Beginning with William Blake and his defense of the imagination, Inchausti revisits the lives and work of a stunning array of well-known Christian thinkers as well as those not often thought of as Christian. These expected and unexpected figures include Walker Percy, Dorothy Day, Jacques Ellul, Søren Kierkegaard, Jack Kerouac, Marshall McLuhan, Ivan Illich, and Andy Warhol. Inchausti analyzes influential aesthetic and "anti-political" contributions, such as Pasternak's beloved Dr. Zhivago and Thomas Merton's enduring Seven Storey Mountain, re-articulating the project of Christian Humanism. Finally, addressing the primary ways Christian mysteries contradict and disarm the modern mindset, he urges a posture of accountability toward the world rather than ongoing attempts to gain power over it.
Fascinating and insightful, Subversive Orthodoxy could be adopted as a text for courses in English, literary theory, philosophy, spiritual formation, and sociology.
Author Information: Robert Inchausti is professor of English at California Polytechnic State University. His previous books include The Ignorant Perfection of Ordinary People and Thomas Merton's American Prophecy. He also edited Seeds, a popular selection of Thomas Merton's writings. Inchausti received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Dimensions: 6 x 9
Number of Pages: 224
Reviews
Endorsements: "Robert Inchausti writes with a sharp eye and considerable wit to argue that Christians, often from the margins, are among the most acute critics of modernity. His book is trenchant and informative enough to claim a wide audience. He well deserves one. A finely written volume packed with learning worn lightly."--Lawrence S. Cunningham, University of Notre Dame"This is an important and brilliant book. Robert Inchausti always says things that I enviously wish I had said myself. But he says it much better, and in a way that is hard to either dismiss or improve. Subversive Orthodoxy is the kind of thinking we need to reform Christianity in the true spirit of the Gospels."--Richard Rohr, O.F.M., Center for Action and Contemplation
"We live in a world so besotted with the folly of following fashion that it has forgotten the dynamism of orthodoxy. Whereas intellectual fashion's slavish addiction to the new keeps it chained to the present and subservient to the fatuousness of fads, orthodoxy always questions the status quo from the perspective of the permanent things. As such, and as Robert Inchausti demonstrates so ably, orthodoxy is not merely dynamic but subversive, undermining the presuppositions and prejudices of modernity with the wisdom of the ages. Subversive Orthodoxy assembles an impressive and apparently eclectic menagerie of orthodox believers from Blake and Solzhenitsyn to Chesterton and Dostoyevsky, and shows their unity of purpose in subverting the modish and the modern."--Joseph Pearce, author of The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile, and Wisdom & Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton
"What a good book! Its celebration of personalism is a timely reminder of the value of a wisdom of the heart. The Christian writers whose thought it examines have nothing in common except an interest in what Chesterton called the return to the modern world of true logic and the luminous tradition."--Ian Boyd, CSB, editor of The Chesterton Review
Review: "Inchausti pulls together a wide variety of saints and sinners. . . . The list of Inchausti's 20 is an avant-garde list who represent the restlessness of the Gospel. . . . Inchausti ends where his book begins, framing a macrohistorical perspective of an endangered species--the restless person who chooses the Christian path not for its security or peace or anything olsteenatically self-helped, but with a leaning to subversive orthodoxy. He wants the reader to reflect not only on a legacy but on a reframing and casting out of the disembodied lifeless faith."--Zachry Kincaid, Matthewshouseproject.com
"A colorful portrait of women and men who could very well be considered the mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers of the emerging church. . . . One of the great joys of this book lies in discovering the overlap of the modern world's most unconventional Christian thinkers. Inchausti's work is a tapestry of faithful outsiders whose visions warp and woof into one another across the centuries. . . . If Inchausti's book is understood as a deftly written overview, in which each snapshot invites additional research and deeper study, then Orthodoxy should be on the shelf of anyone who has more in common with Jack Kerouac than with Jerry Falwell."--Joshua Andersen, Prism
"Well written. . . . If we as Christians are supposed to be in this world but not of it, Subversive Orthodoxy has some valuable lessons. . . . Subversive Orthodoxy can serve as a doorway to the minds of some great thinkers."--Jeremy Hinzman, Catholic Register
"The miscreants (too many to list) and their works (too vast to summarize) explored in Inchausti's text prick your conscience and curiosity. . . . A motley crew, Inchausti effectively and eloquently bands them together around what he identifies as their shared wellspring of inspiration: prophetic vision. . . . The work offers readers expert analysis of a diverse corpus of material. Two chapters in Inchausti's work warrant particular attention: The Novel as Countermythology and Macrohistorical Criticism. Their content provides a tantalizing peek into the world of language theory and literary criticism. A unique hybrid of the academic and popular, Inchausti's book makes a valuable contribution to the libraries of college students, pastors, and Christian educators alike."--Dhawn B. Martin, Religious Studies Review
ISBN: 9781587430879
Catalogue code: N/A
Publisher: BRAZOS PRESS - published 15/05/2005
Format: Paperback