Paul writes – I’ve always been fascinated by US writer Walker Percy. So has Brian McLaren, but in a far more engaged way than me. Alan Roxburgh recently spoke to Brian McLaren(pt.1 here), and in reflecting on that conversation he wrote the following on his blog (full reflection, here):
“I’ve been trying to find a way of describing Brian in order to make sense of why he is read and appreciated by so many but also criticized so vehemently by others. Walker Percy helps me do that…
Percy would never claim to be a theologian or a Biblical scholar. He was a man who intended to be a doctor but was drawn into the vocation of writing by an accident. In that drawing of his life he sought to understand the meaning of Christian life in a world and culture that was tumbling down Alice’s hole into a place that seemed to make little sense and chewed up human life. In books like The Last Gentleman, Love in the Ruins, The Thanatos Syndrome and his non-fiction Lost in the Cosmos Percy explored through writing the meaning of human life and the place of the Gospel in late 20th century America. He was wrestling with deeply human questions of how to frame our lives given the utter centrality of the Christian story.
That’s what I find Brian up to in his writing. I’ve never found him claiming to be a theologian or a Biblical scholar. He’s a Christian in love with Jesus, shaped by the Bible and committed to the historic faith of the church who is seeking to articulate the questions we’re facing as human beings and Christians in a massively changing world…
He’s always trying to have a conversation with his culture through the real people with whom he’s in relationship. He is inviting us into those conversations – but that is what they are – conversations along a road and on a journey that is often strange and challenging. He may not agree with the comparison but in some ways Brian is like a Walker Percy prodding and probing to understand how the Gospel of the Kingdom, the great narrative of God’s purposes in history are lived out today…”
Roxburgh’s observation well captures what many of us are trying to do – “prodding and probing”, listening and reading; trying to find the ways, the “gaps” within which gospel, kingdom and local culture(s) are in life-giving and liberating conversation.
For more on Percy [(Thomas) Merton, (Flannery) O’Connor, (Dorothy) Day, have a listen to this Speaking of Faith broadcast – Literature: Fired by Faith - previously highlighted on this blog. Downloadable as an Mp3 here.
Alan's one of my people, mate. A Canadian. (After 45 years here, he qualifies.) :-)
Posted by: Bill Kinnon | Thursday, 06 December 2007 at 07:11 PM