dotLove: don't stop looking.

by Joseph William Perry

In the last few weeks I have found three books by three novelists which have this theme in common—that they expose the falseness and hypocrisy that pervades much of institutional Christianity. While it is true that, over the years many have opposed this negative establishment, it remains a perennial force—almost an alter-ego of true religion. It has grown up alongside the true, the loving and the merciful in the same proverbial fields of growth. Just as, according to Christ's parable of the wheat and tares, we should expect it to.

Each of these novels I stumbled upon in a different way; each one was a pleasant surprise to me with their content and their quality. Each of these authors is capable of pointing out the problem, the falsity, the hypocrisy; each offers the spirit of love and mercy as the answer.

The first of these three goes by the name Jake Colsen, a pseudonym for the team of Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman. The book, So You Don’t Want to Go To Church Anymore, is about a mysterious stranger who leads a shaky evangelical pastor into a deeper walk with God. It was published early in 2006 and I stumbled on the web site through a message on one of the bulletin boards. The book has its own web site where it can be read online or downloaded freely.

The second author is Booth Tarkington. He began writing about a hundred years (yes, 100 years) before Jacobsen and Coleman. The book is The Conquest of Canaan, about an Indiana town and its love-hate battle with sin and hypocrisy. The third is Harold Bell Wright who began writing in 1902. His first book, which also has passed the century mark, is That Printer of Udell's. Wright wrote it while pastoring a Christian church in Kansas and read it to the church in serial form, one chapter per week during Sunday evening service. These two public domain texts can be found online also. I'll give details at the end of my little essay.

Newest First:

Wayne Jacobsen is a teacher and writer whose themes have included Jesus, his relationship with God and how that relates to believers and their relationships with each other. He has been described as appealing to those outside the box of organized religion. Dave Coleman is a pastor who has majored in the marriage and family ministry. These fellows apparently decided to use the pseudonym to amuse and amaze their friends. Pretty neat trick. While the book wasn't a literary masterpiece it held my interest. I felt an affinity with the main character and thought the lessons he learned in the story were true and pertinent.

The pastor in the story befriends, or is befriended by (depending on your point of view) a mysterious sort of fellow named John (with no surname) who seemed to pop into the scene when he was needed. He was a sort of a prophet—not the condemning kind, but the supportive kind, the kind who could hold up a mirror for a person to see what was in his own heart. Jake, the associate pastor, had his troubles and would find himself with more, but he found his friend John always steered him in the direction of love, caring, non-judgmentalism and most of all trust.

In this book the institutional church was portrayed mostly, but not totally, as a hopeless relic and house-church gatherings were portrayed mostly, but not totally as a viable alternative—not as a cure-all. There was a conflict between Jake and the large established church and Jake ended up taking refuge in home fellowship. But before the end of the story there is reconciliation. The authors, while attacking bad attitudes and sin, did not attack the institutions or the people in them. I recommend the book. Reading it was sort of like having my very own mysterious itinerant spiritual friend named John.

Two: Booth Tarkington's Delinquent Redeemer

I first knew of Booth Tarkington because I owned a copy of his Penrod when I was a kid. I think it was supposed to be a kind of a Tom Sawyer clone; I read all of Tom Sawyer but I don't think I finished reading Penrod. Tarkington wrote quite a few more novels including two, after 1920, that he received Pulitzer prizes for. The one I just finished, The Conquest of Canaan, was published in 1905. The name suggests the holy land, but no, the action takes place in Canaan, Indiana, a multifaceted town by a river. It's a civilized town with several churches and a growing economy, with a few wealthy powerful folks, plus settled business people, Negro domestics, working class, then tramps and outlaws.

The hero of the story started out as a kind of whipping boy of the town, the one whom everyone loved to blame. He was boy named Joe who always got in trouble, until finally, after seriously offending the powerful judge (whose daughter he was sweet on, of course) one too many times, he ran away at age 19. For the next seven years he remained in the minds of all a no-account delinquent. Of course there is a love interest. Ariel was a tomboyish but passionate child—poor and always awkward. But she loved Joe, despite the fact he treated her like a troublesome and ever-present little pest. Be that as it may, Joe had secret ambitions—he wished, with all his heart, to become a lawyer in order to defend the underdogs and misfits in his home town. Ariel inherited a fortune and went to Paris. Joe went to the big city, took what menial jobs he could find, befriended the underclass and studied the law.

The villain in the story was the judge, who ruled his family, the church, the newspaper, as well as most of the businesses in town because no one could afford to offend him for fear of the consequences. As the story plays out, Joe came back to town as a righteous albeit unchurched advocate for the rights of the poor and downtrodden. Ariel came back as an heiress, having inherited her uncle's fortune. She was sophisticated, beautiful, not awkward any more, but of course she was still in love with Joe. Then the judge who was thought to be righteous, but of course really was not, experienced a bad turn of fortunes. When his investments went bad, he tried to cover it with money that was not his, and finally he was found to have cheated Ariel out of her inheritance. Many more sub-plots work themselves out and eventually Tarkington brings the judge to justice, and a merciful one at that. Joe and Ariel forgive, go back to church, and the story comes to a sweet and satisfactory finish.

Three: The Sensitive Tramp of Harold Wright

The other novel was That Printer of Udell's by Harold Bell Wright. It was his first novel—written in a somewhat melodramatic style. I have come to the conclusion that Wright wrote it as an experiment to see, not only if people would like it, but if writing stories was a legitimate and useful way of communicating his message to the world at large.

This was the second book by Wright that I read. The first was Shepherd of the Hills, which I picked up at a garage sale. That Printer was Wright's first try; his later writing was more artistic, still spiritual, but a little less didactic. But this first one was almost, but not quite, a series of sermons in story form.

The author was working as a minister in the Christian church at the time; the traditional values are apparent in some of the characters. He knew how to display a doctrinaire attitude of the Campbellite variety. He also knew how to portray a sincere, humble character, of which there were several in the book.

The hero was a young man of poor origins, son of an abusive, alcoholic father and a righteous mother, who tried to raise him right. When mother died our hero, though still young, flees into the wider world, escaping his father, only to find many more abusive characters, alcoholic and non-alcoholic. But the major trait he found in the world at large was apathy. No one cared what happened to the unemployed worker, as long as they went away from the doorstep. Through an act of Providence our young tramp, Richard, walks into a job with an honorable business-man, a printer. Through many trials, tragedies and triumphs he works his way to responsibility, honor, love, and mercy. He becomes, even before his conversion, a prophetic voice for true religion. He falls in love and eventually gets the girl (who goes from righteousness to fallenness and back to righteousness again) in due time, a long time, but honorably. With the help of the spiritual ones, both church members and non-, he establishes an institution for the carrying out of practical Christianity (a sort of rescue/employment mission/agency), a major theme of the early twentieth century.

In this book Harold Wright displays his talent for interweaving intricate stories, which I admired in Shepherd of the Hills. It's a good book; if you can stand to read from your computer screen I would recommend the gutenberg online text. If you like to hold it in your hands and read then you can get a used or reprinted edition.

Eclectic Reading Habits

So my reading habits are a little eclectic. Sometimes these books come to me in haphazard ways. I found Booth Tarkington recently by picking up Image of Josephine by him, off the book swap shelf at my workplace. I found Harold Bell Wright at a garage sale. As for the "century-oldness" of these books, that is no problem for me—after all I grew up reading century-old books. I read the 1876 Tom Sawyer in about 1963—not quite a hundred years, was it?. Anyway, in this day of internet and extexts we have the added advantage of lots of old texts being available free on the web. What a day! Classic books free. And some of them are pretty good, and pretty upbuilding and enjoyable, as these are.

• Link to online version: So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore by Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman
• Link to etext: That Printer of Udell's by Harold Bell Wright
• Link to etext: The Conquest of Canaan by Booth Tarkington