Customer Reviews

Albert Camus & the Minister

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Howard Mumma first met and befriended Noble prize-winner, writer, and philosopher Albert Camus while Mumma was serving as guest preacher at the American Church in Paris in the late 1950s. Albert Camus And The Minister is the story of their conversations, often laced with humor, on such topics as existential philosophy, Christianity, personal conscience, the Bible, the ideology of war, human suffering, and more. Highly recommended reading for students of twentieth century philosophy, Albert Camus And The Minister also presents personal stories, significant events, and acts of faith from Mumma's own experience which provide a glimpse into the life and background of a man fortunate enough to have a meaningful and enduring intellectual relationship with the late Albert Camus, one of the most influential thinkers of his day.

Mumma in the foreword acknowledges his bias and inaccuracy (he wrote the book almost 40 years after Camus' death, and was around 90 at its publishing). One cannot take the book in a 100% literal fashion - there are clear victims of inaccuracy in the text. However, the story as a whole is an excellent narrative of the existential struggle between the two extremes of Jean-Paul Sartre's thoughts and Mumma's Christianity, with Albert Camus' frustration with the universe straddling the chasm.

On another note, it is impossible to verify the book, Mumma notes that Camus did not want to be identified with a Methodist "priest". In the text, when speaking over dinner, Camus shuns any and all publicity. It is clear that these conversations were never intended to be public - and Camus and his biographers did not mention it.

I'm no stranger to reviewing books. I normally find it easy to write a brief one or two assesment of a book. But my feelings about "Albert Camus and the Minister" by Howard Mumma are very complex and I struggle to write a descent review of this book.

The first 90 pages which cover a growing friendship between Camus and Mumma is clearly the most interesting part of the book. The rest is a collection of life experiences that were meaningful to Mumma. These experiences are not dull, but I found them to be a bit disconnected from the first 90 pages. One of the most entertaining points of this book is where Camus asks for baptism, but Mumma rejects it on the grounds that (A) Camus had already been baptised as an infant and (B) he wasn't willing to join the church or make it a public event. He ends up regreting that stand a bit, especially on reflecting on the fact that it was his final meeting with Camus. It was also neat to read about Camus' enthusiasm in studying the Bible.

Mumma holds a view of the Bible which relegates The Fall to allegorical tale and he certainly doesn't have an evangelical view of the inspiration of scripture. While coming from that platform might have made agreement with Camus a bit easier, I believe Mumma would have had some more meaningful answers to Camus' questions if he actually had a view of the Bible which validates using it as an authorative source. In some senses, from a thoroughly evangelical Christian prespective, Mumma wasn't offering Camus something much better than he already had. Sure, Mumma presented some God talk, but did he present the gospel to Camus as something that is "true truth" not just "religious truth"?

I sympathise with the views other reviewers who are quite critical of this book. While I hope and trust Mumma has recorded things accurately, there are a few things which make me wonder. First, some of his recollections (he admits plainly that they are recollections and may not be 100% accurate) portray the conversations as rather simplistic--with most of the dialogs turning out to be more "gentle" and successful from Mumma's perspective than one would expect when an Existentialist and a Christian minister would get together. Second, I don't know enough about Camus to verify it, but some other reviewers bring up interesting comments that Mumma seems to have gotten some of Camus' biographical details wrong. Third, Camus seeking truth is quite believable, but requesting adult baptism? That seems a bit far fetched. As another reviewer noted, it is notable that the accuracy of first 90 pages of the books can not be verified. This problem is further compounded by the fact that Mumma shares that Camus was secretive about it--he requested specifically that his inquiries be kept secret (this make this book a betrayal of sorts).

I will not go to the length to say I think Mumma invented the dialogs (as some reviewers have suggested), but I think I reader should approach it with some caution and be prepared to accept that at the very least some of the dialogs may not have been recorded completely accurately.

So, if you have been following me so far, you should find that my response to this book is both positive and negative. I don't regret having read it, though. The first 90 pages are interesting even if we are to suppose that they are totally fictional. This book might be worth getting if the reviews so far intruige you. I'll just advise you that you shouldn't expect Mumma to be an evangelical nor should you expect any of the recollections in this book to be easily verifiable.

I'm left wondering what would be the outcome if Camus had spent this time with an evangelical (such as Francis Schaeffer or OS Guinness) instead of one who has accepted most of the doctrinal positions of the "liberal" movement.

On the one hand, there are elements of this book I liked a great deal. An account of Albert Camus's steps toward Christianity is an interesting read. On the other hand, the author wrote the book about these confidential conversations from notes almost a half century after the conversations. Howard Mumma admits to taking some liberties with the dialogue. At a minimum, it calls into question much of what is written in these pages. It is certainly interesting and entertaining, but it lacks a certain level of authenticity for readers of Camus. Camus seems to be more of a simpleton than a brilliant thinker in Mumma's recollection of the conversations.

The conversations with Camus occupy the first half of the book. The other half of the book, Mumma tells stories of people and experiences that influenced his faith. Though the stories can be interesting, they have no direct implact on the dialogues with Camus. Most people that purchase the book will buy it for the conversations with Camus, not these personal anecdotes. It seems as though Mumma's publisher just requested filler because of a fear that a 100 page book would not sell. This cheapens the overall scope of the book.

Mr. Mumma's work is exceptionally rich in presenting us with "Camus the Man" and the demons he struggled with. However, though I found the exchange between Mumma and Camus interesting on certain points, his implication that Camus'1960 tragic death was a "suicide" turned what could have been an otherwise warm tale of friendship into a let-down. Tell me, how does a man who was in the passenger seat of a car along with three other friends decide that this is the perfect moment for suicide and then influences the driver in such a manner as to cause him to swerve into a tree? Talk about the Absurd!

On the portion of this book related to Camus:

I have read everything translated into English of Camus I could find, except for Christianity and Neoplatonism, which is on my list.

I picked up the Mumma book because I saw Camus' face on the cover, and was intrigued by the idea - I had the desire to read dialogues between these two minds.

Mumma's goal here is not dialogue, it is at the farthest stretch a confession of his failure, and a presentation of what were his arguments to an intelligent, thinking non-Christian man about Christianity and the Bible.

He says very early on that he failed Camus, but points most directly to his stance on not baptizing him and Camus 'suicide', as he explains it.

Where he fails Camus is much more devious - Camus was not ignorant of religion, Christianity, the saints, etc. - the title of aforementioned Christianity and Neoplatonism should illustrate that pretty fully. The Mumma book is a record, not of dialogues between him and Camus, but of the things Mumma said in an attempt at a celebrity conversion. It there had been real dialogue, I wouldn't use 'celebrity conversion' as the derogatory phrase I intend it to be. Camus certainly asked 'simplistic' questions, because he wanted to know where the man stood. Camus' own words, thoughts, and ideas regarding the matter were however truncated - either by a very polite and non-confrontational Camus, or by a minister who kept no record of it. Camus' words were recorded only in as much as he agreed with Mumma.

Judge for yourself by this singular passage - it speaks of things the minister wanted to be true about Camus but could not know, based on the assumption that joy isn't possible without an attempt to know Christ:

"Here he sat before me, head lowered. The depressed look in his eyes was accented by the little pouches of skin under each one. Despite all of his brilliant success and the fame as a writer, sadness remained his dominant emotion. I wondered what he thought as he sat there. How did he think that I, a guest minister from America, could possibly help him? How could I help him find the answers for which he was ardently searching? As I watched him, I realized that his was more than intellectual curiosity. He wanted more than just a comprehension of faith. He wanted to experience this faith and have it act in his own life."

I find it quite possible that the 'depressed look' and 'little pouches' might have reflected, instead of a desire for an experience of living faith, a desire for a cure for tuberculosis.

This is the tone of the book - at least the portion on Camus. It is a minister's projection of his own definitions and explanations onto a mind I'm not convinced he understood. Judging from the conversations, it certainly doesn't seem like the minister was insterested in asking any questions of his own - he already had his own answers.

I will qualify this in one way, however - in reading Mumma's views on the Bible and Christianity, I think he offers a much more ecumenically conciliatory point of departure than what passes for 'True Christianity' in this country. Special pleading and self-righteousness, it is my hope, will be the death of religions one day. However, had religion in the past 50 years followed the ideas and types of ideas of people like Mumma, our world would be devoid of its everpresent fundamentalism.

On the rest of this book:

I find it a shame, after completing the other section of the book, that these were not separate volumes. I, like others reviewers here, find Mumma's presentation of a nearly converted Camus very suspect. I think a lot of revelation can be gleaned from Camus' desire for a personal, private baptism - this was a friend, and he wanted to strengthen that friendship. I feel the same way towards my Christian friends. On the other hand, the rest of the book is much more interesting, and in fact I could have read a much longer version of what was offered there. Again, it seems as if the first section was his confession.

Much of this book is hard to believe with Camus' role in the "conversations" merely being that of a child posing simple questions to spur Mumma's pontifications. I suppose Mumma deserves some credit for tricking fans of Camus into reading his biblical rants, but much of this is hard to swallow. Maybe the two did have conversations along these lines, but I've never seen Mumma mentioned anywhere else in connection with Camus. This includes the two massive and very comprehensive biographies of Camus by Herbert Lottman and Olivier Todd. Mumma seems most impressed by the celebrity of Camus and doesn't give any indications that he actually bothered to read Camus' work. Mumma seems to have simply filed Camus away as an "existentialist" (a movement Camus didn't consider himself a part of and a term he despised) and a "non-believer" and attributed his own pre-conceived notions of such people to Camus without digging deeper. This entire book seems like an embellishment of their relationship at best and a figment of Mumma's imagination at worst.

It's a matter of record that Albert Camus wrote his Master's thesis on "Christian Metaphysics and Neo-Platonism: Plotinus and Saint Augustine" under the supervision of a professor, Jean Grenier, who was something of an expert on Eastern religions. Considering all his study, considering The Plague, The Fall, The Myth of Sisyphus, all else that he wrote, is it possible that Albert Camus could have been as naive as Howard Mumma portrays him? The thrust of the entire narrative seems to have been that Camus came to an American Protestant minister looking for something he had never found before in religion, and found it in, of all places, a Protestant translation of the Bible--as if he had been completely unfamiliar beforehand with its stories and lessons. We may never know the entire truth, but the rehashing of the precepts of the Protestant myth of "sola Scriptura" is so pronounced herein that somehow this book seems to have the taste of the same sort of pious fiction that gave us Voltaire's supposed deathbed horrors.

I was shocked to read the author's statement that Camus was raised by his mother and his aunt. This is totally inconsistent with even Camus' autobiological notes. Camus was raised by his mother and maternal grandmother. If the author was such a great friend of Camus, how could he be so mistaken on this point ? Since little else in the book can be verified, this misstatement raises serious concerns about the veracity of the entire book.

i am not quite an encyclopedia entry on Camus, but I am very VERY suspicious of this account by Howard Mumma. this man basically claims that Camus had most decidedly chosen to become a Christian just prior to his death. he also asserts that Camus committed suicide. as an interested reader, does this not strike you as odd? if this is one man's attempt to disgrace the reputation of Camus - a "man and a thinker" - for the sake of political gain...shame shame SHAME ON YOU! if not, well, i apologize for calling you a filthy liar.