I knew a lot about Prince, an icon of my youth, but not until he died did I discover that he was a serious Christian.
At the Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall in Saint Louis Park, Minn., they made the quiet announcement: “Our brother Prince Rogers Nelson fell asleep in death this past Thursday.” Why didn’t I know this about Prince? And who else do I not know about?
Several years ago I embarked on a search for living Catholic novelists. I asked a dozen or so writers I know, “Who is the greatest living Catholic novelist?”
Only the novelist Eve Tushnet had an answer on the tip of her tongue: Donna Tartt — who I didn’t know was Catholic. Everyone else had a long pause before naming a dead Catholic novelist, or occasionally a live one.
The long pause was the important part. When I was a young woman, everyone, Catholic or not, knew the answer to that question. In the 1960s, the answer was Flannery O’Connor, or Graham Greene. In the 1980s, it was Walker Percy, duh.
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Thirty-five years later, nobody seems to know a Catholic novelist. Have Catholics stopped writing novels?
No, Catholics still write them, but as the example of Donna Tartt demonstrates, they have stopped being known as Catholic novelists. In the arts and in entertainment, it’s not a good label to have. (One former Catholic novelist wrote a whole New Republic essay about rejecting the label “Catholic novelist.”)
It’s not a plus, in arts and entertainment, to be known as a Christian or a conservative or, worse, the double-barreled Christian conservative. In Hollywood, the Friends of Abe announced that they are winding down the 501(c)(3) they had to fight the IRS to obtain. Perhaps they realized how easily the donors could be outed by a politicized IRS employee?
#share#Still, they are out there, the secret Christians among us.
I might have guessed that Prince was one of them. Even at his raunchiest, his music never treated sex casually. The spiritual significance of sex permeated his work. Rejection of the materialist superstition in the sexual realm — of our reduction to mere bodies with appetites — is perhaps the hallmark of the secret Christians among us. Eros has a purpose, a direction, a home: “When asked about his perspective on social issues — gay marriage, abortion — Prince tapped his Bible and said, ‘God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out,’” adding, “He was, like, ‘Enough.’”
Even at his raunchiest, his music never treated sex casually. The spiritual significance of sex permeated his work.
I do not know what religion Tom Hanks adheres to, if any, but watching him in the just-released movie A Hologram for the King made me suspect he is one of the secret Christians among us. The movie, based on a Dave Eggers novel of the same name, is a tale of middle-aged despair and redemption — finding forbidden love in the desert that is Saudi Arabia. Muslim law makes love dangerous, which makes it freighted with significance. Sex is risky, not risqué. The Chinese may make holograms for the king cheaper than you do, but so what?
To all the questions facing a middle-aged divorced man on the brink of business failure, there is no better answer than love.
As our culture moves further down the path of disconnecting sex, love, and babies, and of redefining the classical Christian understanding of sex as anti-gay hatred, we are going to be scouring the airwaves and the sound clouds for inspirations to creativity and procreativity.
The secret Christians among us are going to loom larger than before.