other possibility is that my criteria may not even apply, because Meyer’s not ending her book in this life. Obviously, Bella and Edward have already passed from mortality to immortality, and the happy family life they achieve at the end does sound vaguely like the Mormon idea of the afterlife (from the very little I know). In some ways, Meyer may be achieving a happy ending by doing what C. S. Lewis did in The Last Battle: shifting the scene to heaven. Meyer’s “heaven” is just less in line with my beliefs and more in line with popular cultural beliefs about what makes for happiness.

Essential beliefs aside, there is much that Christians can embrace in the Twilight Saga. During the final confrontation with the Volturi, a young vampire named Benjamin accuses the Volturi of acting not of justice but out of fear—fear that the Cullens’ lifestyle grants them power. “These strange golden-eyed ones [the default eye color for vampires who drink human blood is red] deny their very natures. But in return have they found something worth more, perhaps, than gratification of desire? . . . [I]t seems to me that intrinsic to this intense family binding—that which makes them possible at all—is the peaceful character of this life of sacrifice.” Benjamin’s speech could be an allegory for the Mormon community. Ideally (though infrequently in practice), it could be an allegory for the Body of Christ as well.

• ‘New Moon’: Do Vampires Have Souls? And Other Pressing Questions
• ‘Eclipse’: No Cheap Grace, No Easy Love
• ‘Twilight’: A Positive or Negative Influence for Teens?

Twilight, the first novel in Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling series, surprised me by being well-written. Eclipse, the third volume, surprised me by dealing with very painful and complex situations in a mature way. Twilight and New Moon both reminded me powerfully of what it was like to be a teenager; Eclipse reminded me of what it’s like to be an adult in a fallen, yet glorious world.

Bella Swan manages to make a mess of things in Eclipse, a mess that would still be messy even if vampire Edward Cullen and werewolf Jacob Black were just two normal human boys in love with the same girl. Bella’s actions—mostly due to her own lack of self-knowledge—end up hurting both Edward and Jacob, but each of them is quick to point out his own guilt in the tangled situation. Edward, as usual, overwhelms Bella with his understanding and unconditional forgiveness. Even Jacob, whose reactions are usually less mature, rushes to blame himself instead of her.

“Not you, too,” Bella groans. “It is my fault. And I’m so sick of being told it’s not.”

Jacob responds, incredulously, “You want me to haul you over the coals?”

“Actually . . . I think I do,” Bella says.

It’s one of my favorite “truth” moments in the Twilight series, because it illustrates why grace (ultimately God’s grace, but human forgiveness as well) cannot be cheap. Grace means nothing unless you first realize your own guilt, your own true status as a monster. (Bella has a moment, after she’s unfairly used Edward’s own guilty feelings to manipulate him, of epiphany: “I wondered if I was a monster. Not the kind that he [Edward] thought he was, but the real kind. The kind that hurt people. The kind that had no limits when it came to what they wanted.”) And you don’t really feel forgiven by other people unless you’re sure that they, too, have first recognized the true harm you’ve done—otherwise, it’s willful blindness on their part, not forgiveness.

Of course, part of what Bella is also struggling with here is the difficulty of accepting grace and forgiveness when they’re offered—another very real human experience. Yes, folks, there’s a level of emotional and even spiritual complexity in the Twilight Saga that has nothing to do with Edward Cullen’s dreamy eyes.

Though I enjoyed Twilight, the first novel in the series, I did feel that the love portrayed therein was a bit gooey and naïve. New Moon was less so, but, as I previously mentioned, the characters’ actions felt contrived to match the plot of Romeo and Juliet. Eclipse develops some of the emotional consequences of the actions taken in New Moon, and does so in a way that significantly complicates Bella’s notions of love.

On Stephenie Meyer’s web site, one of the FAQs about Eclipse (in regard to Bella’s realization that, in some ways, she loves Jacob in addition to Edward) reads, “Don’t you believe in true love anymore? What happened to blacken your soul, woman??” Meyer replies, “First of all, let me say that I do believe in true love. But I also deeply believe in the complexity, variety, and downright insanity of love. A lucky person loves hundreds of people in their lives, all in different ways, family love, friendship love, romantic love, all in so many shades and depths. I don’t think you lose your ability—or right—to have true love by loving more than one person. In part, this is true because you never love two people the same way. Another part is that, if you’re lucky, you learn to love better with practice. The bottom line is that you have to choose who you are going to commit to—that’s the foundation of true love, not a lack of other options.”

Whoa! Commitment, not “fate” or “first sight,” is where true love starts? Radical! And right. I appreciate that Meyer has allowed the books’ definition of love to grow along with Bella’s—and hopefully the reader’s, too.

For Edward and Bella, it seems (SPOILER ALERT!), that commitment will involve marriage at the ripe ages of 17 and 18, respectively. To Edward, who was born in 1901, their youth doesn’t seem terribly unnatural. For Bella, however, it’s a big stumbling block—not because she at all doubts that she wants to be with Edward for the rest of her life (and what she thinks is beyond), but because it’s embarrassing. She doesn’t want to be thought of as “that girl,” the one who gets married right out of high school. Bella’s mother, married young herself and soon divorced, has drilled it into Bella’s head: “smart people took marriage seriously. Mature people went to college and started careers before they got deeply involved in a relationship.”

Those are definitely the cultural assumptions I was raised on—I even scorned my peers who got married right out of college. Since then, though, I’ve seen that people seem to be ready for major life transitions at different ages. And for some—gasp!—college might not be a necessary, or even right, path. Bella had to mature a lot before really being ready to marry Edward, especially by dealing with her feelings for Jacob. The other big way in which she’s grown, though, is realizing how important a wedding ceremony—which she personally dreads—will be in helping her family and friends feel confident about her decision (though they won’t know about her intention to become a vampire soon thereafter). In other words, she’s realized that her decisions about love aren’t just about her wants and needs—they’re about her whole community of loved ones as well.

Finally, because in Eclipse Bella comes face-to-face with several “newborn” vampires, she now fully comprehends the potential consequences of her decision to become a vampire: “newborns” have an all-consuming thirst for human blood that will take immense effort for her to restrain. Of course, it may not actually come to that, because I’d like to think that Meyer has something more interesting up her sleeve than simply letting Bella become a vampire—but I’m glad to know that Bella is more mature, more ready for both marriage and vampiric immortality.

• ‘New Moon’: Do Vampires Have Souls? And Other Pressing Questions
• ‘Breaking Dawn’: Do We Want a Happy Ending?
• ‘Twilight’: A Positive or Negative Influence for Teens?

Vampires may be undead, but in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, they can be killed. Granted, it’s very difficult to kill a vampire: it requires ripping them into pieces and then burning the pieces, thus almost guaranteeing that only another super-strong vampire can perform the deed. But what happens to the undead after they die?

It turns out that this is one of the central questions behind the dilemma of whether Bella Swan will give up her mortality to stay eternally young with her vampire love Edward Cullen. You see, Edward believes that vampires have lost the souls they once had as humans, and so he’s adamantly opposed to Bella’s risking her soul for him. At this point you may be asking (as I certainly was): what, in Meyer’s fictional world, is a soul, exactly? It’s not entirely clear. Evidently it doesn’t mean that part of a person that directs the conscience or responds to the divine, because Meyer’s vampires have a clear sense of good and evil and Edward and Carlisle (at least) believe that God and heaven and hell exist. However, Edward doubts that any sort of afterlife exists for vampires—and that, if it does, it involves eternal damnation.

Bella’s fairly eager to take that risk, since, as she points out, she’s been raised “fairly devoid of belief,” and she thinks that being with Edward is “heaven” enough. (Whatever.) I think we’re supposed to regard her recklessness with eternal matters as somewhat misguided. Time (and the rest of the series) should reveal more. However, the introduction of this aspect of the Bella-Edward dilemma raises the stakes (so to speak) significantly and makes New Moon an important building block in the series.

Meyer has said in an interview that each of the Twilight books is loosely based on or inspired by a classic work of literature: Twilight is Pride and Prejudice; New Moon is Romeo and Juliet; Eclipse is Wuthering Heights; and Breaking Dawn is A Midsummer Night’s Dream and one other book that Meyer refuses to reveal, because it would be too much of a spoiler. Back to that Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights bit. Neither is what I would call an inspiring love story, unless love involves killing yourself over mistaken assumptions or trying to make your loved one miserable by tormenting her family and weaseling away her estate. Yet both are hailed as incredibly romantic, for reasons I cannot fathom. By using these works as models for her fiction, is Meyer trying to revise them, or is she merely paying tribute to them?

I’m really not sure, but I do know that, after reading New Moon, I think she may have tried to stick too closely to Romeo and Juliet, to the extent that her characters’ motivations feel wrenched to fit another plot. To discuss that in more detail, I’m going to have to get into some spoilers, so if you plan to read New Moon and haven’t yet done so, you might want to stop reading here.

There are some effective ways that Meyer uses the Romeo and Juliet story, most notably by introducing the ages-old feud between vampires and werewolves. There are also some ineffective ways (Edward the suicidal vampire, I’m looking at you). Yep, at one point Edward thinks that Bella is dead, and so he goes to Italy and tries to get a vampire clan there to kill him. You’d think that, with all Edward’s high principles and his practice of self-control, he might classify suicide as a selfish indulgence of emotion,* but I guess not. I suppose vampires do tend toward the emo side. Of course, there are two more books left in the series, so Edward obviously doesn’t succeed at his goal. However, I’m disturbed that, by the end of New Moon, he is still willing to be so careless with his (undead) life that, as he and Bella are discussing what would happen if she stayed mortal, grew old, and died, he answers, “I’ll follow after as soon as I can.” Bella calls that idea for what it is: “sick.”

But did you notice that what Edward said implies that, at some level, he thinks there might be an “after” for him after all? His attempted suicide does set up a situation that proves that he’s not entirely convinced of his own soullessness . . . but surely there could have been other ways to accomplish that in the story.

So it seems that both our protagonists have some growing to do, to learn what they should be willing to trade for life together. I have to admit, I’m hoping for a bittersweet ending that involves Bella and Edward sacrificing something other than their lives—or their souls.

*I don’t want to sound insensitive here to those who have lost loved ones to suicide—while it’s not an action I can approve of in any circumstances, I feel great sorrow for those who, due to despair or chemical imbalances, have taken their own lives.

• ‘Eclipse’: No Cheap Grace, No Easy Love
• ‘Breaking Dawn’: Do We Want a Happy Ending?
• ‘Twilight’: A Positive or Negative Influence for Teens?

However, I’m guessing, based on a brief Google search, that you may not have seen much Christian commentary on the series. I’ll attempt to provide some here, focusing on the novel’s potential effects on teens, since they’re its target audience. Let me state right off, though, that I’m not a parent, nor am I a teen anymore, so take my perspective for what it’s worth. Also, if you’re someone who’s concerned about Twilight because it deals with vampires, and vampires are supernatural, then my approach probably isn’t going to satisfy you. I’m starting from the assumption that fantasy has much to show us about ultimate truth. I’m more interested exploring how the version of love presented in Twilight is and isn’t consistent with the Christian ideal of love.

So here’s the spoiler-free plot summary for those of you who are behind: 17-year-old Bella Swan moves to the tiny town of Forks, Washington, to live with her father when her mother gets remarried. There she meets the Cullens, a family of “vegetarian” vampires (they only drink the blood of animals they hunt in the woods). Romance with Edward Cullen, the eternally 17-year-old son of the family, ensues, as does some suspense and adventure.

From what I can tell, many parents are happy about Twilight because, unlike many teen novels these days, its protagonists do not have sex. Granted, this is partly for practical reasons, since Meyer’s vampires possess super-strength and, Edward explains, if he ever lost control, he might accidentally crush Bella. Not your average reason for teen abstinence. Bella isn’t particularly religious, and we don’t learn more about Edward’s beliefs until New Moon, so it wouldn’t make sense within the story for them to have a more principled reason. Stephenie Meyer is Mormon, and she’s stated in interviews that this is part of the reason that she will never include a sex scene in her books. So it’s a fairly clean read, but teens can’t really apply the characters’ motivations to their own decisions about sexual activity.

What I see as actually more important and relevant to moral issues is the Cullens’ abstention from drinking human blood. The Cullens have definite beliefs about right and wrong, and they strive hard, against their instincts, to pursue right. When Bella asks Edward how he can work so hard to resist regular vampiric tendencies, Edward replies, “But you see, just because we’ve been . . . dealt a certain hand . . . it doesn’t mean that we can’t choose to rise above—to conquer the boundaries of a destiny that none of us wanted. To try to retain whatever essential humanity we can.” Quite admirable.

Carlisle Cullen, the family’s “father” (none of the Cullens are related by blood—they’re bound together by their “vegetarian” lifestyle choice), is so driven by compassion and the desire to save human life that he has become a doctor, in spite of the constant temptation in which that places him (exposure to human blood, etc.). Edward is drawn to Bella both in the normal, human, hormonal way, as well as thirsting for her blood, which requires him to practice a lot of self-control, especially when they’re in close physical proximity. Young readers may get a little obsessive and squealy about Edward, but there are worse things than having a crush on a character whose prominent virtue is self-control. Granted, they’re probably more excited about his perfect face and well-muscled chest and lovely topaz eyes (the descriptions of Edward’s physical perfection do get a little girly), but maybe they’ll learn to admire his non-physical characteristics as well.

I should mention, though, that the self-control issue also makes Bella’s and Edward’s physical contact highly erotic—not in a graphic way, more in a psychological way. That’s not a bad thing for an old married reader like me, but I do wonder about the effect this would have on younger readers.

However, if I were a parent, I think my biggest concern with Twilight might be its over-emphasis on romantic love. Bella and Edward say things to each other like “You are my life now” and talk about being together forever. For Bella at least, their relationship trumps everything else in her life, even life itself. She desperately wants Edward to turn her into a vampire, too, so that they can truly be together. Fortunately, Edward refuses, once again turning to deeply ingrained principles of right and wrong. It would be wrong to deprive her of normal human life, he feels, and so he refuses for her own good, because he loves her. Maybe because Edward was born in 1901, he has a much more developed set of values, including love that puts the good of the other person over self-fulfillment.

If Bella doesn’t become a vampire, she will age and eventually die, as Edward remains an immortal teenager. We get the feeling that something will happen by the end of the series, so that they can stay together “forever” without Edward violating his principles. It’s intriguing to speculate about how this impasse will be resolved, and its resolution (presumably in the final book, Breaking Dawn, to be released on August 2) will probably determine my final opinion about the series. In the meantime, though, I’m struck by the emphasis on achieving eternal romantic love, and wondering how much it has to do with Meyer’s Mormonism. In Mormon belief, as opposed to Christianity, marriage and family bonds are eternal, lasting into the afterlife. It’s an appealing idea, and that very appeal is part of why I believe that the Mormon idea of heaven is false and the Christian heaven is true. If I were making up a religion, I would sure want it to allow me to be with my husband forever. But, for Christians, part of the purpose of marriage is to represent Christ, his love and self-sacrifice, to each other. It’s a way of knowing Christ. When, in heaven, we actually see Christ face to face, we won’t need our human approximations of his love. We’ll have the real thing, rather than the analogy. It’s not romantic, and from our limited human perspectives, it may seem unappealing, but, again, that’s part of what convinces me that it’s true.

If I had a teen daughter, though, I wouldn’t forbid her from reading Twilight simply because its idea of love isn’t completely consistent with Christian love; on those grounds, I would have to forbid a whole lot of literature from throughout history. Instead, I think Twilight presents a perfect opportunity to discuss Christian love and how it compares to the love between Bella and Edward. Your teen may not want to hear that romantic love isn’t the be-all and end-all of her life, but she’s probably much more likely to listen to you (moms and dads) if you have read the book too and can appreciate what it does well.

All in all, Twilight is a well-written, suspenseful story. You want to stay up late reading just to find out what happens next—and in this respect, it’s certainly similar to the Harry Potter books. Bella’s first-person narration is very convincing, and the dialogue is often witty. My husband and I are enjoying reading the Twilight series aloud to each other, and I suspect I’m not the only non-teen looking forward to the rest of the series.

• ‘Eclipse’: No Cheap Grace, No Easy Love
• ‘New Moon’: Do Vampires Have Souls? And Other Pressing Questions
• ‘Breaking Dawn’: Do We Want a Happy Ending?

Don’t miss the first installment of their dialogue, in which they describe their initial experiences with the novel and discuss what Christian and non-Christian readers could possibly gain from reading it.
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Carissa: “Is there a third way between violence and passivity?”

Thanks, Alan, for your thoughtful response. I especially appreciated your point about the silence of God in the novel. I can see that, and I like the quote from Tobin that you mention.

I think where we differ is in how much we think the kid changes over the course of Blood Meridian. You say that the kid “moves from feeling that existence is validated through violence (the domination of one will over another or others . . . to an inchoate belief in a ‘love thy neighbor’ ethos.” I don’t see that. He seems inclined to help his companions up to a point and then abandon them, at the beginning and at the end of the novel. His actions, to me, don’t seem to point to a changed view of the world. He may carry a Bible, but, as the narrator tells us, he can’t read a word of it. True, as you say, his new belief may be inchoate, and it certainly doesn’t have to be stated verbally by either the kid or the narrator in order to be real. Oddly, the most significant textual support that the kid is of a higher moral caliber comes from the judge’s mouth, and he hardly seems like a reliable source.

Throughout the slaughter first of the Apaches and then of the Mexican townspeople, the kid totally recedes from the readers’ view (like God in the world of the novel, I suppose). We have no idea what he’s thinking and very little idea of what he specifically is doing (presumably participating in the carnage). So, for me as a reader, it totally comes out of nowhere when the judge says to the kid, “You alone reserved in your soul some corner of clemency for the heathens.” It almost feels like McCarthy, committed to a distant narrator, suddenly makes the judge do the expository work that the narrator hasn’t been doing. And I, for one, don’t buy what the judge says, because I haven’t seen it borne out in the kid’s actions. It feels like the narrative equivalent of a magician pulling a turtle out of a hat and proclaiming, “Ta-da! A rabbit!”—and expecting his audience to respond to the turtle as a rabbit.

Recently I’ve been reading Alan Jacobs’s Original Sin: A Cultural History, and last night as I was reading that book’s discussion of the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, I thought of the kid. For those who aren’t familiar with the experiment, it was conducted in 1971 by psychologist Philip Zimbardo. In a simulated prison environment, students were divided into two groups: prisoners and guards. After just a couple of days, the guards’ brutal treatment of the prisoners became so extreme that Zimbardo had to call off the experiment.

Just last year, Zimbardo published a book-length discussion of his experiment, called The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. In The Lucifer Effect, he mentions that, in the original Stanford Prison Experiment, there were actually “good guards” who did not show direct cruelty to the prisoners. However, these good guards “never did anything bad to the prisoners but not once over the whole week did they confront the other guards and say ‘What are you doing? . . .’ Or, ‘Hey, remember those are college students, not prisoners.’ No good guard ever intervened to stop the activities of the bad guards. . . . In a sense, then, it’s the good guard who allowed such abuses to happen.”

The kid, to me, to the minuscule extent that he does have a changed worldview, basically ends up as one of the “good guards” that make abuse and violence possible. You write that the kid passes up “the opportunity to kill the judge, because to kill the judge would be to concede to the judge’s worldview; the will to power. So while the kid doesn’t physically stop the judge, he is the only person in the judge’s grasp that manages to reject an atheistic, will to power philosophy.” What the kid doesn’t seem to realize, if this is true, is that there’s a difference between mere passivity and committed pacifism (not necessarily in the sense that all violence is wrong, because I wouldn’t expect the kid to end up there—but I do feel there’s another alternative between the extremes of will-to-power and passivity that the kid—and the novel—ignores).

Thus, the kid’s death?/rape?/mutilation? at the hands of the judge moves me not a whit. It’s not even a sacrificial death; it’s merely a passive one. Eat or be eaten are the alternatives, and he gets eaten. But maybe there’s a third option that looks like being eaten but really entails moral victory.

To return briefly to Zimbardo, he’s apparently investigating how to cultivate “heroism.” And I’m enough of a pessimist that that makes me laugh. However, I do think that the story of how “evil” people become good is a more interesting story than how “good” people become evil, especially since I believe that, post-Fall, evil is our primary state. That’s what I feel is missing from Blood Meridian. If the kid does indeed change for the better, which is what McCarthy seems to want us to believe, I want to know how and why he changes for the better.

On a side note, given your statement that you wouldn’t recommend Blood Meridian to many Christians, I’m curious about whether there are situations you can think of in which you might recommend the novel to a Christian reader. That’s probably a hard question to answer on a theoretical level, but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

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• A CAPC Dialogue: Violence in Blood Meridian
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So far, no one has yet made a movie of McCarthy’s 1985 novel Blood Meridian, viewed by many as his best work (though there are rumors of a Ridley Scott-helmed adaptation in the future). You thought No Country for Old Men was violent? Blood Meridian wins the contest hands-down. Scalpings, rapes, heads bashed in, disembowelings, you name it. Set on the border of Texas and Mexico in the late 1840s (just after the Mexican-American war), the novel follows “the kid,” a sixteen-year-old who takes up with a band of mercenaries (the Glanton Gang) who have contracted with the Mexican government to kill Apache Indians. His main adversary, however, turns out not to be the Apaches, but “the judge,” an unspeakably cruel and manipulative member of the Glanton Gang.

Though Christians have spent a lot of time discussing sex and language in movies and books, we’ve generally devoted less effort to analyzing the effect of reading about or viewing violence. Here, two of our CAPC writers, Alan Noble and Carissa Smith, discuss these issues in relation to Blood Meridian.

In the first installment of their dialogue, they describe their initial experiences with the novel and discuss what Christian and non-Christian readers could possibly gain from reading it.
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Carissa: “Yep. We’re depraved. Tell me something I don’t already know.”

I picked up Blood Meridian at a used book sale a few weeks ago, figuring that, since I liked Cormac McCarthy’s most recent novel, The Road, I should give some of his other works a try. I chose Blood Meridian above the other McCarthy possibilities at the sale because a friend had told me it was “life-changing,” though gruesome. I read it on planes and in airports during a recent trip to Texas, thinking that if I didn’t like it, at least it would give me a little local atmosphere.

It was helpful to be reading the novel in a place where I could visit the Texas State History Musuem, given that McCarthy doesn’t fill in much of the historical background surrounding his party of mercenary scalpers. It was helpful for reminding myself just when exactly the Republic of Texas existed. And it was pretty cool to read about the judge making saltpeter from bat guano and then, the next day at a park, to see a large kettle in which, the sign proclaimed, settlers used to make saltpeter from bat guano.

Unfortunately, the fact that saltpeter can be made from bat guano is about all that I feel I ultimately got from Blood Meridian. Let me say right off that I can appreciate a book portraying lots of violence if the violence contributes to the storytelling. Violence is somewhat essential to Flannery O’Connor’s storytelling style, for example, as there it represents the force of God’s grace. Sometimes violence in a story serves to deepen our understanding of human nature and original sin–and I tried to find some way in which Blood Meridian did this for me, but kept drawing blanks. I found myself thinking, “Yep, humanity is depraved. I already know this. Quit with the endless examples and tell me something I don’t know.” On the other hand, I worry that, because the violence is so extreme, a non-Christian reading the book will not be convicted of his or her own sinfulness–or even general human sinfulness–because the judge’s cruelty is so over-the-top that it’s all too easy to paint him as inhuman. Plus, given the book’s historical setting, readers might think, “Wow, people were so wrong back then–I’m glad we’re more enlightened now”–rather than pondering the ways that such atrocities continue, even within the individual’s heart.

So my question about Blood Meridian is twofold: (1) What can a Christian gain from reading the novel? and (2) What in the novel could help a non-Christian move closer to Christ? I don’t doubt that people can find value in the novel, nor do I wish to condemn anyone for doing so; but I’m curious to see if there’s a reason I should keep my copy of the novel, rather than selling it back to my local used bookstore.

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Alan: “Blood Meridian demonstrates the desire for order in an unjust world.”

I’m going to try to keep this brief, but since I wrote a few hundred pages on this book over the course of a thesis, a conference paper, and a few seminar papers, I might fail. In fact, I think I already failed.

My first encounter with Blood Meridian was actually in an English 102 class at a Community College. At that time I wasn’t as interested in really engaging the text so much as passing the class, so I spent much of my time trying to sort through McCarthy’s challenging dialogue, particularly in the last few pages of the novel. It wasn’t really until I reread the novel for a graduate seminar that I fell in love with it and became lost in its labyrinth-like language and themes. What drove my new love for the book was the central idea of silence.

I’m going to answer your question by dealing with two aspects of the novel that both deal with the violence and the issue of what can be gained - what sort of redemptive (or redeeming) themes/issues are presented.

Near the middle of the novel, an ex-priest named Tobin speaks to the main character, the kid, concerning the voice of God in the world. The kid says, “I aint heard no voice,” to which Tobin replies, “When it stops, you’ll know you’ve heard it all your life.” This idea of how the silence of God can make a person aware of His existence is, I believe, one of the central themes of the novel. The world of Blood Meridian appears godless. Violence is ubiquitous, nearly every character is horribly evil, and there is no hero who rights these wrongs to our liking. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the many violent scenes is the morally neutral stance the narrator and characters seem to take. People die, are raped, are mutilated, tortured, treated as animals, and yet the descriptive language is detached and even a bit lovely in its colorfulness*. It is this very absence of judgement and morality that most compellingly alludes to the presence of God in this world.

McCarthy gives us the classic good/evil binary but fails to present the other half of the binary, leaving us with evil. For most readers, and at least the kid, this binary must be completed. The horrifying absence of goodness and justice in the world creates in both the reader and the kid a desire for justice**. We need to see this world drawn out of chaos. Mexico in the novel is described as godless, and as the kid encounters this godlessness he moves from feeling that existence is validated through violence (the domination of one will over another or others), the stance of the judge, to a inchoate belief in a “love thy neighbor” ethos. Which brings me to the second aspect, the maturation of the kid and his opposition to the judge.{/column2}

As I stated, when Blood Meridian first begins, we are presented with a kid who is devoted to the shedding of blood. He literally believes that through violence mankind (and existence) is validated. This ideology (the self versus the world) is embodied in the judge who takes it to an extreme. The judge is preoccupied with forcing the world to submit to his will. He sketches artifacts in a notebook and then destroys them so that only he controls them. He calls the birds an affront to him. He kills and rapes. He controls the Glanton Gang through manipulation and lies. And he teaches them that the greatest action a person can take is to pit his life against that of another. Because in this act one person’s existence is posed against another’s. The judge’s approach to nature, science, and philosophy suggest that he is a horrifying caricature of an Enlightenment rationalist. In addition, the philosophy he presents to the Glanton Gang has some striking similarities to Nietzsche’s existentialism, albeit a much more violent version. We can sum the judge’s philosophy up by stating that he seems to have come to the conclusion that God is dead and that the greatest validation of a person is the will to power.

And while the kid seems to agree with this ideology in the beginning of the book, through his experiences with the gang he begins to turn from this belief system, much to the disgust of the judge. At several critical moments in the text we find the kid choosing to put others before himself, to be a “good Samaritan” even at the risk of his own life. The kid begins to adopt a “love thy neighbor” morality which is in direct opposition to the judge’s “will to power” philosophy. By the end of the novel the judge is intent on killing the kid, and the kid has several chances to kill the judge, but he refuses to, which is his downfall.

In the judge’s worldview, existence is all that matters and violence can control existence. For the judge, to kill is to be right. But for the kid, existence is not what is supremely important. By the novel’s end, the kid seems to be aware that God exists and he actively searches for Him, although he is ultimately unable to come to any real Faith. After he leaves the judge he kills only once in self-defense, and begins carrying a Bible. He has come to realize that the (essentially) existentialist system that he had previously held to was incomplete. This leads him to pass up the opportunity to kill the judge, because to kill the judge would be to concede to the judge’s worldview; the will to power. So while the kid doesn’t physically stop the judge, he is the only person in the judge’s grasp that manages to reject an atheistic, will to power philosophy.

Now let me see if I can answer your question on a more practical level.

For the Christian I think one thing that can be gained is the idea that often the best response to a debate is silence. Much like Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov, the kid does not answer the judge’s philosophical arguments with words but with actions. God’s existence is not shown through an eloquent intellectual challenge to the judge, but with the kid’s refusal to concede to the judge’s worldview. I think it also presents a world which is continuously alluding to God’s existence, but in incredibly quiet ways, sometimes silent ways. The chaos of the world calls for order, for a Righteous God. The sublime descriptions of the landscape suggest a world filled with purpose and meaning even though it is populated with depraved individuals.

For the non-Christian, I think the horrifying chaos in the novel can present a profound desire for order, for justice, for a Righteous God. And the judge’s existentialist worldview is a frightening challenging. The judge is eloquent, and the brutal worldview he presents seems to logically flow out of his atheism, or at least out of his materialist, Enlightenment ideals. To identify one of the most horrifying characters in American literature with some of the most privileged ideals of American history (enlightenment rationalism, scientific materialism, atheistic existentialism, moral relativism) is a bold and possibly challenging decision.

Ultimately, Blood Meridian is not a book I would recommend to many Christians, or most Christians for that matter. It is disturbing in its visuals and challenging in its ideas, but the way McCarthy skillfully presents opposing worldviews and explores their conclusions makes it my favorite novel.

*McCarthy, anticipating the reaction that the violence of the novel is just an example of how civilized modern man is, includes in the preface an account of a 300,000 year old skull that had been scalped. For McCarthy, the violence in the novel transcends its location in geography and time.

**Thomas Hibbs, a professor at Baylor, recently proposed this very concept in relation to film noir, arguing that the moral ambiguity and even chaos in film noir results in a profound need for order in both the viewer and the main characters. The Art of Darkness

• A CAPC Dialogue: Violence in Blood Meridian, Part 2
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Alex & Brett are “nineteen-year-old twin brothers, born and raised in Oregon, taught at home by [their] parents  and striving to follow Christ as best [they] can.” But their message could just prove to be culture changing for an entire generation. Do Hard Things isn’t a self-help book about how you can do anything you put your mind to, even as a teen. Rather it is a book written by teens that is calling teens to change their attitude about life, God, and themselves, and the book begins by urging all to “Rethink the Teen Years.” Through historical (George Washington, David Farragut, etc.) and modern examples (like Zach Hunter, a 16 year old abolitionist and author) these young men reveal just how much teens are capable of doing through the power of the Holy Spirit.

They list Five Kinds of Hard Things that teens should do: (1) Things Outside Our comfort Zone; (2) Things that go Beyond What’s Expected or Required; (3) Things that are Too Big to do Alone; (4) Things that Don’t Have Immediate Payoffs; (5) And Things that Go Against the Crowd. The book displays a level of seriousness about teens without being preachy, and it is filled with stories that will surprise and delight even the most skeptical reader.

The most amazing thing about the work is the response that Alex & Brett have gotten from their peers. Quote after quote reveals teens who have been desiring this very same message, community, and challenge! That is an amazing thing, and it must be something more than the clever writing of some nineteen-year-old home-schooled twins from Oregon (even if they are committed to doing hard things). Their own words reveal, in fact, that it is something more: The Rebelution is something God is doing in the hearts of our generation, not something we engineered (24).

What further amazed me by reading this book was that I was challenged to do hard things afresh. If it’s hard being a teenager for the glory of God in a culture that doesn’t expect you to, it’s equally as hard to be an adult who does things for the glory of God in a culture that doesn’t expect you to. I suppose, in the end, that’s why I appreciate this book: if you start trying to do hard things for the glory of God as a teen, then you’re more likely to do them as an adult, and that is what the church needs right now! So to everyone I say, “Do hard things… and start by reading this book!”

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What would happen if you took a copy of Les Miserables and highlighted the bits about Jean Valjean, that illustration of grace and mercy, and Javert, relentless man of the law, and left out all that other stuff about student revolutions and orphaned waifs and the never-ending Battle of Waterloo? Okay, yeah, you would get The Fugitive. But add in trains, carnivals, cowboys, and the dying dream of the Old West, and you’ve got Leif Enger’s So Brave, Young, and Handsome, a distinctly American tale of redemption.

So what if the tale’s been told before? As Enger himself writes in his bestselling 2001 novel, Peace Like a River, repetition of a story doesn’t make it any less true or beautiful (I’m paraphrasing here).

So Brave, Young, and Handsome is set in 1915 and begins in Minnesota, but travels south and west from there. In this novel, the role of Valjean is played by Glendon Hale, a small, white-haired former outlaw, now a boat-builder with the chief ambition of finding the wife of his youth and apologizing for having abandoned her. Javert is a Pinkerton Detective named Charles Siringo, a ruthless tracker who relishes the book of Ecclesiastes but doesn’t have much use for Proverbs. Our narrator is Monte Becket, middle-aged writer who published a popular Western adventure novel five years before. He fears that he may be a one-hit-wonder, though, as none of his subsequent drafts have captured the spark of his first achievement. He longs to prove himself to his patient wife. Of course, by the end of Enger’s novel, he does. Enger is not a writer out to disappoint or shock the reader; you know where the story’s going, and you can relax in the author’s hands, enjoying the path to a satisfying destination.

You can tell a lot about Enger’s own reading taste from conversations he records in his books. For example, in So Brave, Young, and Handsome, police detective Royal Davies tells Becket, “You’re doing these youngsters no service . . . You authors, I mean—this world ain’t romance, in case you didn’t notice.”

“So I am discovering,” Becket replies in that scene, but as retrospective narrator, he continues to reflect, “It was, I suppose, the expected wry answer, and it made my host chuckle, but now I am taking it back. I take issue with Royal, much as I came to like him; violent and doomed as this world might be, a romance it certainly is.”

Becket clearly means romance here in the sense of adventure and derring-do, not just lovey-dovey stuff (though that’s often part of the adventures as well). Pardon the English teacher in me, but I also have to mention the literary genre of romance here, because I think it’s a genre in which Enger comfortably operates. As Becket’s and Enger’s 19^th-century predecessor Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, “When a writer calls his work a romance, he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a novel.” It’s not strict realism—and the supernatural is often involved—but Becket is claiming here that, in a way, romance is truer to life than stark realism (or the even starker naturalism that would have been popular in Becket’s youth). A romance will not necessarily have a happy ending, as anyone who’s read Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter could tell you. But the ending will not be meaningless.

There’s a hilariously familiar scene in So Brave, Young, and Handsome, in which Becket continues to debate literary value with Royal Davies’s wife. Mrs. Davies asks Becket what he thinks of writer Boyd Singleton Ample, a famous contemporary who seems to operate in the realist (if not the naturalist) vein. Feeling like he ought to like Ample because he is a “very important writer,” Becket trots out phrases like “his insights on human miseries are salient” and “a broader understanding of human darkness.”

Again stepping into narrative retrospection, Becket explains that his attempted insight about Ample “didn’t seem like a weak limb to climb out on—it was a common opinion among people who were serious about Literature and the phase it was in, whether of ascent or decline, and What It All Meant for Society. In his [Ample’s] most recent novel he had sallied out with a number of momentous ideas, namely that war is difficult, and that poverty is difficult too; in fact, that much of human experience is marked by difficulty. I don’t remember who is at fault.”

To all of which Mrs. Davies responds: “Horse puckey.” (And this is about as coarse as the language in the novel gets, in case you’re curious.)

This isn’t to say that Enger ‘s writing doesn’t display a broad “understanding of human darkness” itself, but his novels go beyond Ample’s fatuous insights that life is hard. Life is hard, but there is blessing in it. As Becket says of outlaw Glendon Hale, “I could feel the draw of his silence, the draw of his naïve and weak-eyed quest for atonement; no doubt even his shifty past was a draw, for his life seemed a curving line, capricious, moment by moment inviting grace.”

For those who lament the absence of Christian literary fiction in the early 21^st century, Leif Enger may provide what’s missing. He may not be literary enough for many litterateurs, and he may not be Christian enough for many Christians, but, in my opinion, that proves that he’s writing just as he should.

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Though Rapture Ready! is written ostensibly as a guide for non-evangelicals to understand (and, yes, sometimes laugh at) evangelical culture, it may be even more useful and revealing as a tool to help evangelicals understand themselves and the secular mindset. During an encounter with Bibleman himself, Robert “R.T.” Schlipp, Radosh remembers, “R.T. asked if he could pray for me, which didn’t surprise me. And then he prayed that my book would help Christians see some hard truths about themselves, even if it hurt. Which I hadn’t expected at all.” Christians’ willingness to recognize their own faults may be unexpected, but it may end up as the most significant result of Radosh’s book. Bibleman’s prayers may be answered.

Of course, anyone who’s ever stepped inside a Christian bookstore is probably already familiar with embarrassing displays of Christian kitsch, so this aspect of Rapture Ready! is hardly news. (One of Radosh’s interviewees does phrase the dilemma particularly well: “When you are born again, God gives you a new heart and a new opportunity. He doesn’t necessarily give you  new taste.”) Radosh does report some interesting conversations with evangelical marketers about the paradox of Christian materialism.

However, what’s even more potentially painful—and important—to evangelical readers are Radosh’s accounts of the way that Christians react to him as a non-Christian—and, more specifically, as a Jew. As one might expect, there are the trite responses along the lines of “I love the Jewish people!” and “Jesus was a Jew,” which just seem to tire Radosh. Another one that keeps coming up, though, is C. S. Lewis’s famous “liar/lunatic/Lord” trilemma from Mere Christianity, re-hashed by people with different levels of education and varying degrees of knowledge of the quotation’s source. I’ve always liked the trilemma, but I still find myself squirming at the way the people Radosh meets pull it out as a sort of Christian trump card, the argument for Jesus’ divinity than which no greater can be conceived. It’s a poignant reminder that things that are fairly popular and meaningful within the Christian community are not necessarily going to speak to outsiders—and may even be misused by those within.

One of the chapters I found simultaneously hilarious, embarrassing, and painfully close to home (literally, in this case) was the chapter about The Great Passion Play and the associated New Holy Land and Christ of the Ozarks statue in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It’s also one of the few topics discussed in Radosh’s book that I’ve actually experienced, since I grew up in Arkansas and my parents currently live in Eureka Springs. Radosh uncovers the not-so-hidden past of the man behind all three of these Eureka Springs attractions: Gerald K. Smith, a racist and anti-Semite. Even at age eight or so, the first and only time I attended the Passion Play, though I didn’t know the founder’s history, I remained rather unimpressed by the show’s use of a pre-recorded track to which the actors on stage lip-synched and pantomimed their lines. However, the lack of actual expertise needed to participate in the Passion Play does give Radosh the chance to volunteer to be part of a night’s performance: he is accepted on the condition that he bring his own sandals.

Even in the ensuing snarky commentary, Radosh manages to convey some fascinating points about the transformation of Christian pop culture in the 20^th century. The Passion Play, he writes, “hails from the prehistory of Christian pop culture, when local spectacles mattered because there was no mass culture. . . . It cannot be a coincidence that the popularity of The Great Passion Play began to wane in the early 1990s, just as Christian pop culture finally caught up with the mainstream in its ability to reach a national audience with homogenized product.” Wow. With that sentence, Radosh just accomplished something I thought impossible: he made me mourn the inevitable death of The Great Passion Play. Offensive and amateurish it may be; homogenized it is not.

Though the Passion Play chapter was my favorite for personal reasons, Chapter 6 (“And books were opened,” in which Radosh discusses Christian fiction and meets writers Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker) of Rapture Ready! may be the most representative of the book’s strengths and weaknesses.

The strength: Radosh admits when he’s been wrong, when he’s misjudged a Christian (in this case, Peretti). Radosh reads This Present Darkness, Peretti’s 1986 spiritual warfare thriller, and its 1989 sequel Piercing the Darkness, and is disturbed by the implications that “liberals” are Satanic. However, when he actually meets Peretti, he finds a gentle, humorous man instead of a raving reactionary. When Radosh directly questions Peretti about his “angry” attitude in the novels, Peretti humbly admits, “I was very angry when I wrote that. . . . I think in my earlier books there was a definite polarization there, and a demonization of the left. I think actually that was a measure of immaturity on my part, and a shallow outlook on things.”

Radosh reflects after this conversation, “I certainly wasn’t one of those people who thought all evangelicals are little Pat Robertsons [“Some of my best friends are evangelicals!” is the tone I get here], but I had thought Frank Peretti was. If he’d put all that hostility behind him, did it represent some broader cultural shift?”

This comment, as it illustrates the strength of Radosh’s own humility, also exposes Rapture Ready!’s greatest weakness: Radosh happily admits he’s wrong and re-evaluates evangelicals to the extent that he discovers they’re like him after all. As Tim Challies writes in his own post on Rapture Ready!, “it takes no great skill to analyze and critique a subculture through the lens of your own. And in this case, it didn’t seem like Radosh offered a whole lot more than that. Seldom did he find much to appreciate in anything but the Christians who were most like him.”

Still, this emphasis on how much Radosh finds in common with the evangelicals who share his values is itself indicative of a perhaps unbridgeable impasse existing between evangelicals, whatever their political persuasion, and secular liberals (sorry to use that label, because I think it’s misleading and reductionist, but it’s one that Radosh himself uses). Earlier in the Peretti chapter, he writes of his growing understanding of the portrayal of liberal characters in Peretti’s fiction:

“To a Christian, the dastardly liberals are not so much villains as victims. It’s not their fault they’re possessed by demons. But if I felt a slight diminishing of hostility, I also saw any hope of mutual accommodation go up in a blast of sulfurous smoke. It may shock Peretti, but these days, much of what liberals really anguish about behind closed doors is how to find common ground with people of faith. And now I realized that for at least some people, common ground will never be possible because they don’t object to specific ideas that can be reframed or adjusted. They object to Satan, whose bidding we are doing. They may not hate us—they may believe they love us—but they hate him, and they won’t negotiate with him either. We want to persuade them, reason with them, listen to them, and accommodate them. They want to save us. It’s not even the same playing field.”

It’s true. Even I, potentially one of the “good” evangelicals Radosh would like because we’d have some common political ground, want to save him. In the belief that the Gospel is indeed good news, it’s kind of inherent that one would want people to hear that good news. That may not entail quoting C. S. Lewis or wearing a WWJD? bracelet, or even making any kind of obvious statement, but it does mean that Radosh and I will never entirely share the common ground he wishes for. Even if I’m not pushy, if I listen to him and treat him with respect, it will be because that’s how I believe I am called to show the love of Jesus—and I’m not sure Radosh would want to accept my tolerance on those grounds. It’s sad, but I don’t think the so-called culture wars can be ended (if they ever existed—but I’m not getting into that) by sorting out the “good” Christians from the “bad” Christians. However, I think Radosh does Christians and non-Christians alike a service in clarifying the differences involved—and in helping us laugh at some of those differences. If reconciliation is never completely possible, at least amused humility may be.

*Radosh provides a multimedia library of links related to all these topics at his site Get Rapture Ready!

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