I’m not sure how this book first came to my attention. I’m fairly sure it was during my obsession with this particular book collection way back on the old blog.
I was first intrigued because Father and Son is the author’s autobiographical account of his upbringing by devout Plymouth Brethren parents during the Victorian era. Since our church’s founding pastor and current senior pastor both attended a Plymouth Brethren Bible college, I was curious how this movement might have looked in the late 1800s.
According to Edmund Gosse, Father and Son is “the record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciences and almost two epochs.” In other words, it’s the story of how Edmund Gosse eventually rejected the Christian faith.
Edmund Gosse’s father was Philip Henry Gosse, an author and marine biologist. The book largely focuses on how Edmund Gosse’s father persisted in his faith in an era when scientists were widely rejecting the biblical account of creation.
I got the feeling while reading that Gosse believed he was chronicling the last days of a dying religion. He seems to express a bit of amazement that his father continued to believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, and there’s a strong sense that he’s carefully explaining something that he doesn’t think will ever be seen again.
While the story of Gosse’s upbringing and rejection of the Christian faith is interesting in itself, I think this book could almost serve as a cautionary tale for today’s Christian parents. Gosse’s parents desperately wanted their son to accept their faith as his own (don’t we all), but their desire so ruled their emotions that they mistook Gosse’s desire to please and ability to parrot the right answers as spiritual maturity.
This impulse is alive today. Even people whose conversion stories are full of the grace of God can be tempted to adopt a paint-by-numbers approach to raising Christian children.
Edmund Gosse was raised in an enviroment that many Christian parents strive to maintain. He was carefully sheltered from all worldly influences and his friends were carefully selected. And even though not belonging to the Church of England meant his family was out of the mainstream, the moral code of the era protected him from a lot of the negative influences present today.
And yet Gosse still rejected the Christian faith. He carefully describes the realization that though his parents could command outward obedience, they couldn’t see inside his soul. This inner rebellion persisted until adulthood, when he finally broke away from the faith entirely.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t shield our children from the world. We have a responsibility as parents to protect our children from corrupting influences until they are mature enough to discern for themselves. And while Gosse felt that his rejection of Christianity was simply a rational choice in light of what he felt was unshakeable scientific evidence, I felt his rejection came much earlier as a deliberate rebellion as described by Paul in Romans 1:18. Evolution provided a convenient excuse for Gosse’s rejection of Christianity, but it was not the cause.
Father and Son has been criticized as an overly harsh depiction of Edmund Gosse’s father. A biographer of the elder Gosse argues that life in the Gosse household was not nearly as bleak and overbearing as the book describes. Only the Gosse family knows that for sure, but I thought the author was careful to mention that his childhood did include laughter and fun. In fact, he seems almost incredulous that people who believed as his parents did could actually find so much joy and laughter in everyday life. But the lighter times are only mentioned in passing, while the somber aspect of life is described in more detail. Since this is primarily the story of how and why Gosse and his father differed on Christianity, this lopsided handling is not entirely unwarranted.
Victorian autobiographies are not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but I found this to be a thought-provoking read, and would recommend it to anyone interested in one man’s tale of the inner workings of the human heart.
Subscribe to Writing and Living by email or in a reader.
, and other online booksellers.
I think this book would be interesting to read, but I’m not sure I could get through it. We have an adult son who has rejected the faith, so this book, even though ti’s VIctorian, might hit a little too close to home. I assume form your review that Edmund Gosse never did return to (or come to ) faith in Christ. SInce I am still praying for my prodigal, I would find this one hard to stomach.
It’s hard to say how it would make you feel. Edmund Gosse never did, to my knowledge, come to faith in Christ. His account of this is very detatched – he is not bitter to his parents or their faith. He just seems to think that their faith was an outdated notion that scientific discovery had rendered obsolete. That was not an uncommon belief then (and now), but he didn’t seem to spout any vehement resentment of Christianity that so many prodigals seem to exhibit.
My oldest is only 13, so I certainly have far to go, but I keep noticing among Christian parents a tendency to think that if they do a, b, and c correctly, their kids will follow in the faith. This book showed that even extreme sheltering is no guarantee of righteousness.
I’m sorry to hear about your prodigal. My husband was a prodigal until he was 27, and was faithfully prayed for by his mother during his years of wandering.