who's Christian?

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> There is no question that Pynchon writes *about* many and varied religions.
> This, however, does not qualify him as a "religious writer" in the sense you
> are attempting to imply.
> 
> The distinction is easy to comprehend. Because he writes about homosexuality
> doesn't make him a homosexual writer.
> 
> best

But he doesn't simply write about religion, he doesn't much
write about it at all. One example, having Wicks narrate M&D
is a little bit more than writing about religion, isn't it? 
Sure, it's a little bit like having Ishmael narrate a large
part of Moby-Dick. Is or was Melville a religious writer?
People argue about Melville to this day. Was he a Christian?
Did he lose his faith? Was he a man that once his eyes were
opened to the hypocrisies of Christianity in Practice
(Calvinism,  but also the conflation of Commerce or
Capitaliism--sailing on christmas eve to kill a white whale,
Bartleby--a story P turns to in his Sloth essay) and the
exploitation of men and beasts, of nature) and to the ways
in which men could and did live at peace w/o a christian god
or money, that turned East?  Pynchon tells us in the Hirsch
letter, that he had been reading up in comparative religion
and that in doing so he had discovered that the
relationships of humans and of cultures (and religions) in
contact was much deeper than he had understood  prior to
reading the  comparative studies in religion. Obviously he
turned to Brown and deeper into Psychology here as well. We
know, believe me, I know because I have read all the books
that have been identified as Pynchon sources for religion,
that Pynchon brings a wide range of religious texts into his
own. My own opinion is that it is not important to come to
any conclusion about Pynchon the man or author.  What
matters is the art the struggle is present there. What I
contend is a conflict much like Melville's deeply reflected
in the texts, a conflict, a paradoxical conflict,  that
Pynchon never resolves, but only hopes to. Let us hope, that
he will not, like Melville, have a long period of silence.