Marcus Borg, one of my favorite writers on Christian themes, aspires to join the ranks of other serious thinkers who believe that a really accessible way to present their ideas to a lay audience is through fiction. Thus "Putting Away Childish Things," about the only quote that does NOT appear in the story, joins the ranks of Camus' "La Peste," Skinner's "Walden II," Rand's "Atlas Shrugged," and Sartre's "No Exit," to name a few.
The book will be jettisoned soon enough from those ranks because, as a novel, it is truly awful. Descriptions flow randomly, awkwardly, and without a discernible point except to remind the author that he is writing a story. Characters are poorly drawn, and their dialogue never delineates them. Not a single literary sentence mars the unbearably prosaic narrative whose main interest is clearly the elucidation of a series of connected scholarly memes.
The idea is to follow the journey of undergrad Erin, a fundamentalist born-again Christian, from her literalist view of the bible and her spiritualized view of Jesus to her gradual awakening as a liberal, progressive Christian who understands that faith is not assent to certain assertions but a complete trust and confidence in God, a "centering in" God, as it were. After a book's worth of agonizing, she finally gets it, due to an astute explication of the three Latin words for faith.
That's how everybody learns everything in this novel. Kate, the protagonist, is a religious studies professor at a small liberal arts college. She has a penchant for lengthy quotes by obscure theologians and more obscure poets, quotes that always outrank experience, crisis, or character in rendering profound insight or propelling profound life choices.
Kate's character, where Borg attempts to develop it at all, is self-absorbed to the point that she actually thinks Jesus' admonition to consider the lilies of the field and place all trust in God applies to a decision whether to pursue the security of a tenure track at her college or accept a cushy one-year chair at an elite progressive seminary.
This dilemma -- which highly privileged choice should 40-year-old Kate make? -- is the theme of the whole book. A few gay folks and an African American appear in cameos, but make no mistake, this novel is about white upper class Episcopalians enjoying the complexity of red wine and the simplicity of occasional, very occasional, causal sex. Beyond that, it's quotes, quotes, and more quotes.
Martin is the third of the main characters. He is a somewhat famous 58 year old professor at the seminary at which Kate may choose to spend a year. He also had a dalliance with Kate when she was a student twentysome years ago. He divorced his wife after Kate moved on and seems to have had sex every five years or so thereafter.
Martin, I think, is meant to be a fairly dashing and appealing older man. At Borg's hands he becomes one more totally self centered, stuffy, a bit creepy, even a little predatory intellectual who cooks and serves lunch for Kate in his apartment and notices that she has lost the "slouch" and discomfort with her body with which she was afflicted when he was illicitly bedding her as a student. Borg did not follow this with a resounding "eeeeew!" so I guess it was meant to be a complimentary observation. Earlier, in first class on a plane from Europe, where Martin absconds to a little hideaway every year, he meets a woman whom he disparages because she always flies first class while Martin does so only when he is upgraded. These Christian paragons suffer in ways we cannot imagine!
By the way, Martin too is utterly suffused with his own wants, needs, and desires and views every issue through this filter. He seems to view sex as a source of mild pleasure for himself to be indulged in rather infrequently. I found him to be one of the least likable characters ever presented by an author as someone I was supposed to like.
Then there is the unremitting and oddly pugnacious defense of smoking. Kate even has the gall to smoke in her bedroom within the seminary where she is interviewing for the chair. She suspects it is prohibited, so she smokes near the window. Martin smokes a pipe with just as much "I'll smoke if I want to" bravado. They even quote Barth that a person who doesn't smoke cannot be a theologian. Perhaps Borg has tried and failed to kick the habit, so he has decided instead to defend this cancer-causing addiction.
Underneath this mediocrity and amateurish lack of literary style is a sincere attempt to guide the reader to an appreciation of progressive scholarship on Jesus. That part is deftly done: if you follow Erin's quest, you do get a nice step by step introduction to Borg's thinking.
He was sensitive enough to wedge in some diversity in the persons of a black lesbian professor, a Hispanic department chair, and a gay buddy for Kate. I wish, however, he at least alluded to the poor and disenfranchised among us. Perhaps he could not find any in the warm and cozy realms of elite liberal arts colleges and seminaries, but one does have the feeling that the Jesus Borg is so eager to illuminate for us would have made them visible.
They might even have enabled the characters to take the focus off their own problems for a moment or two.
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