The late eminent scholar and author, Marcus Borg – SSUC’s Library has 10 of his non-fiction books – wrote exactly one novel, Putting Away Childish Things – A Tale of Modern Faith. It tells of Kate Riley, a popular religious studies professor, and her efforts to discern her future, all the while fending off attacks from religious right and secular left. But, as one reviewer observed, ‘this novel flows out of Marcus Borg’s life.’
As that critic explained, it takes ‘a different way of writing to engage a polarized faith,’ which Christianity has become, and ‘through the story and its characters, Marcus Borg weaves in the important issues that are dividing and polarizing the Christian faith today… you need a storyteller to help you see a new way.’
It’s a ‘teaching novel,’ as Borg himself put it, and not a page-turning thriller: through Kate’s encounters and lectures, the reader engages significant questions about the nature of faith, the historical Jesus, and much more. ‘I have never read a novel as didactic and self-conscious as Putting Away Childish Things, ‘another reviewer reckoned, ‘but I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and wholeheartedly recommend it…many a questioning Christian’s faith will be sustained in the story.
Putting Away Childish Things – A Tale of Modern Faith, by Marcus Borg
Harper Collins, 2010
