Jonathan Aitken

Between Heaven and ‘L’

Jonathan Aitken finds his guide to the Bible a noble endeavour and full of passion, despite a maddening mythical interlocutor

issue 11 July 2015

A.N. Wilson has had a tempestuous journey on the sea of faith. His first port of call was St Stephen’s House, in Oxford, the Anglo-Catholic seminary where he trained for ordination in the Church of England. He jumped ship at the end of his first year and travelled to the wilder shores of atheism, writing the polemical pamphlet Against Religion: Why We Should Try To Live Without It.

Unable to follow his own advice, he created a niche for himself as the biographer of influential Christians such as John Milton, Hilaire Belloc, Nikolai Tolstoy, C.S. Lewis and John Betjeman, while also penning studies of the life of Jesus and the mind of St Paul.

After all Wilson’s literary and spiritual journeys, his fans, of which I am one, cannot quite work out whether our hero is faithfully committed, divinely discontented or celestially confused in his relationship with God.

He calls himself a ‘wishy-washy Christian’.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in