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| author | David Gregory Reagles |
| title | Letters to Malcolm: Textual Communities and Religious Culture, c. 1966-1982 |
| abstract | One of the major themes of modern British history is the decline of Christianity as a force that influenced society.
For most of his life, the journalist, author, and television personality Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990) was widely known as an agnostic, and thus appeared
to be indicative of these historical developments. Yet, just as the decline of Christendom was becoming increasingly normative, Muggeridge converted in
the early 1960s and dedicated the remaining years of his life to promoting Christianity, including authoring more than a dozen religious books. These
writings provided partisan commentary on some of the most pressing religious questions of the late twentieth century. Between his conversion to Christianity
and formal entry into the Roman Catholic Church in 1982, Muggeridge received nearly 2,000 letters from people in diverse religious and social settings. These
readers used his books and the letters they wrote as a means to wrestle with their faith and doubt, the role of the institutional church and religious
authority, permissiveness in society, the specter of decline and secularization, and the proper role of Christianity in social activism. This dissertation
analyzes these letters in depth by placing them in to their social and religious context. It illustrates how "ordinary" people constructed their identities
in response to the religious and social dynamics of those years through the act of reading. Muggeridge's fans saw him as a friend and kindred spirit
whose religious development ran parallel to their own. He thereby became a surrogate cleric whom his readers looked to for guidance and help as they
struggled to understand themselves as Christians in a world they increasingly took for granted as secular. Muggeridge's reputation was deeply connected
to his status as a symbol of anti-institutional Christianity. Once he finally converted to Roman Catholicism in 1982, this reputation that had helped
to sustain his relationship with fans was redefined, thereby stripping him of his authentic spiritual status among a multitude of his readers who had
believed he expressed their own spiritual identity. |
| school | The Caspersen School of Graduate Studies, Drew University |
| degree | Ph.D. (2018) |
| advisor | Jonathan E. Rose |
| committee | Jesse Mann
Darrell Cole
Alister Chapman |
| full text | DGReagles.pdf |
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