I promised to write more about Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth, and (having just listened to the last chapter of the splendid, sparkling, accent-rich audiobook version narrated by John Lee), I think that now is a good time.  I have no interest in doing a standard book review–my brain is too tired from a week of learning Java and SQL.  Not to mention the never-ending kids’ school projects.  But there was just something about that book that might, I think, connect some of the loose and disorderly threads lying around in my head.

In a quick scan of the Amazon.com reader reviews, I noticed that one of the chief criticisms of the book was that it was really not about cathedral-building at all.  The building of Kingsbridge Cathedral in the novel was really just a vehicle to drive a rather spicy, multi-layered story of intrigue, lust, frustrated love, piety, petty warfare, and revenge.  Oh, and lest we forget–the power brokers and fornicators are all wearing TUNICS and eating with their KNIVES.  So we’re getting a 12th-century history lesson even as we lose ourselves in the bodice-ripper parts.  Well…I understand that criticism.  (And Follett did point out the brightly colored tunics a couple dozen too many times, I’ll agree.)  But, I have a different slant on this book from those critics.  I believe it really, truly was about cathedral-building–both the stones-and-mortar variety and the invisible kind.

Let me backtrack a little bit to a memorable lunch conversation a year ago with one of my favorite religion-and-culture observers:  Joe Kett.  Joe was my American History professor when I was a student (a whole quarter century ago) at the University of Virginia.  And some of you over the age of 40 probably remember him as the co-author of the popular Cultural Literacy series with E.D. Hirsch and James Trefil.

Over sandwiches and Coke in a Charlottesville cafe, Joe had me doing some glorious spit-takes with his observations on the varieties of religious buildings on the back roads of the Bible Belt.  The most entertaining was his description of a squat, rusted, warehouse-style, corrugated-aluminum shack he’d passed by.  This unprepossessing structure was situated on a dismal, industrial stretch of road somewhere between Dallas and Fort Worth, sandwiched between an Exxon and a Mobil.  With a marquee exhibiting the most fanciful sort of magical thinking, the shack proclaimed itself in lopsided, grimy white plastic letters to be… "THE CATHEDRAL OF PRAISE!" 

Now, I do still consider myself to be a Christian (although I have lots of nagging questions and prefer the term "Christ-follower" for a number of picky, hair-splitting reasons that I won’t go into here).  As an erstwhile follower of Jesus Christ who is uncomfortable with the sheer tackiness of much American-style churchmanship, I had two completely different responses to Joe’s irony-drenched picture.  Of course, the first response was to acknowledge the appalling (and hilarious) irony.  Almost like the Christian Scientist who thinks that faith-filled denial of a grapefruit-sized tumor means there ain’t no tumor a’tall–calling a forlorn industrial shack a cathedral is a breathtaking denial of reality.  And, even more disturbing than the denial is the insistence that what is uuggg-LY is really quite stunning and awe-inspiring.

But I did have a second, opposite sort of response to the ambitious Cathedral of Praise in Nowheresville, Texas.  And that was to wonder if just maybe there were some people coming to that squalid, self-deluded site who brought bits of beauty and magnificence to it.  Or, if not spires, then perhaps some audacious anchoring that might (if you squint) resemble a flying buttress or two.  Of course, if the message of the person those folks are worshiping is true, then God doesn’t give a mildewy flake of manna whether the four walls and roof around them are hideous or beautiful.  (My apologies, Joe, for torturing your witty back-roads observation with not-so-very-original metaphysical conceit.)  But after the initial spit-take, I couldn’t help but wonder a little.)

So, back to The Pillars of the Earth.  What is it that makes this book really and truly a story of cathedral-building?  And not just cathedral-building, mind you, but a decades-long construction–from rubble-clearing, to chancel, to nave, to transepts, to roof–of a CATHEDRAL OF PRAISE?

Simple.  It is the character of Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge.  He is the man whose faith in God leads him to commission and to oversee the building of a beautiful, heaven-reaching, light-filled structure.  But of course others with base motives also want the same graceful, awe-inspiring house of worship completed (or another to rival it).  What, then, sets Philip apart?

The building of a physical cathedral is only the most visible display of Philip’s faith vision.  Philip is a man who, at a young age, lost both parents to war and savagery–and who was raised by Benedictine monks to combat the chaos and violence of his times with prayer, vulnerability, self-discipline, and good deeds.  His life’s work, as he reminds himself over and over, is to triumph over the savagery through his steadfast service to God.  

Philip is, like so many who yearn for spiritual purity, prone to excesses of legalism.  Excesses that prove devastating to some of the people who love and serve him best.  Yet, Philip also demonstrates a kind of determined, self-forgetting compassion that is utterly subversive.  Countercultural in any age–but, as Follett shows so well, particularly the war-torn feudal system into which Philip was born.  As the story of cathedral-building unfolds, it is Philip’s radical acts of mercy and creative methods of peaceful protest across a lifetime (much more than the expertise and imagination of the master builders) that defy gravity to get the structure built.

When the priory is unjustly denied access to the stone quarry, Philip leads his monks and builders to take the quarry peacefully in a strategy that involves "weapons" of quiet, candles, stillness, and prayer. 

When a penniless girl is denied a fair price for her wool, Philip becomes her protector and guarantor.  She, in turn, ends up playing her own crucial role in cathedral-building….

When Philip is attacked and robbed in the woods by a starving man, he feeds his desperate attacker.  And, instead of engaging in any self-congratulation, he reflects on how little he (and the Church he represents) is doing to alleviate such misery.  All while his feudal rival calculates how to exploit and further such misery to his own ends.

When Philip’s enemy and betrayer comes to him for forgiveness and help, Philip not only offers those things generously–but mounts the man on his horse and rejoices over God’s goodness as he walks behind.  And, in a satisfying Dickensian sort of twist, it is that man who will later rescue Philip’s own good name and career before a hostile court.

Ah, Philip of Kingsbridge.  I (heart) your tonsured head and dilapidated sandals.  I could go on describing your radical compassion and your rejection of violence.  (And, if I could do it in a Welsh accent like John Lee, I probably would.)  But I would give away plot spoilers and belabor my point.  

The thing is, by the time Follett gets around to the cathedral dedication service near the end of this gazillion-page tome, it is clear that the cathedral has been baptized and wholly consecrated by Prior Philip’s life.  By his vision for–and belief in–a God of justice, mercy, peace, order, and costly beauty.

And that vision of the eternal and the holy is, perhaps, the stones and mortar of a genuine Cathedral of Praise.