The Galli Report: 08.13.21
C.S. Lewis on evangelism, Dante on loving God, responding to these terrorized times, marriage advice for young men.
What C.S. Lewis Can Teach Us about Evangelism
Historian George Marsden begins his summary of his new book on C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity like this:
While most books fade in popularity, Lewis’s apologetic volume has sold even better in the twenty-first century than it did when it was first published. In English alone, it has reached something like four million copies since 2001. It is still the favorite go-to book for those considering Christianity or having doubts about their faith. New York Times columnist David Brooks quipped that when he was contemplating commitment to Christianity, acquaintances sent him about three hundred books, “only a hundred of which were different copies of C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.”
He continues:
Given the remarkable successes of this book, an edifying question to ask is, What were the qualities of Lewis’s communication of the faith that made it so lastingly effective? None of us is another C.S. Lewis, but each of us might learn from him how best to communicate our faith to others.
What Dante Can Teach Us about Loving God
Another Christian classic is Dante’s Divine Comedy. Ah, but it is not nearly as accessible as Mere Christianity! But do not despair. In just a few weeks, you’ll have the opportunity to join “the world’s largest reading group” called “100 Days of Dante.”
Between September 2021 and Easter 2022, we will read one canto at a time, and learn from teachers who know and love Dante as they share their insights and questions about the text.
Who is the “we”? It’s presented by Baylor University Honors College, with support from Torrey Honors College at Biola University, Templeton Honors College at Eastern University, the University of Dallas, Whitworth University, and Gonzaga University/ Gonzaga in Florence.
Click on the video link on this splash page to get an introduction. I’m looking forward to it myself!
Responding to the Terror of These Times
As you know, I’ve been looking for ways to respond constructively to our anxious, fearful, panicky, and terrorized world. I’ve recommended something I practice myself--severely limiting my news intake. So much of it is horrible news about faraway places and gigantic institutions over which I have no influence, about which I have no agency to do anything constructive. This sort of news diet tempts one to hopelessness and despair. The closer the news is to my literal home, the more I’m interested—even in the bad news—because at least I can imagine being able to respond in one way or another.
I ran across a piece that offers another response. I ran across a piece that offers another response, a practice encouraged by a woman who was “a friend and inspiration to Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, founded Friendship House, a Catholic Worker–style house of hospitality to the homeless in Toronto, and later Madonna House, a more rural intentional Christian community and international Catholic lay apostolate.”
Faced with the turmoil of the 1960s – the Vietnam War, the nuclear arms race, and the use of dogs and clubs against civil rights activists – Catherine Doherty opted for the way of peace by reaching into the depths of Russian spirituality. From the ancient Christian East, Doherty retrieved for the modern West a paradigm of peace. After much anguish and many sleepless nights on her knees before God, Doherty’s answer to our idolatrous society clouded by violence came to her from her own past: the poustinia.
Poustinia is the Russian word for desert, and a poustinik is someone who dwells there, in the aridity of the desert. Though dwelling in the desert has its literal aspects from ancient tradition, Doherty, who introduced the notion of the poustinia to North America, refers primarily to a spiritual reality. It’s an ethos to which she calls everyone – not just those few who end up living in the solitude of a cabin in the wilderness….
According to Doherty, the Russian poustinik was set apart from the world for the sake of the world, on behalf of the world, and for [the] love of the world. The poustinik did not go into the desert to escape, reject, or spite the world. Far from living in isolation from the world, the poustinik felt the world’s pain and suffering; he felt the consequences of the world’s violence and carried those consequences – those wounds – in the depths of his own heart. As a positive alternative to violence, the poustinik – without escaping or hiding from the wounds of a violence-ridden society – existed in his poustinia to “thank God for the joys and gladness and all his gifts.”
The poustinik option, according to Doherty, is available to everyone – in the silence of walking down a city street or waiting for a taxi, or amidst the chaos of a day at work. Doherty asked, “What is the answer to all these darknesses that press so heavily on us? What are the answers to all these fears that make darkness at noon? What is the answer to the loneliness of men without God? What is the answer to the hatred of man toward God? I think I have one answer.” And that one answer? “The poustinia.”
Counter-Cultural Marriage Advice
Let me end with a longer-than-usual video (for the GR anyway). It’s Jordan Peterson on “My Advice for Young Men Seeking Marriage and Family.” Much of what he says is counter-cultural these days, in large part because he has a Christian understanding of marriage, even though he says elsewhere he is not a Christian. I found myself laughing at a couple of points. He gets marriage.
Grace and peace,
Mark Galli