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Hallo again
to all. We can't recall just what circumstance led Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici to fall into our path in our late teens, but it did. And it charmed us. Its baroque yet compelling prose was an antidote to the dry maths textbooks and Greek verbs that accompanied our university life. Here is Sir Thomas on heresy and schism:
The extended, almost diary-like essay of Religio Medici was a favourite for years. Through its pages we could sense the Church of England in the 1640s, when the Age of Enlightenment had not yet banished the 'wingy mysteries and subtleties' of the mediæval church and the atmosphere was a rich and heady stew of intellectual rigour and mystical devotion.
We
see in news reports that the church still matters today in the USA,
cited in this or that
poll as the most overtly religious country — but what sort of
religion? Peter Manseau and Jeffrey Sharlet, founders
of Killing the Buddha,
try to answer that question in two ways: by their
own road trip, mapped along the highways of the USA, and by
asking some of the best writers in the States to encounter
a book of the Bible and make it their own, by 'taking them
apart, blowing them up with ink and paper'. All books flash, glint, and mirror their times. No matter what church you're a part of, this book provides you with a compelling background for understanding the context in which the Episcopal Church in the USA makes its home. It challenged us to confront the images of God we've created, as comfortably and sensibly and wonderfully Anglican as we think they are — and perhaps as we think God should be. 'Killing the Buddha' may be a Buddhist concept indeed, but there is a lesson that Anglicans may well take to heart in these days of line-drawing, certainties, and finger-pointing. As someone once said, when you find God hating the same things you do, watch out. If that isn't a Buddhist-Anglican concept, we don't know what is. See you next week.
Last
updated: 18 January 2004 |
 This web site is independent. It is not official in any way. Our editorial staff is private and unaffiliated. Please contact editor@anglicansonline.org about information on this page. ©2004 Society of Archbishop Justus |
In
our early twenties, we fell under the spell of minor 19th- and
early 20th-century novels, many
of which had serious Anglican overtones. 
