08 March 2010

A review of Gilead - for the Trinity Book Club


Chorus (in bold):
There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul.

Some times I feel discouraged,
And think my work’s in vain,
But then the Holy Spirit
Revives my soul again.
(Chorus)

If you can’t preach like Peter,
If you can’t pray like Paul,
Just tell the love of Jesus,
And say He died for all.
(Chorus)

There has been a great deal of talk in our time about the separation of church and state, and although I believe in that principal, I think that it barks up the wrong tree.  There is not an established church in the United States, but there is a dominant theology.  It is this theology and its various interpretations and manifestations that need to be separated from the State.  I am speaking of the Calvinism, more specifically the predestinarianism that informs Marilynne Robinson’s excellent book, Gilead.  This theology of predetermined results has freed our society from wrestling with many evils, and that is what she writes about in Gilead.  I’d like to talk about it on a variety of levels. 

On a personal level, I felt as though the author must have camped out in my life, or in the life of my father, or in the lives of the long line of Lutheran pastors and teachers that preceded us.  Interestingly enough, predestinarian controversy inserted itself in my own family’s life, when my great great grandfather left the Ohio Synod of the Lutheran Church over this issue, and joined The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod.  My großmama was much upset when I and my brother, and my cousin Paul all reversed the trend, and left the Missouri Synod.  I know the power of these concepts.  I wonder how many readers can apprehend this book – there being so many arcane, and now culturally irrelevant references.



My mother was born in the hill country of Kansas in a small town near Topeka called Alma, Kansas.  In this town you were either Lutheran or Catholic – they shared a block upon which Holy Family Church (Catholic) and St. John’s Church (Lutheran) sat.  I loved all of the references to the prairie, and was amused at the back seat that the Lutherans occupy in this book.  This is really a book about the Reformed Church (with roots in Switzerland, France, and Germany) and fellow players, namely the Presbyterians (Scotland), and the Methodists (reformed Anglicans, England).  In this town of Alma, the Methodist minister was run out of town, when during the First World War, he made disparaging remarks about German-American citizens. 

A way of apprehending the book.  As I read this book, a physical diagram formed in my mind and helped me to understand what I thought the book was trying to capture and report.  The diagram is noted below, and includes what I think are the major characters and the rôles that they play in this excellent theological treatise (I mean, novel).  At the center of my cross (and the symbol is intentionally used here) John Ames, the narrator, is the passive observer of the theological, political, and social forces at play all about him.  On the cross beam, he occupies the place of the observer, and is sort of the Hegelian “synthesis” to the “thesis” of his grandfather’s radical Christianity, and the “antithesis” of his uncle’s agnosticism.  Although Edward does not take up much type in this book, he anchors one half of the equation. 

The upright is formed by the father and the two sons.  One (Jack), is the total experience of the past, full of all its trials, temptations, faults, and misdeeds.  The other is the true son, innocent, all future, all unknown, in formation.  This diagram helped me read the book.

Jack (John Ames) Boughton
(the past, perdition, Adam,
the prodigal son)


The Grandfather             John Ames                  Edward
(the past,                     (the past                       (the past
Total Christianity)          Karl Barth                     achristian
                Calvin)                                                   Feuerbach)


John Ames
(the future, Unformed)

Fathers and Sons:  Once I stood with my father on the balcony of my sister’s home on Bernal Heights.  Everyone else was partying, but we had a moment to our selves.  He was having a very difficult time with my being out as a gay man, and I think still smarting that I left the church of his fathers.  I asked him, “Do you still follow all of the values, and precepts of your parents?  Have you ever developed a viewpoint that is truly your own?  He looked at me for a few seconds, and then he said. “No.”  And that was that.  The dynamic in Giliead is the knowing rejection (perhaps that is too strong), moving beyond the vision of the father to something else.  Sometimes there is conversation about that transaction, but just as often there is not (John Ames’ father moves East to live with Edward).



The problem of sin:  I found especially interesting the story about Jack and the car, which he stole, and abandoned.  All kinds of folk become involved in his “sin”, so that no one individual can properly be removed from the problem.  It reminds me of the song (Auto da fe) that Dr. Pangloss sings in Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, in which he recounts how the syphilis that he receives from his paramour Paquette, which then goes around the world so that by the last verse he is infected again.  Jack sin infects a whole circle of people.  The grandfather, to use a Lutheran phrase (pecca fortiter) sinned boldly – and to good effect.  Edward didn’t believe in it.  And the picture we have of the son, a common Anabaptist concept is that the child is innocent of all this.  I was amused at how kind sin could be, when Jack is visiting his “wife” Della following the birth of their son, he comments on how nice the women were being to him.  They were lying of course – they despised him and what he had done, and he understands it perfectly.  “They were just being Christian”, he comments.



Fathers and Sons II:  I was terribly moved when John Ames pronounces a benediction upon Jack.  Because of my own history, scenes of reconciliation between fathers and sons effect me deeply.  It is interesting that John Ames comments on the gesture that Jack often makes, of touching his face in delicate moments.  And yet it is this same gesture that is used at the benediction.  I wept.

I loved this book.  I loved all the nooks and crannies that were familiar places to me, and the physical scenes that seemed so familiar.  I loved its language and cadence, and its still, small, quiet voice.  If you are interested read: I Kings 19:8-13.

Thanks, many thanks, to whomever selected this book.

2 comments:

  1. Do you think that a knowledge of Barth and Feuerbach contributes to understanding the themes of the book? I've looked at both briefly, to me it is the dichotomy of God's judgement vs. salvation and the effect of being elected or otherwise predestined.

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  2. I think that it is helpful if you have an acquaintance with the thinking of both of these men, perhaps Hegel as well. Is it necessary? No. It just provides a richer context for the characters, and the author's prose.

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