“Willa Cather’s Secret” by John J. Timmerman, The Reformed Journal, March 1984.
The Christian Confronts His Culture by Richard A. Fowler and H. Wayne House (Moody Press, 1983, 218 pp.)
by Dr. Ralph Blair
Timmerman taught English at Calvin College for many years and is listed as one of eight editors of The Reformed Journal. “A devotee of Cather’s works for forty years”, his complaint now is that he is “unnerved” by biograher Phyllis Robinson’s coming along and spoiling it for him by her “stark revelation” and “shock” that this “brilliant” artist was “addicted to practices” [lesbian] he finds “revolting”. One wonders how he could have been so familiar with Cather and yet not known of her homosexuality before this. At any rate, he neither allows his finding homosexuality “enigmatic” nor contrary views of fellow editors to soften his judgment that homosexuality is “a way of life no Christian can approve”.
No wonder Cather tried to keep secret her lesbian relationship (“a marriage in every sense”, as Robinson puts it). Timmerman is correct in assessing that, had their “sin” been uncovered before they died, her relationship with Edith Lewis “would have created a major scandal among her devoted readers”. He intrudes now, after Cather’s been gone for almost as long as he’s been her “devotee”, to mercilessly condemn “the sanctity of Cather’s private life” while criticizing the biographer’s “merciless prying” that he deplores “passes no judgment”.
His solution, in art as well as in life, is to “keep them separate”, i.e., never integrate one’s homosexuality into the rest of one’s life and never believe that the homosexuality has nay importance in the art. He argues for splitting one’s literary life from sexual life, as though personal sexual experience (the genital and so much more) has only a minimal or marginal impact – if that – on the writing, on the author’s artistic “shaping of experience”. He does this even while saying he has “wondered about the absence of romantic love between men and women” in Cather’s books. That it is hard for him to make even a theoretical separation where homosexuality (“sin!”) is revealed, is clear from the way he underscores agreement with Flannery O’Connor by noting that, unlike the ‘muddy” life of a homosexual author, O’Connor “was as morally impressive as her art is superb”.
Timmerman trivializes one’s sexual life by splitting it off from one’s psychosocial life. Sadly, there are many otherwise well-honored Christians, not to mention the many more unsung ones, who held or hold a “Cather’s secret” throughout their lives. Their experience and contributions were and are, of course, significantly influenced – positively and negatively – by homosexuality and, in most cases, by their inability (or society’s) to integrate it into the rest of their lives.
Alas, Timmerman settles back, for his own pleasure – not hers – with “a shelf of classics” Cather left behind. He rightly honors her for her literary work. Would that he and other Christians could also see what noble work it was for Willa and Edith – what “steel in pioneers” it still takes – to plow through tough prairies and make something beautiful bloom forth from deepest needs for tenderness.
Turning to the Moody Press book, we find two faculty members from LeTourneau College in Texas trying to tackle issues of life control, feminism and homosexuality from an insensitivity that’s apparent even in the book’s male chauvinist title. (What about each Christian mother, sister, daughter, girlfriend, wife, etc. who confronts her culture?) Fowler and House offer a gay insider named “Dave”, who, after seeking in vain for help for his homosexuality, first from parents and later at a Bible college, concluded: “Somehow the Christian community would rather pretend I did not have the problem than help me face it”. Then “Ed”, a Christian psychologist, counseled “Dave” to “victory”. (Apparently, the stigma of homosexuality attaches even to a therapist who counsels a homosexual to “victory” – else why the need to camouflage the therapist’s identity?) “Dave” says it has now been five years “since I have sinned in this area” – by which he must mean genitalized homosexually, for, even in “victory”, he admits: “I still have homosexual desires”. Thus, it might as well be said again and again: “Somehow the Christian community would rather pretend … .”
Fowler and House crudely boast of being “appropriately disgusted and righteously indignant” at the “epidemic” of homosexuality, which, they say, was “once considered to be an unfit subject for discussion in many Christian circles”. Obviously, it’s still a misunderstood subject to these authors. Their book is full of pejorative terms such as “the Gay Plague”. It’s full of silly advice such as: Stop wrestling if you become sexually aroused and gain “victory” over your homosexuality by switching to another sport! Absurdity abounds. A list of “Early Warning Signs of Homosexuality” in boys includes this mishmash: “cross-dressing”, “cosmetics”, being “overpolite”, “masturbat[ing] using female clothing”, and developing no “crush” on a girl. They admit: “The track record for rehabilitating homosexuals is not good.” Not good? They offer only one case of the removal of homosexual desires – and, in that case, it was not really effective. They list “Basic Principles” for counseling, such as: “Treat homosexuality as a sin” and “Realize that homosexual patients often try to anger their counselor to the point of giving up”. When Christians cannot get others to stop being themselves, some may foolishly blame the others instead of their own misinformed expectations and turn their backs on those whose search for intimacy they refuse to understand. They want to protect their own rights to intimacy, though, and flaunt their blessings in the book’s dedication (as is so typical in antigay books): “To our godly wives – our helpmates on this earth”. Bonhoeffer was right: “What is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden underfoot by those who have the gift every day.”