The Wildness of Things

The Wildness of Things | The Point Magazine

Marilynne Robinson is a Christian in a country that increasingly isn't. She belongs to the American "mainline," a collection of Protestant denominations with deep roots in European history, reliably liberal politics and, if current...

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Marilynne Robinson is not only Christian in an increasingly pluralist, secular country, but she's part of the mainline congregrations (Congregationalist, Baptist, Methodist, etc.) considered liberal, not evangelical. Those groups are dying off the fastest.

This essay is a beautiful meditation on why and what that means for faith. In the post-war period, mainline Protestant theologians didn't just aim to enlarge their own churches, but enlarged their theology for an ever more diverse, growing America. In doing so, they arrived at conclusions indistinguishable today from left-liberal secularism.

What, then, remains of faith? I'm not spoiling it; make sure you read the last part of the essay, the one dealing with how Robinson's characters find faith, not in their strength or ambition, but in their frailty.