02/06/2025
"How to talk about the old stories, then, in a context where they both are and are not current, where they both are and are not known? And why talk about them?
It’s the question that underpins the work my colleagues and I do at the Centre for Public Christianity — in short, talking about Christianity in public... We think that the conversations we have as a secular culture are worse off if Christians absent themselves and the insights of this ancient faith from them. We also think that the onus is generally on Christians (and those of other faiths, perhaps) to find ways to bridge the gap between secular and religious language and thought. To go out of our way to explain what we’re talking about, to acknowledge that you may well find our beliefs alien or silly, to make a case for why you ought to care anyway.
The American writer Marilynne Robinson cheerfully disregards any such convention. Widely referred to as one of the great living novelists, her body of work, from the 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead to her various collections of essays, seems simply oblivious to the fact that not everyone would consider Puritan theology, or the nature of heaven, say, pertinent to topics such as gun culture in America or the purpose of tertiary education. She describes reality as she sees it — earnestly, beautifully, without prevarication or justification — and expects the reader to accompany her. And, by and large, they do."
Read Natasha Moore's article over at CPX https://buff.ly/IwUwoBc
