Gilead: Pages 21-28 Summary & Analysis

This might seem trivial, but John doesn’t believe it is. He and his childhood friends were very religious children from religious families in a religious town, which shaped their behavior quite a bit. One day, they baptized a litter of skinny barn cats. One of the girls dressed the cats in a doll’s dress, and John applied the water to the cats’ heads and pronounced the baptismal formula. Eventually, the mother cat found them all by the creek and carried the kittens off one by one. The children lost track of which cats were still unbaptized and fretted about this.

Later, John casually asked his father what would happen if you baptized a cat. His father replied that the Sacraments must always be treated with the greatest respect, which didn’t really answer John’s question, but he got the message. He stopped baptizing until he got ordained.

Louisa took one of those cats home, and she still had it when she and John got married. It eventually disappeared, probably caught stealing rabbits, even though it was a Christian cat. A Baptist friend quipped that it should’ve been named Sprinkle. (He believed in baptism by full immersion, and the cats should have been grateful that John didn’t.) John still remembers what it felt like to place his hands on those cats’ heads. Blessing a creature is different from simply petting it, and it stays in one’s mind. To this day, John wonders what blessing those “baptisms” really conferred on the cats—there’s a power in acknowledging the sacredness of something. He doesn’t expect that his son will go into the ministry someday, but he’s simply pointing out that the vocation has some distinctive advantages.

Ludwig Feuerbach had some wonderful remarks about baptism, particularly the fittingness of water—a naturally pure and spotless substance—as a vehicle of the Holy Spirit. Even though Feuerbach was an atheist, he has some of the best things to say about religion’s joyful aspects, and he loves the world, too. Of course, he makes the significant error of thinking that it’s possible to have pure joy without any religion at all.

Boughton doesn’t care for Feuerbach because he shook many people’s faith, but John figures the fault lies as much with those people as with Feuerbach—“some people just go around looking to get their faith unsettled.” That’s been especially fashionable over the past century or so. Once, John’s brother Edward gave him a book called The Essence of Christianity in an attempt to shock him out of his naïve faith; he believed he was doing John a favor. John always looked up to Edward. Still, he ended up living out the very sort of life Edward had warned him against, and he’s pretty happy with it overall.

Edward, 10 years John’s senior, studied at Göttingen. John didn’t really know him as a child. There had also been two sisters and a brother who died of diphtheria within two months, and Edward had known them while John didn’t. John was always aware that he had missed out on the life his other siblings shared. After Edward returned from Europe with a mustache and a doctorate, having published a monograph on Feuerbach, everyone was in awe of him. But he also came back as an atheist, so he didn’t become a preacher as everyone had expected. Instead he became a professor of German literature and philosophy and raised a big family. Though John rarely saw him, Edward sent a check to the church each year to repay the congregation for their support for his education. John knew he was a good man.

One day, Edward and their father had a confrontation at the dinner table. Their father asked Edward to say grace, but Edward explained that he couldn’t do this in good conscience. Turning pale, their father said that Edward could show some respect for their family traditions. Edward replied that he has now “put away childish things,” prompting his father to leave the table and his mother to weep silently. Later, John walked Edward to the hotel. At the time, his parents must have thought that John would end up following in Edward’s footsteps and becoming another grief to them.

John will be sure to set aside the Feuerbach among the books he’s keeping for his son. When he was young, he read it in secret because it was associated with Edward’s atheism; but he doesn’t believe there is anything harmful in it. He has made some marginal notes which his son might find useful.

Thinking of Feuerbach and joy reminds John of something else. He remembers walking to the church a few years ago, seeing a young couple strolling ahead of him. He remembers the young man jumping up and grabbing a branch, sending glistening raindrops showering onto him and the woman, and they laughed and ran. John found the scene beautiful. In a moment like that, it was easy to believe that water’s main purpose is for blessing. Nowadays he wishes he’d paid more attention to such things.