Alan Jacobs

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s four types of readers

From lecture two of his Seven Lectures On Shakespeare and Milton

(Thx @communicatrix!)

Marilynne Robinson is one of the great religious novelists, not only of our age, but any age. Reading her new novel Lila, one wonders how critics could worry that American fiction has lost its faith, though such worries make one think there might well have been wedding guests at Cana who complained about the shortage of water after witnessing the miracle with wine.

[gallery] austinkleon:

I wrote a little something about reading here.

To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect.

For obit writers, the whole world is necessarily divided into the dead and the pre-dead. That’s all there is.

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biblipeacay:

From an auction collection of 28 Soviet posters from 1920s-1940s or thereabouts - *Factories, Agricgulture, Education & Advertisements* that sold a couple of years ago. [source]

Many Christian organizations, as they think about their treatment of gays and lesbians, and their theology of sexuality more generally, are “evolving,” or “in process,” or “on the journey.” And make no mistake, this is a journey on a one-way street: no Christian group is moving from greater to less tolerance of same-sex relationships.

So let’s imagine that a given Christian organization takes its journey from Point One to Point Two. Point One is believing that sexual activity between people of the same sex is wrong because it is forbidden by Scripture and/or by Church teaching; Point Two is believing that such sexual activity is not necessarily forbidden (not “intrinsically disordered”) and can, under the same conditions of faithfulness that have traditionally governed opposite-sex unions, be blessed by the church.

Let’s also assume that God has not changed His mind about sexuality.

So as we try to evaluate this imaginary Christian organization, we can see what has happened in one of three ways:

1) At one point, the organization held views about sexuality that were largely determined by its social environment, but it has now reconsidered those views in light of the Gospel and has come to a more authentically Christian understanding of the matter.

2) At one point, the organization held authentically Christian views about sexuality, but has succumbed to public pressure and fear of being scorned or condemned and now holds views that are determined by its social environment.

3) The organization has always held the views about sexuality that were socially dominant, bending its understanding of Scripture to suit the times; it just changed when (or soon after) the main stream of society changed.

Note that there is no way to read this story as one of consistent faithfulness to a Gospel message that works against the grain of a dominant culture.

And that’s the key issue, it seems to me — that’s what churches and other Christian organizations need to be thinking about. Either throughout your history or at some significant point in your history you let your views on a massively important issue be shaped largely by what was acceptable in the cultural circles within which you hoped to be welcome. How do you plan to keep that from happening again?

Which religion will have the toughest time reconciling aliens with its beliefs?

The ones that have decided that we humans are the sole focus of God’s attention. The religions that see the world through that viewpoint tend to be some of the Christian evangelicals. The Eastern Orthodox Church, a branch of Catholicism, also has that view.