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Apologia Report 15:6 (1,011)
February 17, 2010
Subject: New controversies in popular religious fiction
In this issue:
BORG, MARCUS J. - his first attempt at fiction, Putting Away Childish Things: A Tale of Modern Faith, sure to raise eyebrows
CHURCH HISTORY - Philip Pullman's latest, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, "the most daring pairing so far"
MORMONISM - the strong LDS themes of the Twilight book series by Stephenie Meyer
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This issue of AR is focused entirely on religious fiction. Due April
20th is Putting Away Childish Things: A Tale of Modern Faith, by
Marcus J. Borg [1], widely known as a "fellow" of the Jesus Seminar. The endorsements on Amazon don't tell us much - yet. For example:
* - "Professor Borg spins a fine yarn and teaches much in the process, yielding a whole cloth of integrated and inquiring Christianity."
* - "Putting Away Childish Things is a page-turning tale grappling
with issues of faith confronting today's church. An inspiring and
compelling story that will be treasured and revisited, Borg's
illuminating insights and all-too-human characters make theology
accessible to all."
* - "The form is different with Marcus Borg's insightful new novel,
but the reader's experience and payoff are the same as with his many excellent non-fiction books: this is a great read that leads to a deeper, more hopeful understanding of the meaning and possibilities of Christian faith today."
Keep watching your radar screen.
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CHURCH HISTORY
Has Dan Brown's success in twisting church history encouraged more copy-cat antagonism? Philip Pullman appears to have enjoyed the controversy of his past efforts, because next he will tweak Christian noses at new levels with his latest book (due May 20th): The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ [2]. Library Journal quips (Jan 15 '10, n.p.): "Here, in what is surely the most daring pairing so far, proclaimed atheist Pullman, author of His Dark Materials trilogy, questions the events of the Gospels and puts forth his own tale. Interesting to see what challenges libraries might get on this one." Amazon adds: "By challenging the events of the gospels, Pullman puts forward his own compelling and plausible version of the life of Jesus, and in so doing, does what all great books do: makes the reader ask questions.
"In Pullman's own words, 'The story I tell comes out of the tension within the dual nature of Jesus Christ, but what I do with it is my responsibility alone. Parts of it read like a novel, parts like
history, and parts like a fairy tale; I wanted it to be like that because it is, among other things, a story about how stories become stories.'
"Written with unstinting authority, The Good Man Jesus and the
Scoundrel Christ is a pithy, erudite, subtle, and powerful book by a controversial and beloved author. It is a text to be read and reread, studied and unpacked, much like the Good Book itself."
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MORMONISM
"Mormon Vampires in the Garden of Eden" by John Granger -- an analysis of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books [3] which "continue to dominate best-seller lists more than a year after the finale was published, and the movies based on the stories, like the novels, are second only to J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series in popularity."
According to Granger, the series is "a re-telling of the Garden of
Eden drama - with a Mormon twist." He explains that "In a nutshell, [female protagonist] Bella is Eve and [male protagonist] Edward is the Adam-God of Mormon theology." Granger also describes the series as "a romantic retelling of the story of Man's Fall presented in the engaging and exciting wrappers of a romance and an international thriller."
Anticipating the question, "How can this be?", Granger explains
that Meyer's "popularity isn't due to Harry Potter withdrawal so much as to the artistry and meaning of her own work. Though they feature vampires, the novels are not vampire genre pieces; they are a brilliant melange of Young Adult romance, alchemical drama, superhero comic book, and international thriller." Further, Granger speaks of "the reason these books are so popular: They meet a spiritual need. ... When God is driven to the periphery of the public square, the human spiritual capacity longs for exercise, and it often finds it in the 'suspension of disbelief' and activity of the imagination that are available in novels and movies.
"The books and films that satisfy this spiritual longing most
profoundly are the ones that have religious content of some kind,
sometimes any kind."
In the Twilight series, "the Fall is a good thing, even the key to
salvation and divinization, just as Joseph Smith, Jr., the Latter-day
Saint prophet, said it was. Twilight conveys the appealing message that the surest means to God are sex and marriage." And, according to Granger, "Mrs. Meyer's books are as popular as they are because, like the LDS beliefs that are the substance of her meaning, they reflect and reinforce conventional thinking regarding sexuality more than they challenge it...."
The books "paint the Mormon faith as inherently bloodthirsty,
violent, secretive, and abusive to women and non-believers. The
Twilight novels, especially Breaking Dawn, can be understood as a response to the challenge they posed to Mormon believers like Mrs. Meyer. In brief, Meyer was inspired to write works in which she addresses and resolves in archetypal story the criticisms being made of Mormonism by atheists and non-believing gentiles."
Gardner summarizes that "I think that resolving her misgivings and interior conflicts as a Mormon woman in a land of non-Mormons was a major impetus of Mrs. Meyer's writing. In her books, she lays out defenses, often as inversions or compensating reversals (such as one would find in dreams), for at least ten specific Mormon beliefs, practices, and historic events that most outsiders would see as evidence that Mormonism is a fraud and a cult." Granger gives examples of these from the books.
"Yet, for all the apologetic recasting of arguments non-Mormons
make against her faith, Mrs. Meyer also incorporates substantial
criticism of her church in her story. ... [S]he seems to accept a
large part of Krakauer's [4] assertion that Mormons are, by
definition, violent, dangerous, and disrespectful of those different
from the Saints. ... Mrs. Meyer also takes a poke or two at [LDS
founder] Joseph Smith, Jr., himself."
In further explaining the popularity of the series, Gardner notes
that "One reason can be summed up by the term 'genre genius.' ... The story types Meyer blends are Young Adult boy-meets-girl romance like The Fantastiks, Gothic romance grafted from the Bronte sisters, and the international-thriller blockbuster formula.
"A second reason stems from Meyer's blending of Mormon and
post-modern morality. Not surprisingly, the sexual morality of the
Twilight saga largely reflects LDS teaching about chastity and
modesty. ...
"But in other respects, Mrs. Meyer delivers the same postmodern mantras as just about every other author, screenwriter, and pundit of our times: Diversity is the core good, prejudice is the greatest evil, and the meta-narrative or core cultural myth on which you've been raised is what keeps you from seeing things as they are....
"But perhaps the primary source of the appeal of the Twilight saga stems from the numerous allegorical and hermetic meanings that can be drawn from the narrative. ...
"The most powerful allegory ... is Twilight's re-telling of the
Garden of Eden Genesis tale, a spiritual allegory of the God-and-man love story in a teen romance wrapper....
"Christians understand Adam and Eve's disobedience to God, their 'original sin,' or Fall, as the beginning of man's distance from God, a distance that man could not restore on his own, but that required the incarnation and sacrifice of a divine, sinless Savior to
accomplish. "Mormons reject this interpretation. Not only do they [Mormons] hold the Pelagian view that human conscience and free will are sufficient for salvation, but they go a step further, asserting that, not only was the Fall not a bad thing, it was actually a good, even necessary thing for human salvation.
"In some streams of Mormon tradition, Adam is, in fact, the finite
God of earth (or the Archangel Michael), and Eve is his celestial wife from another planet. The Fall and expulsion from Paradise, according to this view, were necessary in order for Adam and Eve to marry and reproduce. 'Celestial marriage' is a core ordinance for Mormon exaltation (salvation), and without the 'Fall,' man could not take this important step in his progression from mortality to post-mortal life as a god in the Celestial Kingdom." Touchstone, Nov/Dec '09, pp24-229. <www.tinyurl.com/yfk7ub8>
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Putting Away Childish Things: A Tale of Modern Faith, by Marcus J. Borg (HarperOne, April 20, 2010, hardcover, 352 pages)
2 - The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, by Philip Pullman (Canongate,May 20, 2010, hardcover, 192 pages)
3 - The Twilight Saga Collection, by Stephenie Meyer (Little & Brown, 2008, hardcover, four volumes, 2560 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/yawb582>
4 - Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, by Jon
Krakauer (Doubleday, 2003, hardcover, 400 pages)
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