The Loose Ends of Life
For Rose Macaulay in The Towers of Trebizond, a story of moral seriousness couldn’t afford to tie up everything neatly.
The past no paradise: Returning to The Innocent Curate
I plead for the renewed reading of The Innocent Curate, as a general portrait of an Episcopal Church in the heyday of its mid-20th-century revival.
Most necessary sin of Adam: Richard Major’s Quintember
Quintember is perhaps an ideal read for Episcopalians who have reached our Anglican shores as refugees from Methodist, Baptist, or other Protestant climes, for those who have entered the fold from the campus of American (neo-)classical paganism, and for those seeking asylum from the lawless badlands of postmodern relativism.
Solid and contrived piety: Michael O’Brien’s Father Elijah series
Catholic-minded friends recommended Michael O’Brien’s apocalyptic thrillers, Father Elijah and Elijah in Jerusalem, to me for years.
Master and Commander
Many observe that Patrick O’Brian’s novels are comparable to Jane Austen’s, if only she had written rousing naval adventures.
Gathering the fruit, June 4: Public piety, Christian unity, fantasy
This week: the beauty of public liturgy, the "personal shape" of ecumenism, and the world as narrative and symphony.
Maclean’s, apathy, and (the agony of) Canada’s unbelief
I have sometimes complained that it is very difficult to stir up a proper theological controversy in Canada. Maclean's magazine did its best by publishing a skeptical article during Holy Week.