Where The Light Fell is a “Covid-aware” memoir, which is to say that even though the book narrates and reflects upon earlier times, it keeps one of its bookish eyes on the present moment and, while barely saying so, draws a line of continuity from past events to the present lunacy that grips America today. We can see this from the very outset with what can be described as Yancey’s “origin story.” Philip Yancey was born in 1949 and, at roughly the same time, his father contracted poliomyelitis. The elder Yancey was one of the unfortunate few whose symptoms included paralysis of both his legs and diaphragm, meaning he couldn’t breathe on his own and was confined to an iron lung which did his breathing for him.
The Yanceys were devout Christians; one might almost call them fanatics; the sort you’re apt to find in greater numbers in the Deep South; the sort who thought Billy Graham was a liberal. They had planned to become missionaries in Africa and, to that end, Philip’s mother had developed a prayer chain with 5,000 people on it. To translate that into post-millennialese, the woman had developed a social media following of 5,000 people using only letter mail. She enlisted those 5,000 people to pray for her husband and, on the strength of their belief in the power of prayer to effect miracles, and on signing a waiver saying they were acting against medical advice, her husband stopped using the iron lung and went home. The predictable happened. Nine days after going home, the man died, leaving behind a true believer and her two infant sons.
We can almost read this account as a parable for our times: absolute belief trumps science and blithely carries on without regard for the consequences. In fact, The Guardian reports a resurgence of polio in New York’s Rockland County driven by the same fanaticism that killed Yancey’s father. But, more generally, we have all encountered this conflict between true believers and medical science in the anti-vaccination conspiracy theories that undermine public health efforts to limit the spread of Covid variants. However, parables are a Jesus thing and, as Yancey relates, the Christianity of his childhood paid surprisingly little attention to the teachings of Jesus.
Had the religious leaders of the schools and churches and youth camps of Yancey’s childhood devoted any time to the teachings of Jesus, they might have noticed that those teachings rest on a foundation of grace: the crazy notion of unmerited love and unconditional forgiveness. Instead, Yancey grew up within an angry tradition grounded on prohibitions and punishment. The institutions he attended fostered a culture of fear. And his home was the site of pernicious psychological abuse.
It’s a testament to the idea of grace that Yancey has been graced with more moderate views. Rather than rebel against his religion and reject it entirely, as his older brother Marshall did, he has worked instead to reject those ideologies within it that promote cruelty, ignorance, and isolationism, setting in their place teachings of grace, curiosity, and a generous embrace of the wider world. In part, his freedom from religious shackles may be a function of birth order. Marshall ran interference for him in his dealings with both his mother and their schools, but at a considerable cost to his mental health and emotional well-being. Later in life, their roles reversed. Philip was sufficiently grounded that he could run interference between his utterly intractable mother and an emotionally fragile brother.
Alongside the personal narrative of family conflict and religious development, Yancey offers a parallel narrative of cultural trends in the American South. Christian fanaticism adheres to the view that it is “in the world, but not of it” which justifies a radical isolationism. As a result, Yancey grows up wearing clothes that are out of step with the times, has nominal awareness of the rising civil rights movement, and has no interaction with people who think or look different. He is taught racist tropes about Black people, most notably the Curse of Ham interpretation, a bizarre reading of the Noah story that I had never encountered before. (Given that I grew up within a mainline Protestant denomination in Canada, it’s not surprising that I had never encountered it before.) In fact, he confesses his racism; he believes what he was told, and as long as he remains within his tight enclave, there are no opportunities for exposure to experiences that can contradict those teachings. The first such exposure happens during a student internship at the CDC when his supervisor is a Black scientist named Dr. Cherry. By the end of the summer, Yancey concludes: “The church has clearly lied to me about race.” (Italics in original.)
Racism is one feature of a more general Southern (white) identity which is supported by narratives Yancey finds just as disingenuous as the lies his church tells about race. As a youth, he finds these narratives enshrined in plaques and music and customs and monuments and, with a nod to Stone Mountain, even in the landscape. (For more on Stone Mountain’s ties to the Klan and its continuing racist legacy, see Erin L. Thompson’s Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments.) These narratives hearken back a hundred years to the Civil War which is understood as a “War of Northern Aggression” aimed at, among other things, unseating a perfectly comfortable economic arrangement which most Blacks are content to continue with Jim Crow laws. It’s a mystery to someone like me, removed from the scene both by geography and time, how white people in the South could square their narratives with the rise from their midst of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his prophetic cry for freedom and justice. In fact, many white people in the South couldn’t sustain such cognitive dissonance. Yancey, for one, observes: “As a Southerner, coming of age for me included a dawning awareness that we were living with a story that was self-deceiving, a lie. The resulting tension planted something deep in my soul, a nagging sense of betrayal.”
While these narratives hearken back to the Civil War, they point forward, too, to the present day. They may have morphed somewhat, thanks to the manipulations of men like Steve Bannon and Donald Trump, and thanks to the pressures imposed by a global pandemic and public health measures aimed at curbing its spread. But their general tenor persists. A YouGov survey has found that 54% of US citizens who identify as Strong Republican think it’s either somewhat likely (33%) or very likely (21%) that there will be a civil war within the next 10 years. The idea of Northern Aggression draws new life from the CDC’s promotion of Covid vaccines, the DOJ’s investigation of the January 6th failed coup attempt, and the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago. And, as with Yancey’s experience growing up, these views take hold within isolated enclaves that couch political aspirations to religious language.
It is only with the help of people like Philip Yancey, who use memoir to present a long view of things, that we can see how current circumstances did not spring into being fully formed, but have deep roots in events barely within our reach. His writing also provides us with an example: it’s not good enough simply to challenge false narratives; we must deliver at the same time fresh narratives that are healing and life affirming. Above all, we can accomplish nothing without grace.