It’s official! John Bunyan has a day of his own in the Church of England calendar. Each summer we celebrate a tinker’s son, an ex-soldier and ex-prisoner who wrote a Christian classic which puts its writer alongside George Orwell. Like Orwell, John Bunyan was the author of one of the great allegories in the English language. Like Orwell, Bunyan practised a style of writing that was street-wise and easy. He took pains to ensure that his tale would lodge in the popular imagination.
Why was he sent to prison? For preaching the Gospel. To the everlasting shame of the Church of England, which was of course hand-in-glove with the powers that be, he was incarcerated at the Restoration and while serving his time (12 years) he began writing his masterpiece ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’. The reign of Charles II was a time when uniformity in religion was something like the elixir of life or the philosopher’s stone in Christian England. The idea that an Englishman should think he could convey the Gospel to his compatriots better than the exponents of that Gospel officially approved by the Established Church amounted to something as detestable as heresy.
We might note in passing that England’s greatest religious poet, John Milton, was at this time under a cloud for his service with the Protectorate. It was during this period that his masterpiece ‘Paradise Lost’ saw the light of day. Like Bunyan he enjoyed great popularity for a work that could not have been further from Bunyan’s in terms of style. Samuel Johnson said of Milton: ‘Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.’ His Latin work on theology published in the late 19th century made him vulnerable to attack for Socinian or Arian opinions and he, unlike Bunyan, makes no appearance in the Church of England calendar. Both were men of prodigious talent – Bunyan rough-hewn but talented none the less, Milton learned, sophisticated and magisterial. The Church of England finds genius difficult to deal with.
But back to Bunyan. We all know what a Vanity Fair is – thanks to Bunyan. We also recognise our own failings when we encounter Mr Pliable and Giant Despair. We are immeasurably heartened by the words that mark the passing of Mr Valiant-for-truth:’ So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.’
Bunyan feeds our imagination. He helps us see things for what they are. We do well to put him higher up the scale of our reading wish-list.
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