Last week I dreamed that I was back in college and walking into the English department. There I ran into, saw for the first time in years, three of my favorite English professors, each perfectly in character, each a joy to see. Two have moved on from that wonderful West Tennessee school, but I consider all of them significant to my formation as both an English major and a Bible major.
English majors and the things they love and do well have been in the media a bit recently. A couple of my English major friends posted Facebook links to the New York Times article, “The Decline and Fall of the English Major.” The quality article focuses primarily on the broad significance of the humanities and the hallmark skill of writing in which English majors find themselves immersed.
Steve Strauss, columnist and small business expert, shared his thoughts in praise of English majors over at the Huffington Post in an article titled “Why I Hire English Majors.” Strauss praises English majors for their smarts, boldness, writing ability, and how easy they are to work with.
Being a solid writer is important. I can’t help but believe, though, that being a solid reader might be the more important quality sometime soon. I grew up thinking that all adults read, which I have since found to be not-so-true. People are busy. We love sound-bytes and status updates. We prefer 2-1/2 hour adaptations to reading the 400-page book that serves as the movie’s source. Few people have time to “waste” reading a good book unless we’re on vacation. But I think that Karen Swallow Prior is on to something in her article at the Atlantic, “How Reading Makes Us More Human.” True: there’s a lot of controversy around the benefits of reading fiction, but her approach to “spiritual reading” is spot-on. That she quotes Eugene Peterson makes me trust her even more. Give the article a read . . . and be sure to read the comments. It’s an interesting conversation that we would all do well to think about.
I grew up in a pre-STEM world, where the humanities were of primary importance. And while I respect mathematics and science greatly, I do believe that literature (and literary writing) will be of vital importance as culture moves forward. Good literature read well both anchors us and challenges us in ways that logical problems and their significant solutions cannot. Civilization is made up of buildings and roadways and telescopes to see the stars and research to stop diseases, but people are at its heart. And if we’re not careful, if we allow ourselves to stop reading deeply, we will find ourselves in a great societal deficit we could only know exists if we have made it a point to read the best of our stories well.
Space Enough, and Time 