The C. S. Lewis Phenomenon: Christianity and the Public Sphere by Samuel Joeckel (review)

Christianity and Literature 412 In considering the larger implications of her study, Weaver-Zercher notes that it is highly unusual for members of one culture to produce such a large body of work about members of another. Despite her personal love for the genre, she remains uneasy about the possibility that evangelicals will injure the Amish in the process of “drawing spiritual sustenance” from them (246). She ends, however, on a note of affirmation. She reflects on the attraction of Amish novels for diverse readers and concludes that it represents, not juvenile escapism, but an intelligent hope that the “drought of hypermodernity” may come to an end. Weaver-Zercher has accomplished her purpose in presenting a convincing analysis of the “allure” of Amish fiction, and her sympathetic analysis points toward a larger understanding of Amish fiction as indicative of a widespread spiritual yearning among modern Americans. In this her argument reflects the thinking of Hostetler, who saw a “moral purpose” in the Amish example of an alternative to modern anomie. This moral understanding makes Thrill of the Chaste valuable reading for scholars of religion and popular culture as well as literature, and indeed for any reader suffering thirst in the climate of “hypermodernity.” In developing a larger interpretation of her research, Weaver-Zercher would benefit from placing her analysis in a wider historical and scholarly context. Debates over the social value of romance novels were common in the years of the Early Republic and were complicated at that time as well by the association of the fictive with the feminine. The view that women’s fiction could not only reflect reality but shape it gained currency over time. In studying this period, literary scholars such as Jane Tompkins, Philip Fisher, and Nina Baym have argued for the intellectual seriousness of the popular novel and developed the idea of popular fiction as a cultural work designed to effect social change. It is intriguing to speculate on the possibility that Amish fiction, by introducing readers to a counterculture of simplicity and purity, could likewise serve as a vehicle, not merely for transport, but for transformation. Sara S. Frear Houston Baptist University The C. S. Lewis Phenomenon: Christianity and the Public Sphere. By Samuel Joeckel. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-88146-4375 . Pp. 403. $30.00. It can be like discovering a jewel to find a book that is both scholarly and argumentatively sound. It is a rare thing indeed for that same book to offer keen insights into the life of a profound writer, as well as provide organizational categories 413 Book Reviews for that writer’s work that are both complex and accessible. Samuel Joeckel has shaped such a jewel in his recent book, The C. S. Lewis Phenomenon: Christianity and the Public Sphere. The book is a delight to read, as Joeckel progresses through a carefully constructed series of definitions and assertions toward understanding Lewis as a public intellectual. Joeckel’s primary claim is that Lewis’ persona as a public intellectual created the ways in which Lewis responded to truth claims and the methods that he used to construct the arguments in his works. With the rise of the public sphere that began with Enlightenment presumptions, so Joeckel argues, the place of one type of “public intellectual” became a response to the challenge that atheism offered to Christianity. The introduction to this lengthy book sets up key terms that Joeckel will spend the remainder of part 1 (of three parts) defining, with careful examples from Lewis’ culture and works: “public intellectual,” “de-conversion,” “transcendent character,” the genre of “apologue,” and “outsider” vantage point. Chapter 1 overviews the qualities and role of the public intellectual who used Enlightenment standards of reasoned argument to assume a neutral, or objective, arguer (“de-converted” stance in Joeckel’s term) who used logical discourse to carefully move through an argument and that by doing so, the argument could be acceded on solely rational grounds. Drawing on Russell Jacoby’s (1987) The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe, Joeckel defines a public intellectual as a “figure who defends religious, political, or ideological beliefs in a manner that requires the...