More about Madeleine L’Engle

From GetReligion, a good, informative, entry about Madeleine L'Engle.

Wherever L’Engle went, people kept asking her to explain her beliefs, from heaven to hell, from sex to salvation, from feminism to the arts. The writer did not hide her views, but rarely used the kind of language that so-called “Christian writers” were supposed to use.

Thus, her career was defined by a paradox: Many of her strongest admirers were evangelical Christians, as were most of her fiercest critics. Thus, it’s symbolic that she donated her personal notes and papers to Wheaton College — the Rev. Billy Graham’s alma mater — where they are part of a collection best known for its materials about the life of Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. [more]

Update, 9/14: There is good column in the Wall Street Journal today by Meghan Cox Gurdon about "reading Madeleine L'Engle as a child and as an adult."

A child is inclined to take away very different lessons from a novel than is an adult. For one thing, "A Wrinkle in Time" is infused with Christian faith to such a degree that, were it newly published today, it would probably be relegated to the religious section of the bookstore.

...As a heathen child, I missed entirely the biblical references, the significant mention of Jesus and the way a loving God's sovereignty over the universe is understood even as the characters battle an expanding force of pure evil. Meg's father, at one point, urges her to be courageous in confronting IT. "We were sent here for something," he tells her, echoing Romans 8:28. "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose."

Clearly, American society wasn't as twitchy about Judeo-Christian content 40-odd years ago. In fact, over the decades "A Wrinkle in Time" has been criticized as insufficiently Christian, a claim that pained its Episcopalian author. [more]

Tesser well, Madeleine L’Engle » GetReligion