my turn

My old cronies from the PLNU philosophy/theology shoebox have tagged me in their game of 'Name The 3 Most Important Theology Books Of The Last 25 Years'. Silly boys! i have the bad habit of only reading theology when assigned by a grown-up to do so. My first love is literature, so Scott suggested i list the 'The 3 Most Important Theology NOVELS of The Last 25 Years'. A curious challenge indeed, Mr. S., and since i'm pretty sure all you eggheads are totally void of proper fiction, i'll accept in the hopes that you actually read a story now and then in between your Hauerwas and Cavanaugh binges. (for their picks: Charlie, Matt, Kaz)

This wasn't easy. The 25-year limit killed me, mostly because it eliminated the best of John Steinbeck. Other gems for consideration (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Carrie, To Kill A Mockingbird, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Catcher in the Rye, The Illustrated Man, Slaughterhouse-Five) were also lost to the past. i honestly don't think that the 25-year rule should apply to novels, but rather than blorgue (yes! i made up an AWESOME word! it means to argue over blogs :P) i'll work despite it. Also, i didn't know whether i should judge the books on the theological impact they had on ME, or their general theological content. Furthermore, novels with great social commentary didn't always carry eqvuilelant theological theses. Tricky. Nevertheless, here you have it. The final three ended up being very, very different from each other in settings, characters, and purposes. i'm sure there are better options, but i'm exhausted. i would fully appreciate disagreement, suggestion, etc.

A Prayer for Owen Meany- John Irving, 1989 (you know i can't make a list without it)- Time magazine reviewed it with the following: "Framed by the myth of victim as redeemer, the book removes guesswork without reducing expectations. One knows going in that the mischievous author is staging a kind of 'Gospel According to Charlie Brown.' But anyone familiar with Irving's mastery of narrative technique, his dark humor and moral resolve also knows his fiction is cute like a fox... Through the miracle of literary hindsight, the mess of two decades is foreseen by a sawed-off Christly caricature, Owen Meany, a granite quarrier's son who speaks in capital letters and believes the sacrificial arc of his life has been plotted by God." Excerpt: I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice--not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany. I make no claims to have a life in Christ, or with Christ--and certainly not for Christ, which I've heard some zealots claim. I'm not very sophisticated in my knowledge of the Old Testament, and I've not read the New Testament since my Sunday School days, except for those passages I hear read aloud to me when I go to church. I'm somewhat more familiar with the passages from the Bible that appear in the Book of Common Prayer; I read my prayer book often, and my bible only on holy days--the prayer book is so much more orderly. Read it, theo-junkies, you'll laugh, cry, and wet yourself. i promise.

Beloved- Toni Morrison, 1987 - The ghost (known only as Beloved) of the baby whose mother cut its throat to save it from slavery returns as a woman to haunt her mother and family. One womanist theologian wrote: "This text grapples with problems of human fallibility. It is concerned with the tragic, active forgetting of community, history, and the power and cultural origin of myths. Beloved examines the ambiguous powers of memory and community, which can be both creative and destructive. Memory is vital for revisioning communal and social transformation that is healing. ... Morrison's work is not Christocentric, but presents a combination of Christian and pre-Christian worldviews. Beloved suggests that Jesus Christ is within the community of ancestors. ... Jesus perfectly embodies the power to save lives and hold together that which would otherwise fall apart. Christian womanists are called to proclaim a theology whose pragmatic consequences are the preservation of life, the healing of wounds, and the sustenance of community. Beloved reminds us of our own creative and destructive potentials." Excerpt: Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if she were, how can they call her if they don't know her name? ... By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what it is down there. The rest is weather. Not the breath of the disremembered and unaccounted for, but wind in the eaves.... Certainly no clamor for a kiss. Beloved. Read it. There's a reason Toni Morrison's a Nobel Prize winner.

Mystic River- Dennis Lehane, 2001- Said the New York Times in its review of Clint Eastwood's film version (which, in my opinion, was as true as humanly possible to Lehane's book) : "Dave's abduction is an act of inexplicable, almost metaphysical evil, and this story of guilt, grief and vengeance grows out of it like a mass of dark weeds. At its starkest, the story is a parable of incurable trauma, in which violence begets more violence and the primal violation of innocence can never be set right. ''Mystic River'' is the rare American story that aspires to -- and achieves -- the full weight and darkness of tragedy....When Sean realizes he must tell his old friend Jimmy that his beloved daughter is dead, he wonders what he should say: ''God said you owed another marker, and he came to collect.'' This grim theology is as close as anyone comes to faith, but Mr. Eastwood's understanding of the universe, and of human nature, is if anything even more pessimistic. The evil of murderers and child molesters represents a fundamental imbalance in the order of things that neither the forces of law and order nor the impulse toward vengeance can rectify. The problem -- the tragedy -- is that grief, loyalty and even love spring from the same source. When Jimmy learns that he has lost the child who saved his life by forcing him into responsibility, he rages like a rabid beast, and you know his fury will only lead to more hurt. ''We bury our sins, and wash them clean,'' he declares later as he prepares to enact his vengeance, but this is wishful thinking, mere sentiment, and you suspect that Jimmy knows it." Excerpt: When Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus were kids, their fathers worked together at the Coleman Candy plant and carried the stench of warm chocolate back home with them. It became a permanent character of their clothes, the beds they slept in, the vinyl backs of their car seats. Sean's kitchen smelled like a Fudgsicle, his bathroom like a Coleman Chew-Chew bar. By the time they were elven Sean and jimmy had developed a hatred of sweets so total that they took their coffee black for the rest of their lives and never ate dessert. The only non-required reading i've ever read with a pen in my hand.