John Updike, who died in January at 76, was widely regarded as a colossal figure in American letters and named “the finest novelist writing in English today,” by no less a fine author than Ian McEwan.
Updike was also an ardent Christian, a fact that surprised him to some degree: “How did the patently vapid and drearily business-like teachings to which I was lightly exposed succeed in branding me with a cross? And a brand so specifically Lutheran, so distinctly Nordic; an obdurate insistence that at the core of the core there is a right-angled clash to which, of all verbal combinations we can invent, the Apostles’ Creed offers the most adequate correspondence and response.” Born a Lutheran in Pennsylvania, he changed denominations as his place of residence changed; a Congregationalist in Ipswich, Mass., and an Episcopalian in Beverly Farms, Mass.
In Pigeon Feathers, a short story, he dramatized a teenage crisis of faith: 14-year-old David dips into one of his mother’s college textbooks, The Outline of History by H.G. Wells. He is immediately ambushed by the historian’s description of Jesus as an obscure political agitator, a kind of hobo in a minor colony of the Roman Empire who survived his own crucifixion and presumably died a few weeks later, the freakish incident giving rise to a new religion.
Bang go all of David’s cherished Sunday school convictions. Out the window flies his childhood faith and an overwhelming fear of death enters his consciousness. He goes in search of a hint, a nod, something that can rebuild his fortress against death.
He finds it at last while examining the intricate feathers of some recently slain pigeons. He cannot believe that a universe as beautiful, that made so many beautiful things as this one, could allow him to wink out like a candle in a dark room.
In later life Updike himself had a full-blown spiritual crisis. “I remember squatting in our cellar making my daughter a dollhouse, under the close sky of the cobwebby ceiling, and the hammer going numb in my hand as I saw not only my life but hers, so recently begun, as a futile misadventure, a leap out of the dark and back.”
Updike got through it by clinging to the Christ-centred, neo-orthodox theology of Karl Barth.
I was one of the many fans who corresponded with Updike, sending him articles or reviews that I had written of his books. He often favoured me with generous replies. Once, having received from me a copy of Barth’s speech that the theologian gave on the occasion of his 80th birthday, Updike wrote: “Dear Rev. McTavish: Thanks for the bundle; I loved reading Barth’s friendly, slightly edgy farewell. Something about that man’s voice always soothes me, and I wondered what the medical adventures he so fully alludes to were, and what the quarrels he mentions. He was a battler, no doubt about it.”
In an essay he once wrote on Barth and Soren Kierkegaard, Updike stated, “They convinced me that this was the human condition and that we could leap our way out of it. And once you take this highly intellectually unhealthy leap into faith, the world becomes accessible again.”
Strengthened by his Christian convictions, John Updike went on to write over 60 books: novels such as Couples and Rabbit, Run and The Witches of Eastwick, short story collections, playful volumes of poetry and thick books of literary criticism. It was a highly productive life in which the author never lost his faith. He also, interestingly, never read as much theology again. “My life is mostly lived. God is the God of the living,” he wrote, “though his priests and executors, to keep order and to force the world into a convenient mould always want to make Him the God of the dead, the God who chastises life and forbids and says No.”
But if Updike stopped reading theology, he never stopped attending church. “When I haven’t been to church in a couple of Sundays,” he once said, “I begin to hunger for it and need to be there. It’s not just the words, the sacraments. It’s the company of other people, who show up and pledge themselves to an invisible entity.”
On another occasion he also said: “Somehow it struck me quite early that the church, whatever its faults, was speaking to the real issues, and that without the church I didn’t feel anybody would speak to the real issues – that is, the issues of being human, being alive. I’ve remained loyal to the church. Spires you see in a small town or a city do bring hope, and hope brings energy. It’s certainly brought me energy.”
