ENG 201-C01_Discussion Thread: Studying American Literature from a Christian Worldview

Discussion Thread: Studying American Literature from a Christian Worldview

To begin my discussion on the importance of this exciting era lensed through a Christian worldview, American was built on just that and used to receive its understanding from just that. An era that birthed what could be described as the greatest of American literature, I will attempt to do my best as to not be too eagerly bias as this time era is my place of residence for most, if not seemingly all, of my literary studies. Many authors of this time even would preface their work to make sure that they gave God the glory foremost rather than that of their prideful nature of man being first. In today’s modern world we see much less of this as to be compared to those times before the World Wars when the American people were observably closer to God. I seldomly study much of anything after the World Wars as I believe the world and its global powers sought to advance far too quickly with much prideful enthusiasm. This perhaps led to some things that we could consider not to be as necessary for the sake of human advancement, if at all.

Humanity does a good job of employing the ingenuity for developing ways of constructing improvement, yet, at the same time, it deliberately and inadvertently pursues to cause the very thing it seeks to remedy and regrettably does so for its own sake; and as a result, through generations, the entities responsible for these sacrilegious productions understand the business and wealth it agitates. This great transcendental period with famous figures such as my all-time favorite, Ralph Waldo Emerson, had paved the way for great thinkers alike to bear actual intelligent fruit bestowed by our Creator that can be read through and extracted from Godly light. In addition, there was also a great rise in the midst of this age for competition against the Creator, the impression for the immense denial of God, and even the divinity in Nature itself during this same “age of expansion” as great American essayist Hamilton Wright Mabie sought to describe this liberal-thinking movement in my most treasured book of his, (Short Studies in Literature, p. 116). By what us believers would declare infamous these notorious zealots that I am attempting to recognize would be “provocateurs of the Faith,” as I would like to call them. Individuals and their works such as Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, etc. that we come to study and identify best in contrast to the pursuit of investigations concerning God and existentialism.

It is difficult for me not to be perceived as cliché when proclaiming the admiration for the likes of Emerson and his works. However, I would suppose that is why he may just be the greatest of his time and possibly even to this day because he has instilled much literary inspiration to many among the forthcoming generations through his fervent yet ardent bouts of vivacity that gave great power in his words while reading them. It would be a delight to include amongst my most admirable of classic literary inspirations by denoting the names of Hamilton Wright Mabie, Henry David Thoreau, T.S. Elliot, and Walt Whitman to name a few. English and other European writers, authors, poets, and lecturers of the like, I too, would have to include such names as Blake, Wordsworth, Goethe, Goldsmith, Coleridge, and Bacon as I do my best not to sound boastful in my enthusiasm to recognize my love for these great writers of the past. I most imperatively admire their testimonies of God in their works. What an inspiring time it was to merely be present with God, Nature, and your thoughts. These studies of old has even led me to invoke my own writing and interpretation in the fashion of a so-called “19^th century man.”

Today’s world and even several decades prior there has been such a deep disconnect from Nature and the wonderous works that our Creator has invited us to make use for ourselves to follow in what a Christian would conceive as a more righteous trajectory for walking their life as accordingly as possible. Even though William Wordsworth may be considered English literature, the American and European great minds of the Faith think a lot alike in how these remarkable men and women of the Romantic era transcended their minds and interpretation of the world inside of us and all around us. The title and beginning of the poem

“The world is much too with us; late and soon,” 

Wordsworth puts best in short words the internalization of this disconnect from Nature as

“we lay waste to our powers,” 

he continues in the same poem (45). I believe authors of this era (as undoubtedly the Bible as well) are a prime example of how we should be communicating ourselves the best we can in a Christian worldview. There are far too many distractions and polluted progressive thinking that puts the term ideocracy to good use these days, sadly enough.

In conclusion, the importance for studying American Literature from a Christian worldview the exemplification of these authors I have recognized, they cannot simply just credit themselves out of the passion from their own soul alone but the commitment in achieving such spiritual literacy and to some Godly or ethereal degree of intimacy with Nature that God intend for us to be in relationship with from the very beginning. We need not to lean on our own understanding, but in all thy ways acknowledging Him

(KJV, Prov. 3:5-6) such as these wonderful God-fearing and God-believing literary composers did to keep the Almighty at the forefront of their own works giving Him the glory to what they could and did accomplish through their unyielding faith.

Works Cited

Mabie, Hamilton Wright. “An Age of Expansion.” Short Studies in Literature, Dodd,

Mead and Company, 1893, p. 116.

Wordsworth, William. "The World Is Too Much with Us." William Wordsworth: Favorite

Poems, Dover Publications, 1994.

The Scofield Study Bible. King James Version, edited by C. I. Scofield, Oxford University

Press, 2003.