the rix mix

I was in a pissy mood for hours today before I realized it was why I was having unpleasant encounters with the kinds of people & situations I usually handle with some detachment & patience. The beautiful weather disguised my bad mood to myself. So it's probably not a good evening to critique a book I liked but which had very disturbing subject matter: a fundamentalist college. So disturbing that I reread Garry Wills' lovely, scholarly little book, "What Paul Meant" (Paul being the Apostle), just to clear the fundamentalist nonsense out of my head. Wills is, so far as I know, a Roman Catholic in good standing in a parish somewhere. I hope so, because he writes in the best tradition of Catholic intellectuals who study, question, doubt, & yet ultimately affirm, & also know how to present difficult ideas to readers of average intelligence like myself. In this book, he reminds again & again that a narrative carrying a doctrinal truth (or any other kind of truth) doesn't mean the narrative itself is true. God created the world. Doctrine. In six Earth days? The strength of American protestant fundamentalism doesn't make it less aberrational.

Labels: religion