A Lifetime at a Church, Filled With Faith and Drama

The first third of “The Dearly Beloved” recounts the back story, or rather the love stories, of these four characters. Charles chases Lily for two years without earning so much as a kiss. Wall presents Lily’s unwillingness to let anyone love her as a product of the same trauma as her atheism: the sudden death of her parents in a car accident when she was a teenager. Like James, Lily has a benevolent uncle, only instead of financial support he offers emotional advice — perhaps most significantly, to let the boy who is already so in love with her love her. Their marriage is less a melding than a mutual agreement to never challenge the most essential element of the other: his faith and her grief. Nan, by contrast, falls for James right away, and their union is one of ease and unburdening: She was born to love, and he to be loved; his calling to ministry is nurtured by her own faith in the church as an institution of stability and charity.

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Most of the novel takes place in the ’60s, after James and Charles are hired by Third Presbyterian to replace a mawkish minister whose final sin entailed substituting “Silent Night” for “Joy to the World” at the close of the Christmas service. The two men are meant to balance each other: James wants to preach social justice and believes the parish is too wealthy for its own good; Charles writes sermons to help people think clearly and believes even the well-off need spiritual tending. The novel’s second section tells the story of their first few years together, when James nearly gets them fired for his political sermon and letting a feminist group meet to talk about abortion in the church offices, while Charles watches enviously as Nan takes to life as a preacher’s wife, comforting parishioners and sustaining the choir as Lily moves further away into her own life of academia and activism.

Wall sometimes makes too much of these differences. Rather than seeming like two ministers, James and Charles sometimes read as if the pastoral teachings of Henri Nouwen and the political theology of Reinhold Niebuhr were fighting for control of one parish, and poor Lily seems like the atheist bull in everyone else’s metaphysical china shop. And yet for all of their education, none of these characters comes across as especially philosophical or theological. Instead of discussing soteriology or theodicy or even Jesus, they talk in the blanched terms of bad things and good people, even with one another.

Source: The New York Times

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Keywords:

Wild Card (TV series) • Backstory • Atheism • Adolescence • So in Love • Born to Love (film) • Presbyterianism • Sin • Silent Night • Joy to the World • Christmas • Social justice • Sermon • Person • Spirituality • Sermon • Feminism • Abortion • The Preacher's Wife (soundtrack) • Choir • Minister (Christianity) • Lutheranism • Henri Nouwen • Political theology • Reinhold Niebuhr • Parish • Atheism • Papal bull • Metaphysics • China • Irreligion • Philosophy • Theology • Salvation in Christianity • Theodicy • Jesus •