One of the most disturbing aspects of the rise of pop Christianity in modern America is the near complete overthrow of theologies, credes, and a sense of history by proudly uneducated Bible Belters. My father founded a church in a small town in SE Ohio in 1970. It was routinely called "the hippie church" and was a welcoming place for pretty much anyone. If you believed in Christ's redeeming power, you were home. Heaven was in your hands. I knew junkies, speed freaks, racists bombers--but almost nobody who would admit to being gay. That was the one line you never heard crossed. Blatantly gay people attended the church but if you commented on this to Rev. Dad he would scold you for thinking such a thing. It became apparent to me that Christ's Love, at least as presented at our church, only went so far; the Cities of the Plain were patently excluded. As the hippie church became the center of the Religious Right (a book waiting to be written) there were schisms over civil rights (Dad openly despised MLK), over Dad's personality cult (people actually collected his sayings in pamphlets), but never any problems over certain basic tenets: abortion is evil and fags are too. The amount of hatred for pro-abortion/pro-gay advocates was mindboggling. There simply were not two sides to this issue. Increasingly, it got so you could not tell the difference between Republicans and hillbilly Christians; the concepts had effectively merged. I hated going home. I still do. I am so thankful that my child, dog and I can live in a sane urbane environment (aka Denver). But terrible places like my home are calling the shots in our culture. The barbarians, many of whem started out as anything but, are not just inside the gates, they now control the drawbridge. I know so many people who left home over not being able to live gay there, and so many who are still distant from their families, and they have my sympathy. It sounds like many of the people written about in "Straight to Jesus" come from places like SE Ohio--where God and his flock exist to make your life a living hell unles you do as they do. And they dare call it Christianity.

While I have always enjoyed Laura Miller's essays/reviews, I couldn't help but get a kick out of her cutting down Tristram Stuart's knowledge of cultural history while in the same piece labeling Plutarch a "poet." I've been reading Plutarch with great pleasure my entire adult life and have never seen him referred to in this context. Am I missing something?

While its always nice to hear words from on high from a literary wonder like Kundera, one can't help but realize that when great novelists can no longer write great novels, they instead write about great novels--and also realize that this is probably for the better. Anyone who suffered through Bellows's late works, or Garcia Marquez's, for that matter, can't help but wish that they had retreated into the essay solely and left fiction alone.