Lutheran Saints #20: Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

October 12, 2021 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Although Christoph grew up the son of the preacher of hope and healing Johann Christoph Blumhardt, he felt spiritually dry for much of his early life, even into young adulthood. Living at the center of an awakening had attuned him to spiritual realities, and the care to the point of exhaustion offered to the suffering turned his loving attention on the needy. But the bright confidence of his famous father did not break through to his own soul until the very linchpin of the awakening was taken from them.

Christoph was with Gottliebin Dittus on her deathbed. While her breaking free of the devil’s power had been the moment of truth for his father Johann Christoph, it was her death in Christ’s hands that changed everything for Christoph. But in both cases, the good news was the same: “Jesus is victor!” His victory was not a matter of the past—whether the distant past of prophets and apostles, or the more recent past of his own childhood and his father’s Möttlingen pastorate. Jesus is victor now, today, and into the future.

Johann Christoph saw with the joy the transformation in his son. On his own deathbed, his place his hand on Christoph’s head and spoke his final words: “I bless you for the victory.” Not the victory of career or success: the victory of Christ.

From then on Christoph took the mantle of Bad Boll, the institution founded by his parents to care for the sick and suffering. Like his father, he became a renowned preacher. But much more quickly than his father, Christoph became disenchanted not only with his renown, but with its effect…

Lutheran Saints #19: Johann Christoph Blumhardt and Gottliebin Dittus

September 28, 2021 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

In the spring of 1842 Pastor Johann Christoph Blumhardt was advised by his parishioners to investigate the strange goings-on at the home of the Dittus siblings. Orphaned and bereaved of several other siblings as well, four of them—Gottliebin, Anna Maria, Katharina, and Hansjörg—lived together in a tumbledown house under conditions of extreme poverty. But the poverty was not the primary target of concern. It was the noises, the strange lights, and above all the strange behavior of Gottliebin that called for further examination.

Gottliebin did not respond warmly to the pastor’s friendly overtures. He let her be, but neighbors complained again: Gottliebin fell down, she fell ill, the noises in the house were so loud as to keep them up at night. Johann Christoph dispatched the siblings to stay with a relative overnight while he and trusted members of the congregation searched the house. Therein they found strange objects, and thereby the fears of Johann Christoph were confirmed: dabbling in occult magic was a widespread spiritual disorder in his flock. Further inquiry revealed that Gottliebin’s early life had been filled with attempted initiations into such dark traffic at the behest of her elders.

Spiritualist studies were not unknown at the time. Reputable figures investigated reports of poltergeists, converse with the dead, and spirits of all kinds. Johann Christoph consulted with such experts of his acquaintance, but remained uneasy with their eager conclusions. Scripture forbade all forms of magic and attempts to communicate with the dead; the devil would deceive by any means necessary, including by lures of knowledge of the supposed beyond. Johann Christoph was resolute: he decided only to pray and place his trust in Jesus Christ…

Slovak Novels in English #38: The Heiress

September 14, 2021 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

In many ways, this review marks a triumph: the completion of my quest to locate and read all of Kristína Royová’s books in English! (See the now-complete bibliography at the end of this post.) The title is not literal—in Slovak the book is called Moc svetla, “The Power of the Light,” with an epigraph from John 1:5. A whole seventy years passed between in its initial publication in Slovak and its translation into English.

It was no small thing to add this last Royová novel to my collection. The only used copies I could locate online originally cost upwards of $200! I wrote a few pleading emails to the vendors to broker a deal. None of them ever responded, but not long after, one dropped the price to $60. Still a bit much for a faded mass market paperback, but I wasn’t going to let the chance slip away. Collectors are always at the mercy of dealers!

I wish I could say that this almost 600-page book was worth the 10¢ per page. Unfortunately, I have to admit that the 3-star rating for The Heiress is awarded on the same arbitrary grounds that I gave the same rating to Bellevue: a split between a 5 for the book achieving its intended purpose and a 1 for the enjoyment I took in reading it.

It’s pretty funny, actually, that I would have the same issue with these two particular Slovak novels in English, because they are about as diametrically opposed in outlook as humanly possible. Bellevue is bleak and nihilistic; The Heiress is chirpy and optimistic. In truth, the best characterization I can think of for The Heiress is “religious soap opera”…

Narrative Cookbooks

August 31, 2021 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

The worst kind of cookbook is one whose recipes just don’t work, of course. A close second is a database of recipes with no context, explanation, or personal story—recipe as equation that will give as clockwork and uninspired a result as a multiplication table. The kinds of cookbooks I love are personal, passionate, and preface each and every recipe with enough detail to know why it mattered to the cookbook author to include it, and how to judge the results as the reader and cook.

But even that kind of cookbook is primarily a tool—for expanding one’s repetoire of flavors or skills or simply grasp of how the other half eats. I’ve concluded, though, that my most favorite cookbooks are something beyond tools. They are what I hereby officially dub Narrative Cookbooks.

A Narrative Cookbook is not a Memoir with Recipes—a fine genre, and have I mentioned lately that I myself have written a Memoir with Recipes?—but its distinct own thing. In a Memoir with Recipes, the primary purpose is to tell the personal story, and in this particular case the personal story is very much bound up with food, so the author would like you the reader to taste or at least imagine the taste of the food that informed the life.

By contrast, a Narrative Cookbook is still more about the food than the life, but it recognizes that you can’t extract the one from the other, and the food won’t come to life without the life itself being reported alongside the recipe.

In my entirely unscientific survey, I find that Narrative Cookbooks span a spectrum from most essay-ish to most memoir-ish and the whole range in between…

To Baptize or Not to Baptize; or, How a Lutheran Comes to Commit Casuistry

August 17, 2021 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Upon reading To Baptize or Not to Baptize: A Practical Guide for Clergy, more than one person has told me, “This is an excellent work of casuistry.” Not exactly the words to warm the heart of a Lutheran theologian. But they meant it as the sincerest of compliments.

And they’re right—in a sense. “Casuistry” is mostly a dirty word inside religious circles and out. It connotes the very worst of all legal and bureaucratic systems: reductionistic, narrow-minded, and inhuman. It binds the innocent in twisty cords of corruption and lets the wicked off the hook on a technicality.

But in fact “casuistry” shares a common Latin etymological root with “case,” as in “case study,” a time-honored strategy for moral discernment. At its best, casuistry is simply case studies, examining the wide and intriguing array of situations that we human beings get ourselves into, and thinking through the possible responses and options that arise as a result.

In that sense, To Baptize or Not to Baptize is chock full of casuistry, as it narrates forty-nine different baptismal situations calling for pastoral discernment. There may well be more…

Slovak Novels in English #37: The Shop on Main Street

August 3, 2021 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Once again I’ve chosen a novel that pushes the boundaries of my mandate to read all “Slovak Novels in English.” In this case, the issue is equivocation on the term “Slovak.” The fact is, The Shop on Main Street was not written in the Slovak language at all… but in Czech, which is why it’s been issued in a series called Modern Czech Classics. Whether and to what extent Czech and Slovak are different languages has been a neuralgic issue for a long time, and even more so in the days when the two peoples shared a country. In any case, they are mutually intelligible to a degree that native English speakers can’t even imagine. However, I will not therefore conclude that I need to cover all Czech novels in English, too!

The more specific reason in favor of counting this one a “Slovak Novel in English” is the fact that the author was, in fact, a Slovak. Ladislav Grosman moved to Prague and adopted the local lingo to such an extent that it made sense to write first a short story, then a hybrid novel-screenplay, in Czech. Still, the story is set in Slovakia and all the characters are Slovak. So the novel passes my own personal litmus test…

Lutheran Saints #18: Robert Barnes

July 20, 2021 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

It was February of 1526 and Robert Barnes was on trial.

This was not where he expected to be. Before the age of twenty he’d joined a house of Augustinian friars and showed such great promise that he was sent first to Louvain on the continent to earn a Doctorate of Divinity and then, on his return to England, was made prior of the Augustinian friary in Cambridge and earned yet another Doctorate of Divinity. Finding in the famous university town other like-minded humanists, Robert gathered around him an intellectually and spiritually reform-minded community that met for lively debate at the White Horse Inn.

In time, they felt they had to go public with their concerns, and Robert was the obvious choice. On Christmas Eve 1525 he delivered a firebrand sermon, skewering the luxurious lifestyle of the high-ranking clergy. In no time at all accusations of heresy were flying, there’d been a student demonstration, and Robert—with a handful of others—found himself dragged to London and imprisoned.

At the end of his three-day trial before Cardinal Wolsey, Robert was forced to read aloud a recantation in front of the huge crowd, the alternative being death at the stake. He had to kneel before the bishop and beg for absolution, which was denied him until he agreed to whatever penance the bishop chose to impose. He agreed and discovered the next day what it was to be.

At an even bigger and more lavish gathering of clergy, a bishop railed from the pulpit against Robert as well as Martin Luther, made the accused men ask again for forgiveness, and then had them carry the firewood for the ceremonial burning of heretical books. Only then were the offenders absolved, at which point the crowd was granted an indulgence for having witnessed the whole affair, and Robert was sent to Fleet Prison for another six months.

When his time was up, Robert was transferred to the Augustinian friary in London for house arrest. But he evidently had not learned his lesson from the whole sorry debacle. Immediately on arrival he got involved in the sale of Tyndale Bibles—translations of the Scriptures into English—and when rumor circulated that this time Robert really was going to be burned for his troubles, he hatched a plan. He left his clothes at the edge of the Thames with a suicide note appended but actually escaped to Antwerp with the help of German merchants…

Top Ten Facts about My Novel-in-Progress, Because Literary Fiction Needs Clickbait, Too

July 6, 2021 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

1. I am writing a novel. Or rather, I have written the first draft of a novel and am now editing it.

2. I have written a number of novels before, which ranged from unreadable disasters to nearly-there.

3. For this reason, I have generally been cagey about admitting in public that I write fiction. Even this much makes me wince.

4. I suspect that the current novel is not an unreadable disaster…

Slovak Novels in English #36: The Hot Summer of 1968

June 22, 2021 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

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I little expected to find another five-star novel so soon after It Happened on the First of September. But not only does The Hot Summer of 1968 fully deserve this highest of ratings, it’s practically a sequel to the other novel, despite being by another author. I take this as evidence that the oft-overlooked Slovakia has a history and culture rich enough to repay ample fictional exploration. The more, the better! …

Slovak Novels in English #35: Bellevue

June 8, 2021 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Ivana Dobrakovová, Bellevue, trans. Julia and Peter Sherwood (London: Jantar, 2019), 220 pp.

Of all the Slovak novels in English I’ve reviewed so far, the assignment of three stars to this one is the most arbitrary of any rating I’ve given. It’s a compromise, actually. If I were to rate the novel based on its accomplishment of its intended goal, it certainly deserves five stars. If I were to rate it on the pleasure I took in reading it, it would get one star.

But that can hardly count as a legitimate a criticism of a book that maps out the degeneration of a mind into madness…