We use Open Road special promotions to take a deeper look at Taylor Caldwell's upfront religious viewpoint.

I return to the newsletter, after my July hiatus, with a somewhat different approach to Taylor Caldwell. If I were to pick from her specific concentration points, one that affects me more than any other, it would be her approach to influencing the religious experience in her readers. That has two parts:

Jesus's aura and his right to our worship.
The New Testament and her reader's response and experience with it.

This is a huge topic with TC and for our times. To see why, keep these two things in mind.

Jesus's parables were immensely influenced by the Old Testament, but he certainly had not read the New Testament.
The New Testament has had modern interpretations in the last 100 years that seem to be the main source of recruitment by Conservative Christians.

In response to these TC was herself primarily driven by the New Testatment, with her allusions to Jesus not even vaguely driven by what the New Testament gospels took from the Old Testament. For example, before Jesus, the most powerful of the prophets was Isaiah of whom she says nothing. Secondly, several of her protagonists (Cicero, Aspasia among them) seek him only as The Unknown God. She is almost without allusion to his wisdom teachings.

As often happens, I am prompted to write by Open Road's special promotions, each at $2.99. As often, OR has front-loaded these in a given month.

I Now list the twelve of them coming at the beginning of this month: 3 today, and the other 9 on Monday. After these, I have selected two for special attention as a start to discussing TC's changing approach to encouraging her readers to obey her personal religious strictures. I base these on discussions related to two of the novels being offered on Monday:

Time No longer (1948 publication) and Your Sins and Mine (publication 1955).
All books are priced at a sale price of $2.99

08/01/2021 The Earth Is the Lord's
08/01/2021 Great Lion of God
08/01/2021 Glory and the Lightning

08/02/2021 Your Sins and Mine
08/02/2021 Ceremony of the Innocent
08/02/2021 Maggie—Her Marriage
08/02/2021 No One Hears but Him
08/02/2021 Dynasty of Death
08/02/2021 Time No Longer
08/02/2021 There Was a Time
08/02/2021 The Arm and the Darkness
08/02/2021 Let Love Come Last
"Time No Longer" is a phrase in Revelations, Section 10 paragraph 6 – the very last section of the canonical bible. To me, it appears to mark the time when Jesus would return and explain "all." That's my interpretation, but there are stronger progressive and conservative takes on it.

Revelations is the entire source of all of the post-millennial and pre-millennial references to Armageddon that Evangelicals and other religious right use to justify their battle against us "heathens."
A religious leader responded: I don't see that quote as the destruction or end of time. Rather the experience of all time; freeing time from the prison of linearity. Everything that has happened, will happen and is happening at once, nested in each other – rather than in a line.

I continue on the topic of Revelations. I have never been able to think of revelations as worthy of being in the bible. It is mostly feverish numerology. Supposedly it marks the sins of those who deserve to go to hell. It is misogynist to the extreme. I hadn't noted previously TC's use of this title. It comes though in one of her most progressive novels. It cannot have been an accident.

Here is more from that religious leader:

Revelations is a bit of mystery to me. Though I have studied it, I regret it didn't stay with me. I know there was great debate on its inclusion. As to killing "enemies" that makes very little sense to me if God is the God of Love and Abundance. I remember a question that was asked of me; how could you be happy in heaven when others are suffering in hell. I think the deeper question is who do you see in God.

Back to me: It might help if I give my take on a major piece of Jesus's wisdom. Yes, from the Sermon on the Mount. I've never heard an analysis by a minister of

Enter by the narrow gate, for the way is wide and the path is easy that leads to destruction. For the way is narrow and the the path is hard that leads to salvation.

These are words I have lived by my whole life. They mirror where Jesus started his official ministry, when he came to Jerusalem the week of Passover before his crucifixion. I picture it as a call to narrow your work in a new venture to go where you can focus; where Jesus is waiting to help you. I picture it as an admonition to fully understand and engage your mission.

I picture the need for a local church to have a minister – through their sermons and your personal conversations with them – engage you and your missions to help you with that focus, lest you can't access Jesus on your own. It is, though, hard to find such ministers. Alas, most of the congregation does not easily find their own personal mission on their own.

Jesus guides me because he is waiting at the entrance of the narrow gate, which I instinctively recognize. Jesus helps me see what part of my mission can touch the rest of the world through iteracting with them through the Holy Ghost. Jesus helps me by showing me where is the energy that manifests God so that I can use it in small manageable pieces. That last is necessary or else I would be overwhelmed.

Even if its poesy does engage the world "finally" having Jesus reveal His mission, I have this simple problem. You can understand much of Jesus now. You can evolve in your understanding of His relevance here and now. Why not?

Little in Revelations smacks of Jesus coming to Jerusalem at Passover and entering the Holy City by the narrow gate. Why would his return not mirror his entrance? Or, do modern congregations fail to understand what Jerusalem meant to Jesus?

Now you have the right to ask me where it was that TC even proferred her readers the malevalence that infests most of Revelations.

Check out Your Sins and Mine. Here is a previous discussion of it in one of my newsletters.

By my reckoning, at its appearance in 1955, it marks TC's change from someone who wrote previous to that time with some nuance of the industrialists and the need for Americans to recognize a bigger world, to one in which she damned those who dared to address modernity. It was also the time she did become the darling of the John Birch Society.

One may ask, can such a change happen so quickly (over 7 years)? Or, was it always latent, set free by events? Although I stop here, the two main records – her novels and Peggy's autobiography – are helpful though not conclusive. I personally will pursue this further, with another device.

Michael Fried, Grandson
For the Descendants of Taylor Caldwell

These last few weeks have been devilish, and I have been receiving e-mails that allude to the despair of many. I resuse a symbol that I have used previously and feel appropriate here. ⇒

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