American novelist John Updike was becoming popular when I completed my undergraduated studies, back in the 1970s. I’ve read about 6-8 of his books, and many critiques. Let me whet your appetites with this… Rowland Croucher.

by Robert K. Johnston

Robert K. Johnston, Ph.D., is Professor of Theology and Culture, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena CA 91182. Prior to that he was Vice-President and Dean of North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago. —————————————————————————- —-

To the casual reader, John Updike might seem just another writer clever in his use of words and in his ability to capitalize on sex. His best-selling novels and short stories are filled with puns and pudenda. But Updike’s purpose is something other than mere titillation. Sexuality has been for him a mode of human activity through which to explore society’s present sterility and its future hope. It has provided him with a subject matter capable of reflecting life’s mystery, and this theme he has rendered with stylistic power and architectural precision.

A Religions Consciousness

To the critics, Updike is an enigma. Some have understood him to be a somewhat aloof commentator on American life, exploring such phenomena as rural life in an urban age, suburban anomie, clergy dissatisfaction, aging and marital infidelity. Most of his novels reflect a precise historical situation. The Centaur is a Truman book, Rabbit, Run is set in the Eisenhower era. A Month of Sundays takes place in the time of Nixon’s unraveling. And Marry Me (Updike’s latest) has the Kennedy administration as its background.

But though Updike writes of contemporary life, most critics have seen his interest in it as more than sociological and have rightly affirmed the novelists religious underpinning, even while disputing the exact nature of his beliefs. Kenneth and Alice Hamilton’s major study, The Elements of John Updike (Eerdmans, 1970), regards his vision as stemming from historic Christianity. Others have located his “religious” center in a form of theistic existentialism. Still others have understood Updike to be involved in a continuing quest for belief. All agree that he is writing in reaction to a modern Protestantism once comfortably ensconced in small towns (like Shillington, Pennsylvania, where Up-dike lived as a boy), but now caught up in the secularism of the expanding megalopolis. However defined, Updike’s religious consciousness informs all of his work; a close reading of his fiction supports the claim that he is seriously involved in enfleshing that marginal belief which underlies life for an increasing number of Americans.

Updike’s novels and short stories are not “religious” in a narrow understanding of that term. There are no Christ figures in his works (except perhaps George Caldwell in The Centaur) or other sacred symbols; and when the Christian church is portrayed, it usually comes off as an archaic, lifeless institution, run by inept, bungling, morally and spiritually bankrupt clergy. The epigraphs that introduce each of Updike’s books, however, should alert the reader to the need for sensitivity concerning religious elements. The Poorhouse Fair quotes Luke 23:31; Museums and Women, Ecclesiastes 3:11-13; A Month of Sundays begins with Psalm 45 and a quotation from the theologian Paul Tillich; The Centaur is introduced by a quotation from Karl Barth; Couples quotes Paul Tillich again; and Rabbit, Run uses Pascal to set the mood for what follows. Such theological stage-setting belies what might otherwise superficially pass for “secular” fiction.

If one is to understand the fictive world of John Updike, his theological world view cannot be ignored. This world view might be summarized in the words of Pascal’s Pens ©e 507, which Updike quotes at the beginning of Rabbit, Run: “The motions of Grace, the hardness of the heart; external circumstances,” This epigraph may serve as a brief outline of Updike’s literary effort: his theologically concerned fiction seeks to portray (1)

external circumstances, (2) the hardness of the heart, and (3) motions of grace.

For more see http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item_id=11 95