A Writer's Writer from a Congregation of Writers

On Buechner and Presbyterians, the Jesuits of Protestantism.

While I’ve happily attended Imago Dei Community since 2001, I’m also fond of my Presbyterian roots, and I find that fondness growing over time. Perhaps it’s nostalgia for the old pipe organ, or memories of Sundays with family. Or maybe I miss the repeated liturgy, the structure of services, the Povey Brothers’ stained glass, the timber beams and stone walls. (I still go back to Mt. Tabor Pres sometimes to look at the architecture.)

This isn’t just sentimentality, though. Formed from the Church of Scotland, Presbyterianism has an intellectual depth and history that non-denoms, mega-churches, and most other American denominations can’t remotely touch. They’re like the Jesuits of Protestantism!

For instance, here’s an incomplete list of authors with Presbyterian roots:

• Pearl S. Buck

• Elisabeth Eliot

• Timothy Keller

• Norman Maclean

• Henrietta Mears

• Eugene Peterson

• Fred Rogers

• Francis Schaeffer

• Robert Louis Stevenson

• John Updike

• William Zinsser

That’s a Big Red Machine-esque lineup of wordsmiths! And I left off one of the most prestigious names of all—Frederick Buechner—because that’s who I want to focus on today.

Admittedly, I’m no Buechner expert. I’ve read two of his books—Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter’s Dictionary and Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC—and both were short. But they were also astonishing, packed with snack-sized paragraphs which cut to the quick of the Christian journey. Like, here’s Buechner’s take on hope from Whistling in the Dark:

Hope

For Christians, hope is ultimately hope in Christ. The hope that he really is what for centuries we have been claiming he is. The hope that despite the fact that sin and death still rule the world, he somehow conquered them. The hope that in him and through him all of us stand a chance of somehow conquering them too. The hope that at some unforeseeable time and in some unimaginable way he will return with healing in his wings.

No one in the New Testament calls a spade a spade as unflinchingly as Saint Paul. "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile," he wrote to the Corinthians. "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied" (1 Corinthians 15:17,19). That is the possibility in spite of which Saint Paul and the rest of us go on hoping even so. That is the possibility that led Dostoyevski to write to a friend, "If anyone proved to me that Christ was outside the truth, and it really was so that the truth was outside Christ, then I would prefer to remain with Christ than with the truth."

I mean, come on. How can so much be folded into so little? Buechner is a master of distillation, and his books are stuffed with essays like this, somehow both dense with insight and joyfully light. I’ve spent years with thoughts from these two brief books rattling around in my head. (His essay on homosexuality is another powerful work.)

Frederick Buechner’s name keeps coming up lately. Maybe this means I should read more of his work. But where should I begin? With the Pulitzer finalist Godric? Or maybe with his most recent work, 2017’s The Remarkable Ordinary? Until I hear your suggestions, I’m settling on Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who, because I’d like a Buechnerian take all the wacky wild childs of the Bible.

At 95, Buechner is presumably still writing today. How much unpublished work will he leave behind? I hope his legacy is long-remembered and that he finds new readers and appreciation in the coming years. That’s some projection, though, because really, I want to read more Buechner.

I also wanna add that for all there is to say about American Christianity, there’s also a rich vein of shining believers—like Buechner, and Peterson, and Maclean, and many, many more—who reflect a Christianity undaunted by painful questions or intellectual rigor. There are so many followers of Jesus who carry on the tradition of rooting out out truth, fearlessly facing down our shadow sides.

I resonate with the recent rise in doubt, in deconstruction. There are hard questions to consider about America and Jesus and the Church and our own identities, and Christian culture is well past due in asking them. There’s hope on the other side, though. In dark days, the Light glowed through Frederick Buechner’s words. Maybe he’ll inspire you, too.