Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise

Inchausti gets it. This accessible and insightful book is well worth pondering but never gets ponderous. It draws from and speaks to a far broader milieu than its assignment to "Christianity and culture" suggests.

It is commonly thought that countercultural movements have been dissociated from the Christian traditions of Western civilisation ever since the twentieth century began - in many viewpoints, since the French Revolution. Indeed, the impression one obtains from studying the evolution of Western culture during the past three centuries via the influence of academia is that an underground secular beliefs beginning with the likes of Jean d'Alembert, Baron d'Holbach and other fathers of the French Revolution have gradually taken over from Christianity with very little serious attempts to resist or work creatively to develop new ideas except where communist regimes have persecuted religion with the utmost violence. However, as Robert Inchausti shows in "Subversive Orthodoxy", there have actually been a surprising number of people who have created some remarkable achievements under the direct influence of Christianity in the period since the French Revolution made Christianity for the fashionable intellectuals an outdated system. Inchausti divides "Subversive Orthodoxy" into four main sections titled "The Soul Under Siege", "The Novel as Countermythology", "Antipolitical Politics" and "Macrohistorical Criticism". Both of the first two sections discuss the role of religion in literature, and demonstrate conclusively that Christinaity was able to offer a level of criticism of industrialised European culture that is not grasped by many people, even by conservatives who are extremely critical of socialism. However, if seeking to soften one's opinion of the rigidities of orthodox Christianity, Inchausti is perhaps a little careless in what he does because writers such a Göthe, Kerouac, and even to some extent Merton, were not strictly "orthodox" in the sense that conservative hierarchs would wish (it is revealing to know about critical opinions of liberation theology in the light of what Inchausti writes on page 94). Moreover, having grown suspicious of syncretism in religion, one doubts what Kerouac wrote about Buddhism is of value here, though my knowledge of where some of the appeal of Buddhism in the 1950s (and similarities with the Catholic culture Kerouac originated from) would have lied softens my opinions considerably here. Moreover, even if they are not nearly as orthodox as many would wish, the inclusion of Kerouac and Merton does do an extremely important job in showing how strong the Catholic influence on the counterculture of the 1950s actually was. The section of Dorothy Day is very valuable even to someone who has read her works, and even if short offers the point of how she defended herself form capitalist critics. ten way in which it is linked shows how close, in spite of her potential canonisation by the Vatican, Day was to the "Sixties". Wendell Berry, a frequently-cited writer with roots in this period, is also given an excellent treatment. In spite of his focus on environmental protection, Berry is a social conservative highly critical o

This book is one of the best I've read on this topic. Beginning with William Blake, it moves on to offer a panoramic survey of the presence of the True Spirit of Christianity as a real counter-culture. You will be surprised as to who some of those Christians-in-disguise are: Jack Kerouac, John Coltrane and Marshall McLuhan. But the book's value goes beyond listing and commenting on these individuals; it really is a spiritual manifesto for those of us who repudiate the religious right and the other poseurs who have hijacked and slandered the Gospels. Thank you Professor Inchausti for this well-timed catalytic reminder that there is a stream within history that, like salt, has helped preserved the presence of the Rebel Jesus.

I've been a fan of Inchausti's work since The Ignorant Perfection of Ordinary People. This new work shows him at the top of his form. He has the amazing ability to guide us through the intricacies of a person's career, thought and achievement in a way that is incredibly apt and accurate and yet lightly concise, even at times playful, with brilliance and wit. His purpose, to trace the tradition of subversive orthodoxy in recent times, never becomes an ideological axe or thematic bludgeon. He shows us thereby, that the best response to the bully-media preachers is the open spirit of the inquiring mind in true contemplation of the Christian mysteries. He deftly celebrates the works of twenty exemplars of this great tradition and we see for ourselves that the life of the gospels is not translated automatically into any one narrow social or political teaching. I love seeing Jack Kerouac in here, along with Dorothy Day, Jaques Ellul, Wendell Berry, Merton, Dostoyevsky, McLuhan and all the others. Inchausti might be one of our best exemplars of what could be termed the great tradition of lyrical thought. In this mode, the thinker gives us the delights and demonstrations of the best our minds can do not through attempting geometric structures or compelling rhetorics, but by encouraging and releasing the mind's insights and linkages through intuitive discovery, meditation and dialogue. Read Subversive Orthodoxy for the pleasures of the lyrical prophetic mind at its best.

While the fundamentalists and Christo-fascists are usurping the christian tradition and attempting to take over society, an international contemplative counter-culture seethes in the underbelly of our crudely global society. Throw out all you believe Christianity is and can ever be; dismiss with an imperious wave of the hand all of the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells who falsely claim the name of Christ for their authoritarian projects. Here, in Doctor Inchausti's book, are the real Christians, revolutionaries and outlaws who eat away at the structures of political and psychic oppression and shake the halls of power in Church and State, Big Media and Academe. Inchausti unveils with a sort of quiet but passionate and even lightening-like splendor the women and men who lived a bohemian Christianity. But though their personal vocations made them lonely figures - outcasts and rebels, pariahs to all, something eerie transcended them, a tradition of revolutionary Christianity going back to the enigmatic figure of Christ. This tradition embraced them in spite of their differences. There are figures in the book who represent a conservative radicalism (such as Solzhenitsyn) and there are others who are left-wing anarcho communitarians (such as Dorothy Day, the most important Catholic personality of the twentieth century). This means that this orthodox avant-garde - as Inchausti calls it - is truly transcendent both embracing yet rejecting the grotesque dichotomys in religion, art, and politcs that are killing our world dead. I am going to give the book five stars because it is an absolutely necessary book that all would-be rebels - Christian and non-Christian should read. Within the covers of this book is an energy and light that destroys whole worlds of assumptions and discourses. But I am tempted to give it only four stars because it unjustly neglects some very important figures. Patrick McGoohan was and remains a Roman Catholic. He was the creator and star of the greatest television series ever made "The Prisoner". That specific series attacked some of the most vital issues of the day and its relevance grows daily after the Cold War and the emergence among the family of nations of a global empire, a rutheless media elite, the dominance of multi-national corporations, the continuing managerial revolution, and a war on terror being waged for elite purposes. Besides that "The Prisoner" is the Christian Kaballah, full of all sorts of odd interpretations of the Christian Gospel. "Subversive Orthodoxy" is a necessary book, absolutely non-sectarian and non-dogmatic in its appeal to religious and non-religious people. Read it and behold while your old world disappears and a new one full of terror and promise comes into being.