181 - Sinners and Seagulls: Pelagius Redux

Sinners and Seagulls: Pelagius Redux
By John W. Kuykendall

AN ad in my morning paper heralds the publication of a certain fable "that will make even Jonathan Livingston Seagull go into a flap!" Maybe so; but the odds are definitely against it. Richard, Bach's indefatigable Everybird has soared to a considerable head start. He has enjoyed the generous exposure of a Time cover story; he has been a regular among the top ten bestsellers, at this writing, for a solid year (topping all hardback records since Gone With The Wind); he has attracted barbs and sneers from religious pulps across the theological spectrum; and, as a sort of final accolade, he has gone paperback, for the sake of the vast multitude (this writer included) who displayed both their stinginess and their lack of sophistication by refusing heretofore to fork over $4.95 for a scant hundred pages of deathless prose.¹ Yes, JLS has made it. A nation of readers, waiting on sofa's edge for another big little book ever since the decline and fall of Love Story, has finally found a worthy object for its affections.

Jonathan has made it in a very special way. Not that we need have any illusions about the permanence of the object of any fad, literary or otherwise. And not that any book-even one with hypnotic pictures, big print and childlike (or is it childish?) simplicity-can long compete with the bombardment of the more raucous and insistent media which have made book-reading nearly as quaint as a quilting-bee. And certainly not that we need expect to find therein anything novel or unexplored or distinctive, even if it was dictated by a mysterious voice "behind and to the right" of the author-cum-amanuensis (which, incidentally, is not a bad way to write a book). As a matter of fact, it seems entirely plausible that Bach's seagull has enjoyed such success precisely because the message it propounds is neither new nor different. The bird has insinuated himself into the stream of American consciousness and left nary a ripple to attest his recent landing.

I

This is a nation which has long resonated to themes of aspiration, perseverance, growth, and accomplishment. We have been characterized, by ourselves as well as outside observers, as an ambitious race which figured to move from glory into glory by mother-wit and

John W. Kuykendall is a graduate student in the Department of Religion of Princeton University and in the fall will be joining the faculty of Auburn University as a member of the Religion Department. His field of special interest is American religious history, and he holds degrees from Davidson College, Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, and Yale University. He has served as Assistant Dean of Students at Davidson and Presbyterian Campus Minister at Auburn University.
¹ TIME, November 13, 1972, pp. 60-66; see also, inter alia, Christian Century, November 22, 1972, pp. 1185-1187; Christianity Today, December 22, 1972, pp. 23-24; and America, December 2, 1972, p. 474. There is also a new book-length parody: Dolph Sharp, Ludwig von Wolfgang Vulture (New York: Price, Stem and Sloan, 1973).

182 - Sinners and Seagulls: Pelagius Redux

elbow-grease, and the occasional hint of a smile on the countenance of Fortuna. Certainly our religious heritage bears the watermarks of this trait. They used to say-back in the days when American religion was assessed in sweeping generalities-that the history of our theology could be summed up as the erosion of the sandcastle of Calvinism by the sweeping tides of Arminianism. The tribal temperament carried over even into theology. Give an American the choice between dependence upon the flat of an omnipotent Sovereign and reliance upon his own abilities to cope with his situation, be it temporal or eternal, and he'll grab for his own bootstraps every time. For all the spartan rigor of Augustinian orthodoxy, the anthropology of that cantankerous English/Irish monk, whose usual alias was Pelagius, has been quite beguiling to the praxis of American Christianity.

To describe American religious thought in such bald terms as the foregoing is doubtless a bit simplistic and naive, but it is also a bit correct. As Donald Meyer reminds us in his little book, The Positive Thinkers, ² American religious activity has frequently served as the court chaplain of the popular psychologies of success which have typified the national temperament. Religious figures from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale and his heirs (and their name is Legion) have exercised a specific priestly office, directing other elements of the American culture in a unison hymn of capability and accomplishment. From pews as diverse as those of Watty Piper (putative author of The Little Engine That Could and other perverse stories), William Faulkner (Stockholm: "Man will prevail…. "-and don't you forget it), Bear Bryant ("When the goin' gets tough, the tough get goin"') and the scores of monthly unforgettables in the Reader's Digest, Americans have been serenaded with variations on the psalm of success. If the words were frequently changing to fit the immediate circumstances, and if the tempo seemed sometimes to shift mid-stanza from a waltz to a march and back again, the angelic tune has remained the same. American religion, too, has sanctioned the ambitious American temperament.

II

And now, mirabile dictu, there comes this bird-a seagull, no less-who can sing that song as though he were fashioned in heaven just for the purpose. And once again the religious sector is called for support; Jonathan Livingston Seagull, everybody says, is a profoundly religious book. As becomes the pattern, the Christ-image is there, front and center. Jon teaches as one who has authority:

He spoke of very simple things-that it is right for a gull to fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form (JLS, paperback, p. 114).

He attracts the attention of the masses, who see but do not perceive

² Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1965.

183 - Sinners and Seagulls: Pelagius Redux

and hear but do not understand:

"Well, sure, O.K., they're Outcast," said some of the younger gulls, "but hey, man, where did they learn to fly like that?" (JLS, p. 106).

He heals the lame:

"You don't understand. My wing. I can't move my wing."
"Maynard Gull, you have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way. It is the Law of the Great Gull, the Law that Is."
"Are you saying I can fly?"
"I say you are free" (JLS, p. 112).

He even raises the dead-which, as usual, raises a peck of trouble:

Fletcher shook his head and stretched his wings and opened his eyes at the base of the cliff, in the center of the whole Flock assembled. There was a great clamor of squawks and screams from the crowd when first he moved.
"He lives! He that was dead lives!"
"Touched him with a wingtip! Brought him to life! The Son of the Great Gull!"
"No! . . . He's a devil! DEVIL! Come to break the Flock!" (JLS, p. 121).

Then, in a cop-out from the original game plan, Jon emulates Jesus at Nazareth rather than at Jerusalem (a prophet is always without honor in his own flock), and pulls a nifty disappearing act to avoid crucifixion. Bach seems to have concluded that death and resurrection are just too much reality to be borne. But Jon rejoins the old, old Story-line for his finale, an ascension scene which is graced with a bit more explanatory information than the first chapter of Acts. Thus the portrait is completed, even if emasculated. The hero is the Christ. It was ever thus.

But, of course, there is more. Jon's theological flight plan is not circumscribed by the Christian tale. The Eastern religions have come into play as well. With a facility for syncretism that would draw admiring glances from the Alexandrine divines, Bach (or his "dictator") has taken up the song of ambition and pristinated it with the unction of oriental wisdom. Some say JLS is a Buddhist tract, and some claim it's Hindu; I lay odds that neither faith would willingly lay claim, and if s not worth the argument anyway. ³ The point is that the book espouses the quest for perfection as the absolute goal of life. Limitless freedom is the meaning of heaven. Jon is not the Son of the Great Gull; he is simply the model or example of perfect freedom. He is the one from whom all the other gulls who read this book can draw the incentive to go and do likewise. The ring of pelagian knowledge is complete: You can because you know you can. And that is the point that readers have taken to heart. Bach isn't talking about seagulls, as Time cleverly perceives. He's talking about people: painters and plumbers and politicians and podiatrists, patriots and poltroons and poor people, and even an occasional preacher. I'm FREE!!! I CAN FLY!!!

³ More significant in this regard, it seems to me, is the fact that Richard Bach has until recently been quite active in the Church of Christ, Scientist.

184 - Sinners and Seagulls: Pelagius Redux

III

Give Richard Bach his due: he has touched a nerve. His message is one which this nation yearns to hear. (Right again, Time the-weekly-newsmagazine: "Jonathan Livingston Seagull clearly speaks to some kind of need in America for words of inspiration that do not instantly turn to ashes on the tongue.") We desperately want to hear that we are once again on the right track, both individually and as a society. There is almost as much truth as comedy in the recent New Yorker cartoon in which the big-steeple congregation echoes to their sleek servant of the Word: "Amen, brother! We're OK and you're OK!" At this tragic juncture of our history, we crave a booster inoculation with a fairly venerable heresy, lest our nerve should fail and, presidential inaugural addresses not to the contrary, we should discover that there is nothing we can do for ourselves.

But someone-pray God for once it can be the church-ought to offer a few modest disclaimers. Could it be that our ambitions, exposed in these times for what they are, had better be the objects of contrition rather than expectation? Could it be, for instance, that our national integrity, tarnished if not erased by talk of honor smeared across a cunning peace (if peace it be), cannot be rebuilt by mere strength and persistence? Or again, could it be that the people of this nation should be led to acknowledge that our Jonathanesque aspirations are fundamentally nothing but greed, for they always fail to allow for the same possibility for other seagulls? And could it be that until we have dealt honestly with our pasts- including Wars and Watts, Watergates and Wounded Knees, including all the pains of all the souls that have been victimized by this peculiar American temperament: the dull-witted, the helpless, the different, and even those-perhaps especially those-who like the Loud family have followed our rainbow to our own particular gehenna of plenty-until we have dealt honestly with those pasts, we have no stake at all in a future which can be substantially different? Could it be that the words we hear from Jonathan Livingston Seagull are really the easy words-the words that we want to hear but desperately need not to hear?

Ultimately, Jon Seagull is talking about nature; what I need to hear about is grace. In this time, in a unique way, I need "grace and strength and wisdom and courage-those somewhat homely virtues that my father prays for every morning of his life--in order to face up to the mess of my life as an American, both personal and corporate. And I can't fly out of this miserable world. For Christ's sake, and with his forgiveness, I've got to learn to love it again.

In the meantime, Mr. Bach, go fly a bird!