III. Theory and Practice
Did you know Donald Treadgold at the University of
Washington?
Yeah.
Did you get along with him OK?
Oh, sure. I didn’t know him very well.
He was a mentor of mine.
The problem with the UW is, it’s an
urban university and people live all over hell, including on the islands. There’s just no social life. Consequently I never really did get to
know him – I never really got to know anybody.
He reminds me of you a bit, because he had a real
passion not only for his work, but for its consequences in society. Of course, he was an old Cold
Warrior.
Yeah, so am I.
How do you feel about how your books are used by
people of Christian faith, or religious faith in general, by missionaries, for
example. Some find your books very
useful.
This is backing into it, but I
think it’ll make the point. I once
ran a conference out on Orcas Island [in the San Juans, in northwest Washington
State]. And the people who paid
for it were the Moonies …
The Unification Church?
Yeah. And they had nothing to do with who was invited or anything
that went on. We just had a bunch
of their graduate students show up in the audience. And somebody once assaulted me, in effect, and said, how
dare I have done that because what if they had learned something from our
conference that helped them in their church life? And I said, "God, I’d be embarrassed if they hadn't." I didn’t write my books to help
missionaries, but I certainly would be delighted if they had been of any help.
But you recognize that some church leaders are, in
fact, charlatans …
Yeah, sure, but life isn't
perfect. I mean, we just (got) a
tax fraud as Secretary of the Treasury. What can you do about that? (Laughter)
You’ve moved from agnosticism in the direction of a
general Christianity, a generic or non-affiliated Christianity over the
years?
Yes. Somebody asked me once how I got back to religion, and I
said, first of all, I was always a cultural Christian. Christendom meant something to me, so
does Western Civilization, and Western Civilization is Christendom. Beyond that, I guess I wrote my way
back.
So those books actually did have something to do with
why …
Sure. I’m exploring religion over the last 50 years or so, in a
not purely sociological kind of way. And as I comprehended more, it became … more and more plausible and
likely, and here I am.