I guess I should share a little more about myself with regard to religion. I was a pretty devout child who became an agnostic with vaguely spiritual leanings pretty much immediately after going to college. I stayed that way for approximately 40 years. About ten years ago, I attended an Episcopal church service. The more I learned about the church, the better I liked it. On the one hand, they had the liturgy, pageantry, and rituals that I enjoy so much at a church service. But they are also an extremely liberal branch of the Christian church. Indeed, the Americans are now the black sheep of the Anglican Communion because they have not only condoned gay marriage, they have adapted the marriage litany to accommodate gay couples. They allowed women pastors and bishops decades before the British. We are literally MILES from the loathsome, hypocritical, fundamentalist, bible-thumping evangelicals that support Trump.

Now then, as to me, I can certainly handle criticisms of the church, even direct criticisms of my church. It is obvious to me that a rigid, conservative, overly punitive version of Lutheranism (see any number of Bergman movies) has poisoned Helga's mind and prompted a boatload of inappropriate guilt. As a consequence, she becomes convinced that it is "God's will" that she marry Gregorius. No one seems to make her do it. She flings herself into this unfortunate choice from her distorted ideas of Christian morality. (Incidentally, a view of Christian morality that I think Christ would most definitely not have approved of.)

So don't worry about offending me with religious discussions. I'm flexible and resilient. (Now if one of you were to defend Donald Trump. I would probably go ballistic. But I don't think that likely. LOL.)

--Previous Message--
: Actually, there is a later novel by Swedish
: author Bengt Ohlsson, called
: "Gregorius" which tells the story
: from the pastor's point of view. Perhaps it
: would be interesting to read it and continue
: discussing their issues.
:
: One of the things that I value the most
: about exchanging views with you guys is
: precisely that we frequently have different
: perceptions about books. That enriches my
: reading. Although at first reading I tended
: to coincide more with Joffre (seeing,
: perhaps naively, Glas as a "freedom
: fighter" from the more liberal society
: of the future, inserted in a religious,
: conservative one), I can also see now
: Sterling's point. But this takes us into a
: possibly uncomfortable discussion about the
: role of religion (since we have different
: positions on it): Helga indeed says she was
: not in any way coerced into marriage, but
: actually she seems to have been, by
: religion, guilt, and this urge to marry off
: girls as soon as possible to the
: "best" candidate available.
:
: This is not, at first sight, Gregorius's
: fault (as Sterling says). But it is, since
: it is very unlikely that a young, pretty
: girl really wants to have sex with an old,
: ugly, sanctimonious guy. Maybe there was no
: way out of it in the Stockholm of the early
: XX Century, but there it is: she is repulsed
: by her legitimate husband. Sadly, she
: doesn't have the divorce option, so she is
: left with a passion for a younger, more
: suitable man who can't be her husband and so
: uses her as a diversion until a serious
: marriage opportunity comes along.
:
: And Glas... well, he is the subject of
: psychoanalysis, a man clearly troubled with
: a disastrous father figure, who probably
: hates Gregorius as a substitute for his own
: father (I'm getting Freudian here!), and has
: a crush on the beuatiful girl he is unable
: to attain in real life. He IS a murderer and
: has no business fixing Helga's life, but he
: is also a fascinating narrator, reliable or
: not, and that's what gives this subtle novel
: its value, I think.
: