I Don't Care If We Lose

Alan of Thinklings is talking about an article in which Peter Leithart argues that Modern Protestants can’t write. He says it has something to do with Zwingli. Maybe I’m in a mood tonight, but I find that I don’t care. I don’t care why we haven’t written well in the past. Some write now, and no light-weight, commercially successful novel from an evangelical author takes away from their artist effort. God will raise up artwork to glorify himself. I don’t care who complains about, heh, mere entertainment.

The Thinklings carry on part of the discussion in relation to movies.

0 thoughts on “I Don't Care If We Lose”

  1. I took a look at the Thinklings page; haven’t checked out Leithart yet, but would expect to be in sympathy with his point of view.

    But I’ll venture something that I would not probably be prepared to fight for. I wonder if part of the reason that serious American evangelical literary writing seems to gravitate to the short poem, and not towards the novel, is that (at least if I can go by my memories of my evangelical boyhood and adolescence), in that milieu one is much encouraged to think of one’s own life as a/the story. For example, in the Church of the Nazarene people would often stand up in a service and give their testimonies. There _was_ some kind of imaginative and literary activity here (I mean to say this without prejudice). Why, then, “make up” stories? One looked to see one’s own life conform to a narrative pattern (how I came to Jesus, how I have grown as a Christian); there was a sort of “template” there according to which one could tell one’s own story. (I really don’t mean to sound all innerleckshul here or condescending.)

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