Poisoning the Well

Raymond Reid was asked to respond to my initial critique of his book, The Gate Seldom Found (found here). His response, which was posted to the Professing Message Board, deserves further comment. His words will be in blue.

Bryan asked me to respond to Clay Randall’s ‘First Impressions of The Gate Seldom Found’. Why, I wondered, should I pass judgement on anyone’s honest reaction to the work? Isn’t Clay’s opinion valid for him? After all each of us is the sum of our experiences which ultimately shape the paradigm, the filter through which we view the world around us.

If, as a child, we’ve been badly burned by a kitchen wood stove we’ll be wary of wood stoves from that day forward. On the other hand if we’ve gathered around a crackling country cookstove with good friends and family and have been warmed and cheered, we’ll feel quite different about wood stoves. The novel itself affords a glimpse of that:

When I was a child I saw a pretty orange-red stone that I wanted to pick up. Unfortunately, this particular orange-red stone just happened to be a burning coal in my parent's fireplace! It ending up burning my hand and fingers and took a long time to heal. Even so, I did not grow up being "wary" of fireplaces because today I know that they are useful for adding warmth and atmosphere to a home in cold weather. So, aside from the obvious fact that any child can grow up to learn that careful use of a stove will not result in harm, Raymond's analogy is a lovely, but pointless, image.

What makes one's opinion "valid", exactly? If Raymond wants to insinuate that I am just a bitter ex-member with his wood stove analogy, i.e., that I've been too "badly burned" by my 2x2 upbringing to be objective, then he commits the logical fallacy known as circumstantial argumentum ad hominem. This occurs when an attempt is made to discredit an argument based on something other than the argument itself. Yet, I am on record as saying that I have much love and respect for the members of the Friends & Workers Fellowship and that my childhood was not particularly traumatic, aside from the usual self-inflicted adolescent angst and our individual family dynamic. The logical fallacy here is that the circumstances of my background are brought up as if my history has anything to do with my opinion. Trying to preemptively dismiss my opinion by suggesting that I've reached my conclusions due to selfish reasons is known as "poisoning the well", when in reality it doesn't matter if I left because of some kind of horrible personal experiences or if I am still in the Fellowship because I passionately love it. The truth is that The Gate Seldom Found is 600 page celebration of homespun clichés, and that this analogy has no more substance than the hot air that would rise out of that wood stove.

So the question remains, Are wood stoves good or bad, a work of God or a tool of the enemy? Clay’s truth is as valid for him as mine is for me.

As with any basic question of evil, wood stoves are neither good nor bad; they are amoral. It is the application of human free will thereof that produces good or bad results, so if wood stoves are used to warm a home or cook meals for a family, they are good. On the other hand, truth is not relative; my truth cannot be that 2 + 2 = 5 and Raymond's truth be that 2 + 2 = 4 and both be equally valid. Or, put in the metaphysical sense, truth is not simply the feeling that something is true.

There’s no question that The Gate Seldom Found is polemic, producing sharp opinions both for and against, among both those within the fellowship and those like Clay who are outside the fellowship. Novels that stand the test of time like Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist and other works or Uncle Tom’s Cabin or even Black Beauty were written as strong muscular works that challenged and confronted the readers of their day.

There's nothing "strong and muscular" (which is redundant) about recycled anti-clericalism and anti-intellectualism which is then repackaged into a "polemic, producing sharp opinions both for and against" (which is also redundant), and the only challenge confronting me would be to find even a remote comparison between The Gate Seldom Found and such literary giants as Charles Dickens or Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Each person’s opinion is entirely valid for them. Clay’s views, however, are not shared by readers at large. In particular, people without any previous knowledge of the fellowship are thrilled by the writing. Some find within its pages a freshness and vibrancy that they claim surpasses many Christian works. I’m always surprised to find strong allies among clergymen of various faiths who attest to the way the novel has touched them.

I don't know if mentioning that I've spoken with many who share my view would impress Raymond, but I will do it anyway. In a fascinating display of cognitive dissonance, he seems to accept the validity of his "strong allies" solely because they liked it, whereas the only criterion for determining the invalidity of my review is the fact that I didn't like it. Because there truly is such a thing as preaching to the choir, truth is not a popularity contest.

The doctrines that Clay finds to be repulsive are indeed celebrated in many Christian quarters and I receive streams of email and phone calls from supporters daily. The book’s website: www.thegateseldomfound.com lists many of these comments.

What doctrines, exactly? This is no celebration of doctrine, just a regurgitation of banalities about a "simple faith" and how organized religion is bad. Homeless, itinerant workers going out two by two is not a doctrine. Meeting in the home is not a doctrine. Rejecting a formal collection plate is not a doctrine. Disallowing TV is not a doctrine. Women not cutting their hair and wearing long dresses is not a doctrine. Such assignment of too much importance to the "how" and "where" neglects the essence of "what" the gospel actually is. On the other hand, the belief that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh, came to save sinners is a doctrine - a belief which is most certainly neither unique to the Friends & Workers nor repulsive to me. Such misguided points of emphasis are mere window dressing.

May I also assure you that any manuscript that is perceived as overtly caustic, anti- clerical and anti-intellectual would never be accepted by a major Christian publishing house. Editors comb each work, line by line, for it’s [sic] acceptability and marketability among mainstream readers.

Raymond neglects to mention (although he does it elsewhere) that in the beginning he self-published his book in 2001. Editors mainly care about what will sell books, so if they think mainstream readers would find anti-clerical and anti-intellectual (and anti-Catholic) manuscripts acceptable, they would certainly publish it. And so it seems that Harvest House Publishers did, as even a casual review of some of their titles will demonstrate, such as Tony Coffey's Once a Catholic, John Ankerberg's The Facts on Roman Catholicism, John Armstrong's The Catholic Mystery : Understanding the Beliefs and Practices of Modern Catholicism, Ron Rhodes' Reasoning from the Scriptures with Catholics, and director of the decidedly anti-Catholic website "Good News for Catholics" James McCarthy's What Every Catholic Should Ask . Not only did Harvest House like it, they wanted Raymond to add more to it. Besides, the book wasn't "overtly caustic", it was its thinly-veiled antipathy toward everything outside the professing realm that I found conspicuous.

Of course, scenes of tension and conflict do exist within the text, just as they do in real life. Any author needs to allow his or her characters the freedom to leap up from the page and share their candid views, including their biases. Characters need to speak with a measure of historical integrity and shouldn’t be muzzled or their dialogue laundered to fit the paradigm of a few. After all every writer of a murder-mystery isn’t a [sic] axe murderer and the views of the characters may vary considerably from those of the author.

All of this is true, of course, but I have no reason to believe that Raymond's views "vary considerably" from the characters he created in The Gate Seldom Found, especially judging from the way he turned Organized Religion into his own version of the axe-murderer anyway.

I will speak to just one issue that Clay raises – that pertaining to the shooting of George Farnham, a brother worker. I wrote the story about the shooting on the basis of personal anecdotes by one of Tom Lyness's co-workers, Fergus McElrea. Fergus was 31 years old at the time of the shooting and knew the story’s details and the outcome firsthand. For me to quote his statements on a witness stand would be labelled as hearsay.

But recording this episode in his book based on those exact same personal anecdotes as recalled through Fergus McElrea 60 years after the fact isn't a kind of hearsay? The newpaper does not report that Mr. McElrea was in that hotel room at the time of the shooting. Was he an actual direct eyewitness? If not, are his recollections accurate, or did the sum of his experiences "ultimately shape the paradigm, the filter" through which he remembered it?

That, of course, doesn't suggest that what Fergus told me was anything less than the facts – just that it couldn't be admitted as evidence in a court of law. Five years ago after the first draft of the book was distributed, some person from the mid-west sent me photocopies of newspaper clippings and offered further details. A Google search plugging in the words: Pony, Montana, barber, shooting will bring up more information. The Telling the Truth website offers several of the newspaper accounts of the day.

A Google search of "Pony Montana barber shooting", "Tom Lyness", "Bill Sumner", and "Bill Sumner shooting" yielded nothing more than the newspaper articles already cited at the Telling the Truth website.

So, yes, the shooting is historical and not ‘over the top’. It actually took place and for the reasons, the novel suggests. Miracles do occur, both among our friends and among Christians at large.

Of course it is true that a shooting occurred, and is it no profound revelation to point out that miracles do happen. My problem is that there is a difference between the actual event and what the book presented. For example, the newspaper accounts say nothing about the shooter being the alcoholic wife-beater Raymond portrayed him to be, nor does it say that the issue of his wife's baptism was the sole catalyst of the argument. Rather, it was the fact that the barber wanted to move to another town and he obviously felt Lyness was interfering in his marriage in other ways (not that I condone shooting anyone for this, just for the record). Also, there are conflicting and vague reports about the true extent of the worker's gunshot wounds, calling into question how Raymond could have credibly written in his story that "the bullet had penetrated his [George's] forehead before exiting through the back of his skull". During the trial other motives were explored, including the significant possibility of marital infidelity. So, I think that those extra details Raymond added are part of his exclusivist worldview that which makes nearly every outsider base, mean, and in this case, violently out of control. While he might justify such embellishments in the name of artistic license, I call it overstated distortion solely for the sake of his F&W agenda.

I rather suspect that the seeds of Clay’s dissatisfaction are contained in his second last sentence in which he mentions the characters’ ‘latent anti-Catholicism’. The prime text supporting his statement would be as follows:

Actually, the seeds of my dissatisfaction were planted early on with Raymond's caricatures of organized religion and only later grew into a mature dislike as the story took root. I find it more than a little disingenuous for Raymond to single out the passage that he does, because there are many other "prime texts" revealing the outright anti-Catholic sentiment of the book.

For starters, completely saturating the book (like so much natural fertilizer) is the incessant and universal condemnation of all organized religion (of which Catholicism is one denomination), such as Raymond's description of the Friends and Workers as "seekers of an authentic Christian life" (p. 63) as if all other Christians neither have, nor are even seeking, that same "authentic" Christian life. Eddie Summers wrote in his diary that "most folks conjure up a Jesus and a heaven of their own imagination and not those of the Bible" (358) and Edgar commented that "we left the old church because we found it to be dust and ashes in our mouths." (367). My personal favorite was the exquisitely ironic use of the term "watered-down Christianity" to describe all non-F&W religious groups.

That's just the beginning because Raymond then gets more explicit, such as with Bill Jones' condemnation of the Catholic doctrine of the communion of saints (108). Morgan Butterwick remarks that he had been searching for "spiritual substance" for years but always was unfulfilled, including by those high churches [read "Catholic"] that emphasize the "ritual of participating in the sacraments" (123). There are oblique references to Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and the Lollard Thomas Kittlewell of Worcester, who inspired Dugan MacGladry with his anti-clerical professions of faith. (142-3). Then there's Tony the Italian who left the Catholic seminary after searching those ever-mysterious Vatican archives to learn about the Waldenses; later he wrote a letter to Jack Gillan and George Farnham outlining the usual anti-Catholic suspects like Pierre de Brueys, Peter Waldo, the Council of Toulouse, Simon de Montfort, et al. (299-301) His letter continues with Bernard of Clairvaux, "the most powerful religious man in Europe at that time" (303) for another seven pages.

And, just in case it's not clear enough for the reader, Raymond continues. He asserts that "the church in Rome deteriorated in the second century", being "a system that doesn't line up with Scripture" (158). Against the issue of tithing, Jack said "I learned from an old history book that there is no evidence of Christians participating in such a religious system until three hundred years after Jesus' resurrection. This corrupt and erroneous practice was instituted by a superstitious emperor in Rome during the fourth century." (296) Of course, the ultimate hypocrisy is that they do tithe, even if they don't call it that (see the The Collection Plate Controversy). In the story, as in real life, the Friends all pool their resources together in support the workers and to hold conventions.

Raymond plods on: Jack ponders his history books, where he learned that the Catholic liturgy is "a practice that chokes off any real fellowship, putting one man in authority and creating an instant hierarchy" (329). The Roman Catholic Church is a "false church" (317) which uses "the methods of the Pharisees" (318). The Friends' meetings are better than the "ritualistic readings from the prayer book" (330) and the "elaborate trappings of ritual" (333) which are "held together by rigidly enforced rules". (318)

And yet again: "We come to two churches - the false church and the true church. One is only an organization, the other is a body sharing the common life of Christ." (332)

Finally, there are at least two references to the Inquisition for complete effect: Jack noted that the Roman church had "great power and control", but "we don't burn people at the stake anymore. We deal with conflicts in a more humane and civilized manner now." (302) and "Over the centuries, some leaders not only made definite decisions; they exercised absolute control. The horrors of the Inquisition are a testimony to that!" (591)

Even if the reader is inclined to share the Gate characters' low opinion of the Catholic Church, I think it is safe to say I've demonstrated that there were many more "prime texts" contained within the book than the single passage he provided which could lead me to my conclusion. Instead of honestly admitting the anti-Catholic prejudices, he has tried to conceal it behind a facade of false ecumenism and saccharine platitudes.

P.S. I admire Clay’s writing style and the detailed way he has constructed his perception of The Gate Seldom Found. I’m sure he and I could exchange some good-natured banter even with our seemingly divergent views. We’d agree on much of what Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk, wrote in New Seeds of Contemplation.

I find it interesting that in writing of a book rejecting everything about "organized religion", Raymond quotes one of the greatest Catholic spiritual writers of the 20th century - Thomas Merton - and at the same time reduces him to a mere footnote. What this means is that he actually does acknowledge the contributions of the great spiritual writings of non-professing Christians; what this proves is that the Gate Friends had discovered absolutely nothing new and were therefore merely reinventing the theological wheel.

I can't help but wonder if Raymond read the following statement by Merton in that same book: "In any degree of the spiritual life, and even where there is no spiritual life at all, it can happen that a man will feel himself caught up in an emotional religious ferment in which he overflows with sensible, and even sentimental movements of love for God and other people. If he is completely inexperienced he will get the idea that he is very holy because of the holy feelings that are teeming in his heart. All these things mean very little or nothing at all. They are a kind of sensible intoxication produced by some pleasure or other, and there is only an accidental difference between them and the tears that children sometimes shed when they go to the movies. In themselves these movements of passion are indifferent. They can be used for good or evil, and for beginners in the spiritual life they are generally necessary. But even a beginner would be foolish to depend on them, because sooner or later he will have to do without them. In fact, his spiritual life will not really begin until he has learned in some measure to get along without the stimulus of emotion." (New Seeds of Contemplation, 245)

In other words, the appeal of the fellowship itself and the love the Friends have for each other is good, but it is not enough. Raymond's book places so much emphasis on the subjective emotions and good feelings derived from the fellowship or, combining the analogies of Merton and Raymond, the sensible intoxication of that "crackling country cookstove with good friends and family and have been warmed and cheered", that it is possible that a true spiritual life and relationship with God is overlooked through their collective kneejerk backlash against Organized Religion.

Anyway, if he admires Merton so much, I would refer him also to his other classics, such as Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander and The Seven Story Mountain. In his introduction Merton refers us to other great writings on spirituality such as Pascal's Pensées, the Cautelas and Avisos of St. John of the Cross, the Meditationes of Guigo the Carthusian. All throughout the ages, Catholics have written marvelous classics emphasizing the simplicity and purity of faith, such as Thomas a' Kempis' The Imitation of Christ, Teresa of Avila's, The Way of Perfection, John of the Cross' Ascent of Mount Carmel, and many others. All of these inspired the rest of the world with the "freshness and vibrancy" of their ideas (long before the Friends & Workers appeared on the scene) by being "strong muscular works that challenged and confronted the readers of their day". Perhaps Raymond would be surprised to learn that he shares similar perspectives with other Catholics in history like St. Benedict's ascetic Rule of "pray and labor" - the difference is that this gate was found in apostolic times, not 20th Century Ontario.

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