January 11, 2003

When I talked to Yale theologian Miroslav Volf last summer, he was being considered as possible dean of Harvard Divinity School. He had told Harvard’s president Lawrence Summers quite clearly that if he were to head the school, he would want to lead HDS back to its roots in constructive theology and the formation of Christian ministers. Not that disciplines like comparative religion or social science would be banished. But Volf had no interest in presiding over a school where the expression of evangelical belief was unchic.

I’ve had plenty of chances to laugh at myself in the last year. Once, when I was sunk so deep in lethargy and sloth that there seemed no end in sight, an interviewer termed me “a docent of hope.” How comical, to be reminded that the books I churned out over the past ten years—Dakota, The Cloister Walk, Amazing Grace and The Virgin of Bennington—were out there in the world, proclaiming good news while I sat stupefied, unable to write even a postcard.

Even those who fell in love with last year's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring may find themselves staggered by the sequel, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. It is even wider in scope than the first movie, the filmmaking more thrilling, the emotions higher.