| |||
|
By Lloyd Mackey
Author William Paul Young and Victoria, B.C. rector Harold Munn have a very special reason to be helping Munn's congregants understand The Shack - which Young released in 2008, to great popular acclaim. Munn was born in 1947, in Victoria's Royal Jubilee Hospital. Young's mother, Bernice, was a nurse-in-training at the hospital, and was present at Munn's birth. He only weighed one pound, and was expected to die momentarily. This was his mother's sixth pregnancy; the rest had ended in miscarriages. For whatever reason, the baby did not die -- and Bernice was left to care for little Harold, awaiting the inevitable. But the inevitable did not come. Harold gained strength, left the hospital in two years, grew to manhood and became an Anglican clergyman, like his father -- who had been a rector in Victoria. Harold Munn has been rector of the B.C. capital's historic Church of St. John the Divine for the past 12 years. After completing nurse's training, Bernice married Henry Young. The couple went to Irian Jaya, in southeast Asia, where Paul was born. The Youngs were Christian and Missionary Alliance missionaries. Years later, after Young had written The Shack, the now-Anglican minister that the then-student nurse had cradled and kept warm in 1947 had a most interesting and moving follow-up encounter. Bernice Young was having trouble accepting the imagery of The Shack, particularly the casting of God the Father, in the Trinity, as a genial and blunt-talking black woman.
Author Young told CC.com that Munn "wrote an email to my mother, describing how the imagery was important - and pointing out that God is not a shepherd, nor a rock, nor a mother hen" -- but that these images, too, are important. So the baby Bernice had kept alive became the mentor who helped her to understand the significance and deeply spiritual meaning of her son's book - which has now sold 17 million copies, and been published in 36 languages. On August 21, Paul Young will be leading two workshops at St. John the Divine. He hopes, as part of the process, to tell his mother's story. And Harold Munn will have him as the guest preacher in the St. John pulpit the next day. |
Young's sessions are being billed as 'Divine Intervention,' according to Catherine MacKenzie, the parish administrator at St. John. It is, she notes, a play on words - both with respect to the church's name, and the subject matter of the novel. According to the publisher's promotional material, The Shack "is a suspenseful, imaginative and to some, controversial account of a man who suffers a devastating personal family tragedy -- and, in his despair, encounters supernatural manifestations of the three persons of the Trinity in a shack. God the Father appears as a large African American woman, Jesus Christ as a Middle-Eastern carpenter, and the Holy Spirit as an Asian woman." The Shack has made a big emotional impact on many people. It has also been endorsed by respected Christian figures such as Eugene Peterson, author of The Message, who writes: "This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress did for his. It's that good!" Some critics are not so persuaded, however. Berit Kjos, author of A Twist of Faith, decries what she considers "the twisted 'truths' of The Shack." Kjos maintains that Young's version of the Trinity is problematic, with a distorted view of both the Son and the Father: "This new 'Jesus' never returned to heaven. Was there no real resurrection? Not according to the female 'God.'" The merits of the book, however, are not the key focus for some. MacKenzie says that, because of the connection between the author's and the rector's families, Munn had been anxious to get Young to personally share his story with the people at St. John. While the book was written three years ago, this is Young's first chance to visit Victoria. He has other Canadian connections: his parents, in retirement, are living in Vernon, B.C.; and he spent most of his teen and young adult years in western Canada, after the Irian Jaya period. Young and his wife Kim live in Oregon City, close to the setting of the narrative for The Shack. The book was written, at Kim's urging -- as a Christmas present to his children and grandchildren -- to explain his understanding of God, and their own spiritual pilgrimage. He told CC.com he never expected it to take off as it did. The Young visit fits in with a number of the things Munn's church is doing. Many of them are social justice and social action projects, such as: the 'Out of the Rain' overnight program for young adults that takes place in the church; and the twice weekly food bank. The session on The Shack helps make the connection between the gospel and the way in which the church works it out in the community, MacKenzie pointed out. It is not entirely coincidental that, just a few blocks south, Christ Church Cathedral, not long ago, had a similar kind of session with Brian McLaren, the 'emerging church' leader -- who, as it happens, is also a good friend of William Paul Young's. June 19/2010 | ||
She learned that Munn had read and been deeply moved by the book, and
was encouraging his parishioners and others to read it.