ChristianWeek

What is the task of Christian rhetoric in the twenty-first century? For an evangelical ecumenical newspaper, our responsibility is not only to accurately represent evangelicals as they are in society, but also point to a vision of the whole—that which we believe.

How can we be excellent in this? Someone commented that if Christian journalists were paid more than 10 cents a word, maybe their words would be better. If Christian newspapers just had the means to pay for more work hours, we might be able to pick ourselves up and “do better.”

This is partly true. As a fledgling editor living just above the poverty line, I sympathize. However monetary resources are not the whole story.

I would also say that in order to be “great” journalists, the element most available to evangelicals is the gift of an educated imagination. Evangelicals haven’t done a great job in this area because we’re afraid: imagination is fluid and undefined. The problem is that it’s necessary in almost every area of human existence.

In The Educated Imagination, Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye argues that excellence in rhetoric depends on the stories we’ve learned, the metaphors we’ve imbibed and an awareness of the way we wish to see the world.

We’re all literary critics

Everyday language is filled with metaphor—to get past billboards on our way to work we double-take—otherwise we’d believe good shaving cream leads to a better sex life. This is an act of literary criticism. That means we are all literary critics. Everyone cloaks the vision of the good life in appropriate language, and the kind of language we use depends on what we’ve got running in our imagination.

The apostle John had a pretty good one. At other points in the Bible, Herod is a “fox,” the Roman Empire is a beast, and God incarnate is a lamb. If we weren’t using our imagination to understand spiritual truths, we’d be sunk. Jesus’ parables are a case in point.

Far from flighty, imagination is actually what undergirds our perception of reality. Without it, we would be unable to make rational decisions in everyday life.

If imagination is tied to how we project the common good, that means evangelicals need to get good at imagination. To get good, you need a bigger landscape: a freedom of thought. Steeped in poetry and literature, we would be less tempted to pidgeonhole ideas that don’t fit the evangelical language we use. Perhaps if we learned more languages, we’d have a greater appreciation for the workings of the human mind. Perhaps we would be able to present the gospel to the whole human being.

In his novel 1984, George Orwell suggests the only way to make tyranny permanent and unshakeable is to literally debase our language and speak in automatic gabble. This is the vision of the impoverished imagination—knee-jerk clichéd reactions that make us think we’re thinking—that cast a confining illusion over reality.

It’s a shock, for example, to hear evangelicals like Charles McVety blame Ted Haggard’s homosexual activity on his environmentalism (www.word.ca/release250207.htm).

Yet sometimes we think poetry is for weak warblers who “just want to sing” in their father’s castle and view literature as a sidetrack from important truth-say- ing in the public square. Anyone who has read Solzhenitsyn would disagree. It educates the imagination.

It is ironic that the greatest apologist for evangelicals—C.S. Lewis—considered fantasy writer George Macdonald the most influential in his conversion to Christianity. Why? His imagination was baptized with a vision of goodness.