Leona Foxx Suspense ThrillersThe Wolves of Jack Londonwith Ted PetersLiterature and ReligionWhat is this wolf thinking?
The fieldcalled Literature and Religion or Literature and Theologyhas excited me since my graduate school days. When a student at the University of Chicago, I had the opportunity and honor to study with Nathan A. Scott, one of the progenitors of this field. Under Scotts tutelage, I could apply the theology-of-culture developed by theologians Paul Tillich and Langdon Gilkey to literary analysis. This method, theology-of-culture, provides lenses through which one can perceive the religious depth underlying otherwise secular discourse. I have employed this method when reading Americas most widely read author in the first quarter of the last century, Jack London.
Why might the theology-of-culture method work so well? Because, as Ralph C. Wood, a former Scott student and now a Baylor University professor, avers, The natural order is never autonomous but always and already graced. By digging into the depths, the literary critic can discover divine grace because its already there.
When I became a fiction author, however, I found the theology-of-culture method baffling. Its one thing to analyze. Its quite another to construct. Oh, I could handle the plot just fine. But, deliberately exploiting subtle connotations, undertones, and nuances seemed contrived, some how. This led me to surmise that great novelists most likely write intuitively, maybe even mystically.
In this master page on Literature and Theology, you will find my own espionage writings plus my analysis of the wolf troika of Jack London: The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea Wolf. In both writing and reading, the depth Im looking for is to be found not only in religion, but also in science. To be more precise, science itself can exude religious valence. Thats what the theology-of-culture uncovers and makes visible.
The fictional Leona Foxx leads a tense double life. She is unwillingly pulled back into being a CIA black op trained killer, while serving her new calling to God as a parish pastor on the South Side of Chicago. Haunted by a terrifying past, Leonas skills as a defender of America against threats both foreign and domestic conflict with her conscience, which is shaped by her faith and her compassion for both friends and enemies.
Leona uncovers a terrorist plot hatched by American mercenaries, who plan to blame Iran, thus threatening a war that will make them rich. She divests her clerical collar to pack her .45 Kimber Super Match II and rallies a counter-terrorist alliance of professional crime fighters and black gang members. The story climaxes with a drone helicopter attack on the 85th floor of the John Hancock Building, intended to assassinate the president.
Only Leona Foxx, her ragtag team of die-hards, her finely honed killer instincts, her arsenal of high-tech weapons, and her faith in God can avert the devastation that could result in the death of millions of innocents and manifest in hell on earth.
Discover and memorize Leonas Law of Evil: You know its the voice of Satan when you hear the call to shed innocent blood.
God. She started a prayer. Her thoughts drifted. As if in a theater seat, she watched her lifes past dramas. The faces of the three young men who put her life in peril at the Cheltenham station flashed on her mental stage. She relived the terrifying moment she saw the northbound train about to decapitate her. Then Orpah Tinnen walked into the scene. Leona thought of her son, Magnus, decapitated by the Iranian military. She remembered her moment in the church kitchen, her moment of remembrance of the blood-spattered chest of the executed prisoner.
God, she muttered. She paused. God, you have got such a fucked up world. Why did you put me here like a pin cushion to feel every prick of its pain? Yes, I want to love your world as much as you do. But, goddammit, its hard. Id like to ask the Holy Spirit for the wisdom and strength to trust in what I cannot see. But, goddammit, Im too pissed off to think its worthwhile. I hope your grace covers me. Amen.
Leona Foxx is a black op with a white collar, who worships at two altars, her country and her God. She fights with ferocity for both.
The woman pastor from Chicago, Leona Foxx, takes on renegade Transhumanists making themselves kingmakers by selling espionage technology. Leonas strategy is to turn superintelligence against itself in order to preserve global peace. Can a mere human prevail against the posthuman?
If you want to grasp the promises and risks of enhancing human intelligence given us by our transhumanist friends, readCyrus Twelve.
Blood sacrifice. Could there be anything more evil? What happens when the symbols of grace get turned upside down? Are we left without hope?
Set in the Adirondack Mountains, the clash between good and evil escapes its local confines to threaten the nation and even engulf the globe. The selling of souls to perdition fuels the fires of hell so that we on Earth cannot avoid the heat.
Discover and memorize Leonas Law of Evil: You know its the voice of Satan when you hear the call to shed innocent blood. On the shores and islands of Lake George, certain ears hear this call. Leona swims into action to stop the bloodshed.
Nature is blood red in tooth and claw. Although these are the words of poet Alfred Lord Tennyson in the dinosaur canto of his In Memoriam, Jack London (1876-1916) conveyed their truth with convulsive drama, vicious gore, and unspeakable cruelty.
In what I nickname Londons Wolf Troika, we read in The Call of the Wild how a San Francisco dog, Buck, goes to Alaska and becomes a wolf. In the next,White Fang,an Alaska wolf moves to San Francisco and becomes a dog. In the third of the troika, The Sea Wolf, a Norwegian ship captain named Wolf Larsen exhibits the traits of both civilized human and atavistic beast. Framed in terms of Darwinian evolution, Londons characters demonstrate that the primeval wolf lives on today in both our dogs and our dog owners.
Londons moral is this: never rest unawarely with peaceful civilization. At any moment civilization can erupt like a volcano and extravasate wolf-like fury, barbarity, and savagery. Our evolutionary past ever threatens to rise up with consuming cruelty, demolishing all that generations have patiently put together. Within the language of evolution, London describes original and inherited sin.
As an addendum, I add what may be the final short story London wrote, The Red One. When we to turn The Red One of 1916, it appears London was hoping for grace from heaven.
Now, London was a Darwinian naturalist. Not overtly religious. Yet, London intuitively recognized our desperate need for grace. On our own, our human species is unable to evolve fast enough or advance far enough to escape our wolf genes. Might visitors from heaven provide a celestial technology that couldby gracelead to our transformation? Might grace from heaven come in the form of a UFO from outer space? Four decades before the June 1947 sighting of flying saucers, Londons imaginative mind was soaring to extraterrestrial civilizations that could save us from ourselves on earth.
Because my method in Literature and Religion relies on a theology-of-culture, Im searching for different treasures than other London interpreters. Ive come to admire two generations of Jack London aficionados and scholars now who have fertilized and pruned this literary tradition. Ive benefitted greatly be meeting some of the Jack London Society sockdolagers such as Russ and Winnie Kingman, who produced A Pictorial Life of Jack London. Over the years Ive benefited greatly from devouring essays and books by Earle Labor, Jeanne Campbell Reesman, Clarice Stasz, Richard Rocco, Kenneth Brandt, and others. Ive begun reading the multi-volume behemoth intellectual biography of Jack London, Author Under Sail, by Jay Williams. There are more facts in Williams compilation that the Encyclopedia Britannica could dream of. And, of course, dont miss Jay Cravens new film, Jack Londons Martin Eden.
I am currently working on thisPatheosseries dealing with Jack Londons Wolf Troika. Here is what to expect.
Jack London 1: The Call of the Wild
Jack London 2: White Fang
Jack London 3: The Sea Wolf
Jack London 4: Lone Wolf Ethics
Jack London 5: Wolf Pack Ethics
Jack London 6: Wolf & Lamb Ethics
Jack London 7: The Red One
Literature and Religion: both writing and reading in search of divine grace.
Ted Peters pursues Public Theology at the intersection of science, religion, ethics, and public policy. Peters is an emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union, where he co-edits the journal, Theology and Science, on behalf of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, in Berkeley, California, USA. His book, God in Cosmic History, traces the rise of the Axial religions 2500 years ago. He previously authored Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom? (Routledge, 2nd ed., 2002) as well as Science, Theology, and Ethics (Ashgate 2003). He is editor of AI and IA: Utopia or Extinction? (ATF 2019). Along with Arvin Gouw and Brian Patrick Green, he co-edited the new book, Religious Transhumanism and Its Critics hot off the press (Roman and Littlefield/Lexington, 2022). Soon he will publish The Voice of Christian Public Theology (ATF 2022). See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com. His fictional spy thriller, Cyrus Twelve, follows the twists and turns of a transhumanist plot.
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