The Emergent Novel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"No, I'm not talking about A New Kind of Christian or The Story We Find Ourselves In or The Last Word and After That. Instead, I'm talking about Marilynne\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2005\/05\/10\/the-emergent-novel\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Emergent Novel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"No, I'm not talking about A New Kind of Christian or The Story We Find Ourselves In or The Last Word and After That. 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<\/div>\n

No, I\u2019m not talking about A New Kind of Christian<\/span> or The Story We Find Ourselves In<\/span> or The Last Word and After That<\/span>. Instead, I\u2019m talking about Marilynne Robinson\u2019s Gilead<\/span> and the theology of Pastor John Ames.<\/p>\n

Of course, it is foolish to debate what is the<\/span> Emergent novel, but I am willing to make this claim: there is no novel out there so personal in its articulation of theology, so local in its embodiment, or more concerned with the importance of how one lives in comparison with what one believes in creedal form.<\/p>\n

Marilynne Robinson, in the 80s, wrote a novel called Housekeeping<\/span> that was an award-winning study of life. She then wrote two non-fiction pieces, and has just now returned to fiction. It, too, has already won some awards. I don\u2019t know much about her, but after reading my one planned new piece of fiction for the year (I\u2019ll soon be reading McLaren\u2019s new one), I can say I love Pastor John Ames for who he was in his community \u2014 even though it is all make-believe.<\/p>\n

It is a tale, a long one with only two chapters, and chapter two comes way back at the end with only a few pages left. I don\u2019t know why fiction writers do things like this, but I\u2019ll leave that to the English Dept to tell me. The prose is smooth and silky and transparent and as ordinary as the Iowa landscape described in the book.<\/p>\n

Pastor John Ames is 77 and his wife is much younger and they have a 7-yr old son. The book is a long journal describing for his son what his life was like \u2014 one may say it is a series of blogs to his son about his life. In the process, Ames delivers one gem after another of sparkling, home-spun, theologically-sensitive bits of wisdom. No one will agree with Ames\u2019 theology always \u2014 and again, of course, one can\u2019t because he\u2019s a fictional character who can\u2019t argue back, but one can\u2019t help but at times thanking Marilynne Robinson for inventing such a good man. <\/p>\n

For theological types, the relationship of Ames with his brother Edward, who went off to Germany and found Feuerbach and lost his faith, and with Jack Broughton, his godson whose life was a mess but who returns to make peace with his father, but only does so through Pastor Ames, his father\u2019s best friend, are worth the effort to read \u2014 if you read fiction.<\/p>\n

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No, I\u2019m not talking about A New Kind of Christian or The Story We Find Ourselves In or The Last Word and After That. Instead, I\u2019m talking about Marilynne Robinson\u2019s Gilead and the theology of Pastor John Ames. Of course, it is foolish to debate what is the Emergent novel, but I am willing to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Emergent Novel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"No, I'm not talking about A New Kind of Christian or The Story We Find Ourselves In or The Last Word and After That. 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