"I grew up in the 40s in a white house that my father built in a cornfield north of Minneapolis, a stone's throw from the Mississippi, with my parents and five siblings. We were fundamentalist Christians – members of the Plymouth Brethren. We believed in separation from the world and in the divine inspiration of the Bible; every word and every comma. So we read these texts very closely and memorised passages of scripture for recitation, which gives a person a love of language and especially the grand cadences of the King James rolling off your tongue. Family and faith were merged into one loving world of certainty and fervour, until I reached the age of scepticism and pulled away and left home...
GK: … My mother’s family, the Denhams, came from Glasgow, where grandfather was a bookkeeper for the railroad. He came in 1905, with a wife and four small children, and was a Brethren adherent when he came, though I’m not sure how far back it went. Once here, he attended an Open meeting for a year before he went to the Exclusive group that I grew up in.
DB: How far back does your family go in Brethren?
GK: My grandfather James Keillor and his father and other relatives established a meeting in Anoka, Minnesota in the 1880s, the result of work by an itinerant Brethren labourer. The family has roots in the Baptist church in Canada, and grandfather married a Methodist. In the early days of the Brethren in Anoka, they would accept grandmother’s Methodist relatives to the table for the breaking of bread, until another labourer persuaded them not to.
DB: There are some different branches of Exclusive Brethren. Do you know to which group your family adhered?
GK: Our group was known as the Booth Brethren, to distinguish us from the Ames Brethren, after a particularly disastrous split in 1948. Most of my father’s family went with the Ameses and we went with the Booths. It was the result of an argument over the Glanton Brethren, who were in fellowship with
us, whom the Ameses accused of harbouring Raven tendencies, or at least of not proving themselves to be clear of Ravenism, and so when some Brethren refused to cast out the Glantons on the basis of these accusations, the accusers broke off with us.
DB: Why did you choose to refer to them as ‘the Sanctified Brethren’ in your fiction?
GK: Sanctified Brethren makes more sense than ‘Plymouth Brethren’. In America, Plymouth is a car.
DB: Have you ever had acquaintance with any other kinds of Brethren, e.g. Open Brethren?
GK: I haven’t, to be perfectly honest. Our Brethren had such a strong distaste for the Open meetings that it was a closed subject among us and I knew more about Lutherans or Anglicans or even Catholics than about Open Brethren. The elders found it painful to discuss the divisions that had taken place over
the years, and so I never was clear about Ravenism, for example, what the Kellys believed that was different from our beliefs. And Openism was a vast mystery…
DB: Are any of your relations still members of the Brethren?
GK: My parents are, and my younger sister has been in and out in recent years, drawn to the Brethren by her faith in their principles and her affection for them but repelled by the intransigence of older brothers on the subject of women’s participation in Bible readings, for example. And resistance to
change in even very small matters.
DB: If so, what are their attitudes to your productions as a broadcaster and writer?
GK: As you know, no self-respecting Brethren family would ever want a child of theirs to go into entertainment or literature. But they’ve gotten over the shame, for the most part, enough so that they can enjoy the performances, up to a point. They would never brag about me, of course. But they don’t mind being seen at my shows now and then. And my mother seems to get a kick out of my reminiscences of childhood.
DB: Were you ever a recognized member of a Brethren meeting? Did you break bread?
GK: I was baptized when I was fourteen and did not do as my contemporaries did and ask to be received into fellowship. The thought of coming before a panel of elders to be examined in my faith was a fearful prospect, and also, I had a strong feeling that the Brethren was not a hospitable place for me.
DB: At what age did you leave the company of Brethren?
GK: I was twenty.
DB: Do you find any encouragement toward humour in the Bible?
GK: I feel that comedy is based on the gospel, fundamentally. But there is a playfulness in comedy that is found, perhaps, only in some of the Psalms, in Proverbs surely, and in few other places. This makes me feel that it has been edited severely by men and that it may not represent God’s final word. God’s
love of comedy is abundantly clear in life, it seems to me. God’s creatures are endowed with it, even cats and dogs.
DB: You have been heard to justify the writing of fiction by reference to Jesus’s use of parables. Is this seriously intended?
GK: Well, up to a point. Jesus chose to teach through the telling of stories that are understood to be not literally true. But the real justification of fiction, I think, is the admonition of James that we should confess our sins to each other. Brethren don’t do that. They believe confession would weaken them.
They believe in presenting a staunch countenance to the world. They were, I believe, the worst storytellers I ever met. Everything was heavily edited and much was suppressed. They aspired to a towering solemnity that was truly frightening to small children.
DB: One gains the impression from your writings that you must have heard and absorbed a lot of Bible teaching in your childhood and youth. How did this come about?
GK: We didn’t read the Bible much in our home—my parents had their hands full trying to raise six children and earn a living and keep things afloat—but we went to meeting every Sunday for the full Brethren programme, Sunday School, the Lord’s Supper, the afternoon Bible study if a labourer was in
town, Young People’s, and an evening gospel meeting. And for a few years in my teens, I was an avid reader of Scripture on my own. So a great deal of teaching got drummed into my head. Even today, in my doddering state, verses keep coming back to me, the Bible speaks in all sorts of situations.
DB: Do you think your knowledge of the Bible has been a good thing on the whole (a) for your writing; (b) for your life?
GK: Yes, certainly, and I don’t divide writing from life. The Bible is the source of what spiritual life I have, and writing, as an act of the spirit, must be directed by that.
DB: Have you any thoughts about the Brethren’s penchant for dispensationalism and charts of the ages?
GK: I have the Chart of Time from Eternity to Eternity hanging in my upstairs hallway and it’s a comfort to have it around. It reminds me of a time when I was thirteen or so, attending a lecture on the Chart by a labourer, and while gazing at the Chart was filled with a great sense of certainty that I, a mere
child, understood All Things That Ever Were of Will Be. I don’t get that sense often anymore.
DB: What do you think when you hear people state, ‘The Bible is the word of God?’
GK: Well, it is, of course, but it depends on who the people are. Usually they are trying to sell me their slant, and I am a resistant buyer. I edge away, with apologies.
DB: Can modern literature be to us in any sense the word of God?
GK: I believe that genius comes from God, and that it is up to men and women to use it well, and that we can each be the judge of that. I believe that when the human heart is poured out, when the anguish and sweetness and music and anger of life is lavished upon the page and when language is used
artistically to bring us into the life of another, that this may be God’s doing. I feel that Christians should read great literature. There are gifts to be found there.
DB: How far back does your family go in Brethren?
GK: My grandfather James Keillor and his father and other relatives established a meeting in Anoka, Minnesota in the 1880s, the result of work by an itinerant Brethren labourer. The family has roots in the Baptist church in Canada, and grandfather married a Methodist. In the early days of the Brethren in Anoka, they would accept grandmother’s Methodist relatives to the table for the breaking of bread, until another labourer persuaded them not to.
DB: There are some different branches of Exclusive Brethren. Do you know to which group your family adhered?
GK: Our group was known as the Booth Brethren, to distinguish us from the Ames Brethren, after a particularly disastrous split in 1948. Most of my father’s family went with the Ameses and we went with the Booths. It was the result of an argument over the Glanton Brethren, who were in fellowship with
us, whom the Ameses accused of harbouring Raven tendencies, or at least of not proving themselves to be clear of Ravenism, and so when some Brethren refused to cast out the Glantons on the basis of these accusations, the accusers broke off with us.
DB: Why did you choose to refer to them as ‘the Sanctified Brethren’ in your fiction?
GK: Sanctified Brethren makes more sense than ‘Plymouth Brethren’. In America, Plymouth is a car.
DB: Have you ever had acquaintance with any other kinds of Brethren, e.g. Open Brethren?
GK: I haven’t, to be perfectly honest. Our Brethren had such a strong distaste for the Open meetings that it was a closed subject among us and I knew more about Lutherans or Anglicans or even Catholics than about Open Brethren. The elders found it painful to discuss the divisions that had taken place over
the years, and so I never was clear about Ravenism, for example, what the Kellys believed that was different from our beliefs. And Openism was a vast mystery…
DB: Are any of your relations still members of the Brethren?
GK: My parents are, and my younger sister has been in and out in recent years, drawn to the Brethren by her faith in their principles and her affection for them but repelled by the intransigence of older brothers on the subject of women’s participation in Bible readings, for example. And resistance to
change in even very small matters.
DB: If so, what are their attitudes to your productions as a broadcaster and writer?
GK: As you know, no self-respecting Brethren family would ever want a child of theirs to go into entertainment or literature. But they’ve gotten over the shame, for the most part, enough so that they can enjoy the performances, up to a point. They would never brag about me, of course. But they don’t mind being seen at my shows now and then. And my mother seems to get a kick out of my reminiscences of childhood.
DB: Were you ever a recognized member of a Brethren meeting? Did you break bread?
GK: I was baptized when I was fourteen and did not do as my contemporaries did and ask to be received into fellowship. The thought of coming before a panel of elders to be examined in my faith was a fearful prospect, and also, I had a strong feeling that the Brethren was not a hospitable place for me.
DB: At what age did you leave the company of Brethren?
GK: I was twenty.
DB: Do you find any encouragement toward humour in the Bible?
GK: I feel that comedy is based on the gospel, fundamentally. But there is a playfulness in comedy that is found, perhaps, only in some of the Psalms, in Proverbs surely, and in few other places. This makes me feel that it has been edited severely by men and that it may not represent God’s final word. God’s
love of comedy is abundantly clear in life, it seems to me. God’s creatures are endowed with it, even cats and dogs.
DB: You have been heard to justify the writing of fiction by reference to Jesus’s use of parables. Is this seriously intended?
GK: Well, up to a point. Jesus chose to teach through the telling of stories that are understood to be not literally true. But the real justification of fiction, I think, is the admonition of James that we should confess our sins to each other. Brethren don’t do that. They believe confession would weaken them.
They believe in presenting a staunch countenance to the world. They were, I believe, the worst storytellers I ever met. Everything was heavily edited and much was suppressed. They aspired to a towering solemnity that was truly frightening to small children.
DB: One gains the impression from your writings that you must have heard and absorbed a lot of Bible teaching in your childhood and youth. How did this come about?
GK: We didn’t read the Bible much in our home—my parents had their hands full trying to raise six children and earn a living and keep things afloat—but we went to meeting every Sunday for the full Brethren programme, Sunday School, the Lord’s Supper, the afternoon Bible study if a labourer was in
town, Young People’s, and an evening gospel meeting. And for a few years in my teens, I was an avid reader of Scripture on my own. So a great deal of teaching got drummed into my head. Even today, in my doddering state, verses keep coming back to me, the Bible speaks in all sorts of situations.
DB: Do you think your knowledge of the Bible has been a good thing on the whole (a) for your writing; (b) for your life?
GK: Yes, certainly, and I don’t divide writing from life. The Bible is the source of what spiritual life I have, and writing, as an act of the spirit, must be directed by that.
DB: Have you any thoughts about the Brethren’s penchant for dispensationalism and charts of the ages?
GK: I have the Chart of Time from Eternity to Eternity hanging in my upstairs hallway and it’s a comfort to have it around. It reminds me of a time when I was thirteen or so, attending a lecture on the Chart by a labourer, and while gazing at the Chart was filled with a great sense of certainty that I, a mere
child, understood All Things That Ever Were of Will Be. I don’t get that sense often anymore.
DB: What do you think when you hear people state, ‘The Bible is the word of God?’
GK: Well, it is, of course, but it depends on who the people are. Usually they are trying to sell me their slant, and I am a resistant buyer. I edge away, with apologies.
DB: Can modern literature be to us in any sense the word of God?
GK: I believe that genius comes from God, and that it is up to men and women to use it well, and that we can each be the judge of that. I believe that when the human heart is poured out, when the anguish and sweetness and music and anger of life is lavished upon the page and when language is used
artistically to bring us into the life of another, that this may be God’s doing. I feel that Christians should read great literature. There are gifts to be found there.
I have many fond memories of growing up in the meeting. Of the gentleness of people, of the transparency of their faith, of their devotion to the Word and to Scripture study.” But, he says, “I don’t miss the humourlessness, the lure of legalism, or the snares of the invisible liturgy. . . . If the Pharisees were to come back, they’d come back as Brethren. Seeking the manners of godliness over the love of God, going through the motions, genuflecting in all the little ways Brethren do. This spirit of fearfulness is so contrary to the spirit of artistic freedom and joyfulness, whether in literature or music or painting, in which we aspire to transcend ourselves. I never met Brethren who felt that the arts were a gift of God. The Brethren I knew felt quite the opposite, that the arts were a pretense for individual pride...
I’m working on a memoir, so I’m trying to put my parents down on paper, and I’m trying to put this Fundamentalist group, the Plymouth Brethren, that I grew up in down on paper. It’s dying out, so it’s like writing about some vanishing tribe, but somebody needs to, and I am writing in a sympathetic way about it, and a little bit about certain strokes of good luck that can propel a push forward, whether you have any particular gift or not. I believe in luck, I really do, you see it when it’s there and you just grab hold of it, and you ride it, that’s really how you do it. It’s nothing rational, there’s no planning involved. Hard work can dig you deeper down, as well as doing something good, but I believe in luck, I really do...
JW: When you hear your parents’ voices in your head, what are they saying?
GK: My mother is saying, “Be careful.” My dad is saying, “What are you waiting for?”
JW: If you could go back in time, what advice would you give yourself as a kid growing up in Minnesota? What did he learn? What would he like to do over?
GK: I’d tell him to learn carpentry and plumbing and go find work. Skip college and just read the classics. Get a life and then maybe try his hand at writing.
JW: What are you most grateful for?
GK: Grateful to be alive. Life is good. Every day, even the bad ones."
GK: Grateful to be alive. Life is good. Every day, even the bad ones."
- Garrison Keillor, author of Lake Woebegone.
Photos,~ Garrison Keillor with his daughter, Maia: “I am even more interested in longevity now that she is 15 and I am 70."
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