Haunted by Christ: Modern Writers and the Struggle for Faith

by Richard Harries

Overview

W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, William Golding, Elizabeth Jennings, C. S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, Stevie Smith . . . These are some of the great poets and novelists whose struggles with faith find expression in their works, and who demonstrate the fascinatingly different forms that faith can take in different times and places.

Richard Harries considers the work of twenty of these writers, painting vivid pictures of their lives and times. He also provides numerous critically sympathetic insights into the spiritual dimension of their writings.

The result is a book for readers of all religious persuasions, especially those who are fascinated by the ways in which faith is refracted through the lens of great poetry and fiction.

'A major new defence of Christianity that does not flinch from asking difficult questions about the kind of God who could have created our world.'
The Bookseller

'A heartening book, confronting the hardest questions with wide knowledge and deep wisdom.'
John Carey, Chief Literary Reviewer, Sunday Times

'An eloquent, honest and engaging case for Christian faith.'
The Tablet

'A deeply interesting book.'
Mary Warnock

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780281079346
Publisher:	SPCK (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge)
Publication date:	10/17/2019
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Richard Harries is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Professor of Theology at King’s College, London. On his retirement as Bishop of Oxford (1987-2006) he was made a life peer (Lord Harries of Pentregarth). He is the author of many critically acclaimed books, including Hearing God in Poetry (SPCK, 2021), Seeing God in Art (SPCK, 2022) and his moving autobiography The Shaping of a Soul: a life taken by surprise (John Hunt 2023). Art and the Beauty of God (Continuum, 1993) was selected as book of the year by Anthony Burgess in The Observer. A much loved voice on BBC’s Today programme, he has contributed to ‘Thought for the Day’ for more than 50 years.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

1 Through a furnace of doubt Fyodor Dostoevsky 1

2 A smouldering volcano Emily Dickinson 15

3 'Away grief's gasping' Gerard Manley Hopkins 32

4 The elusive call Edward Thomas 47

5 Out of hell T.S. Eliot 61

6 A jaunty desperation Stevie Smith 75

7 Secular mystic Samuel Beckett 83

8 'Bless what there is for being' W. H. Auden 97

9 Universal pessimist, cosmic optimist William Golding 112

10 Presence in absence R. S. Thomas 123

11 Light from the Orkneys Edwin Muir George Mackay Brown 140

12 Poet of pain and praise Elizabeth Jennings 155

13 Grace in failure: Four Catholic novelists - Graham Greene, Flannery O'Connor, Shusaku Endo and Evelyn Waugh 164

14 Competing myths C. S. Lewis Philip Pullman 178

15 Christian contrarian Marilynne Robinson 193

Notes 205

Acknowledgements 227

Index 229

Editorial Reviews

In this enormously engaging book, Richard Harries shares with us his reading of many of the great writers of modernity, inviting us to attend with him to their wrestling with the hardest questions of human existence before God – and sometimes before the apparent absence of God. These are enriching and provoking reflections, testimony to the way that the Christian gospel continues to be a vehicle for the most serious thinking and imagining in our culture.

A compelling narrative of the modern quest for meaning and the expression, in literature, of our age’s deep wrestling with faith.

Richard Harries sweeps through writers from Dostoevsky to Marilynne Robinson, including Emily Dickinson, Samuel Beckett and Evelyn Waugh – and points out how their Christianity was sometimes submerged and often neglected by critics and readers. This book rightly and authoritatively, without beating the drum, resurrects the profound spiritual tradition of Christianity over a century that often claimed to have stamped it out. Here, see it alive and well, subtly and with fine scholarship unveiled.
This is a rich and important book. I hugely enjoyed it.

From the Publisher