HSC<\/em>: I think so, though I hope faith still speaks to certain sensibilities. In the novel, in 1926, religious faith isn\u2019t as strong as it was before the war, but Christianity is still part of the conversation. These people, regardless of their personal belief,\u00a0have the vocabulary.<\/em><\/p>\n St. Stephen\u2019s boys hear scripture daily, whether they pay attention or not. They take part in daily worship. Christian language\u2014specifically the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer\u2014is native to them. And Christianity isn\u2019t in competition with other religions.<\/p>\n There\u2019s certainly the question of whether religion matters, and even in some circles, whether God is real.<\/p>\n Because so many religious authorities had supported the war, and even tried to cast it as a kind of holy war, the existential collapse at the end of it sidelined the Church and wounded faith. You see it in the boys\u2019 indifference towards religion, which is part of their hostility towards strong belief or indeed any enthusiasm. On the other hand, their expressions of atheism and agnosticism seem equally half-hearted, so even in their disillusionment, they have a shared religious culture.<\/p>\n Setting a novel that grapples with spiritual questions in such an atmosphere made it easier to get to the heart of the matter. The characters have the words for religious discussions, and the evisceration of a common moral understanding hasn\u2019t happened yet.<\/p>\n The characters enjoy a certain freedom with each other. They don\u2019t have to tiptoe around an allergy to religion, and they don\u2019t have to start all the way at the beginning, which is where we often have to start today. I couldn\u2019t imagine trying to write a similar novel set in the present day because you\u2019d have to spend most of the time framing the discussion rather than having it.<\/p>\n GW<\/em>: On the one hand, contemporary American readers may look at St. Stephen\u2019s and think: This is as remote to me as an African village. And yet Morgan Wilberforce, with his rebelliousness and uninhibited sexuality, feels remarkably contemporary. Did you intend the reader to feel the ambiguity of whether to support Morgan or the authority figures in his life?<\/p>\n HSC<\/em>: I feel the conflict too, and the double point-of-view feeds it. I guess it\u2019s part of my general style, which is to try to turn things around and see all the angles. Many of Morgan\u2019s complaints about the authorities in his life are legitimate. These men are deeply flawed, and we are experiencing St. Stephen\u2019s at its nadir.<\/p>\n But while authority is degraded, it\u2019s also sorely needed. We\u2019re not fast-forwarding to the 1960s, or whenever it was that people decided to kick out the bums and start a revolution. I get bored with either\/or scenarios: Either adult repression must be overcome or degenerate youth must be controlled! I\u2019m interested in reality, where the experiences of youth are strongly felt, if shallow and self-involved, yet the adults also wrestle with vocations and shortcomings.<\/p>\n GW<\/em>: Later in the novel you undertake a bold move and leave the school environment when Morgan gets in trouble and has to undergo a sort of rehabilitation at the hands of a clergyman. It\u2019s a remarkable contest of wills and while the outcome is unclear, there seem to be real spiritual and psychological forces at play here. How did you pull this off?<\/p>\n HSC<\/em>: The third part of the novel is really the linchpin. It can seem a baffling diversion from the social-sexual dramas of parts one and two, until you realize there\u2019s been a bigger battle going on.<\/p>\n By the end of part two, I felt overwhelmed wondering how long Morgan was going to keep making the same mistakes. Taking him away from the school was a way of removing distractions, stripping away all the apparent causes of his suffering and error, even including his relationship with Grieves (which upsets many readers but nevertheless has to happen so Morgan can begin to see the decisions he\u2019s facing).<\/p>\n Throughout the contest of wills you mention, the surface conflicts got picked off one by one, and then what happened was Morgan\u2019s character, and the forces opposing him, had less and less to hide behind.<\/p>\n The Bishop (the clergyman in question) was one of those characters that mesmerized me the minute he appeared on the page. He\u2019s inspired in part by real priests I\u2019ve known\u2014vigorous, clear-sighted, authoritative, humble, and astonishingly sensitive men\u2014but because the Bishop is fictional, and here only seen through Morgan\u2019s eyes, he\u2019s allowed to be better than any real person could be.<\/p>\n Once I\u2019d made the decision to take Morgan out of the school, I had to stop playing around, stop pretending (if I had been) that his problems were merely social or psychological. Of course they are that, but they\u2019re more, and the Bishop was a character who could address that.<\/p>\n Even as he comes to understand Morgan in his emotional, intellectual, artistic, and physical dimensions, the Bishop is forthright in his spiritual worldview. Of all the characters in the novel, he has the fullest appreciation of what it means to be human, and he\u2019s the one I wanted to accompany Morgan through the later stages of his ordeal.<\/p>\n This is strange to say, but there were times writing this part of the novel, especially working on the more elusive scenes, that felt\u2026dangerous. I was trying to expose a reality that we often pretend doesn\u2019t exist, and I sensed I was playing with something menacing. As Morgan came under attack, I felt myself under attack, too. It took more than one kind of discipline to get through it.<\/p>\n A technical challenge here was maintaining the balance between a bold frankness and underwriting. When you pin abstract things down too firmly, they can get flat or clich\u00e9d, but if you\u2019re too elliptical, it gets timid and dilute. My editor and I had some pitched and fruitful battles over this. I can\u2019t express how grateful I am to him for challenging me with such firmness and sensitivity\u2014a shadow contest of wills, perhaps, beneath the page.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Gregory Wolfe\u00a0is the founder of\u00a0Image\u00a0and serves as Writer in Residence and Director of the\u00a0MFA in Creative Writing<\/a>\u00a0program at\u00a0Seattle Pacific University<\/a>. His books includeThe Operation of Grace: Further Essays on Art, Faith, and Mystery<\/em>, Beauty Will Save the World <\/em>and Intruding Upon the Timeless. <\/em>Follow him on Twitter: @Gregory_Wolfe.<\/p>\n![\"Wilberforce_Horizontal_edit\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/162\/2016\/01\/Wilberforce_Horizontal_edit-300x219.jpg\")
<\/a>GW<\/em>: Religion and worship played a large role in the British public schools in the 1920s and St. Stephen\u2019s is no exception. I suppose it\u2019s easy to observe most of the characters ignoring Christianity, but it was a time when faith could still speak to a certain sensibility and when the best chaplains and schoolmasters could exercise something of a pastoral role. Is that a fair assessment?<\/p>\n
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