Soon I hope to start to read Gilead.  This could not be more different than the fantasy reading of my youth, but I mention it because of what I already know of its voice.  In this book, there is the world of an aged and dying minister and his account of the things that happened to him.  This is important because the work is from a Calvinist perspective.  My understanding is that it is also very touching and it can’t hurt to read something that is Calvinist and touching….two words you may never see again in the same sentence.  (Calvinists and Protestants in general are not dispassionate, but they choose reserve for their exteriors and the eruptions of their love and violence is the atypical entrance of the mightily joyous or profane that marks plenty of the likes of American literature….think southern gothic.)

Some things happen to him….that is what I just said of Gilead’s Rev. John Ames   This points to an important facet in the Protestant understanding of life.  Things happen and you roll with it.  You respond and those responses can be blood or love, but it is usually because something happens regardless of your intentions.  Free will is downplayed and the adventure is that which is thrust upon you rather than what is willingly taken.  In another “Protestant” novel, Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, such things are central to the novel’s actions. Read more