A Subversive Gospel

This book accomplished something I was not expecting: it caused me to love another author. It is no surprise that the author was Flannery O' Connor, who Bruner has an obvious and profound respect for. What is unexpected is the degree to which I followed him into that affection.

Certainly, you must read at least, "The Violent Bear it Away" by O'Connor for this book to make sense. It will not be for naught; if you find this book valuable, you will certainly find the former exponentially so. What Bruner does in his volume is take a great deal of commentary, including his own, and place it in logical categories to show the deep and meaningful themes of O'Connor's troubling volume.

This resonates deeply with me. If you are after a bulleted list of self-help guidelines gleaned from a piece of the Bible, this book is certainly not that. What it accomplishes is something requiring far more labor and patience. The answers are no more black and white than the characters from O'Connor's novels, but the meaning to be found by walking with them becomes stitched to you, hemmed in by the very Spirit of God with occasional discomfort.

"Those of us who, in our own fitful and limited ways, attempt to follow in the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus need not be expected to observe the stifling decorum of a 'respectable' Christianity," writes Bruner. This is not a shadow everyone who bears the name of Christ wishes to walk in; perhaps there is more of a home in that darkness than we imagine.

Summary: An exploration of Flannery O’Connor’s writing, theology and influences.

A Subversive Gospel is the type of book that will never find a large audience, but that I thank God (literally) that Christian academic publishers still publish.

This is my year of exploration of Flannery O’Connor, which I am probably doing it all wrong. I have only read her short story collection A Good Man is Hard to Find and her Prayer Journal before deciding to read all of her fiction this year. I picked up a quick biography at the end of last year to give me a bit of context before I started. And then I was recommended A Subversive Gospel. A Subversive Gospel is oriented toward someone that is quite familiar with her work, especially The Violent Bear it Away, which is the most discussed work in A Subversive Gospel.

I did stop about 2/3 of the way through the book and quickly listen to the audiobook of Wise Blood to get a sense of O’Connor’s novel style. I will probably read A Subversive Gospel again, or at least parts of it, after I finish reading O’Connor's fiction. Most of the book, while referencing her writing, I think was good preparation for reading her books. I am glad I read it when I did, so that I will hopefully get more out of, and enjoy the books more, because I understand them more.

There were five chapters in A Subversive Gospel. The first is about O’Connor’s theological influences, primarily Baron von Hugel. The second was about O’Connor’s moral vision and how she understood the world around her theologically. The third was about her dramatic vision for her writing and is a lot about the style and choices that she made writing. The final two chapters are about several short stories and then the Violent Bear it Away as examples of how the previous three chapters work out in her writing.

This type of book is really an example of why I often wish I had been a literature major instead of a sociology major in college. I learned a lot from my sociology, but learning about how to be a better reader is one of my goals as a reader, and this is a book that really does help me become a better reader, not only of O’Connor, but more broadly as well.

A great read about the power of hope and the mystery of Flannery O’Conner.