Page "Frederick Buechner" Paragraph 48

In 2008, the 50th anniversary of Buechner's ordination, Rich Barlowe wrote of Buechner in the Boston Globe, " Who knows?

The words are Frederick Buechner's mantra.

Over the course of an hourlong chat with the writer and Presbyterian minister in his kitchen, they recur any number of times in response to questions about his faith and theology.

Dogmatic religious believers would dismiss the two words as the warning shot of doubt.

But for Buechner, it is precisely our doubts and struggles that mark us as human.

And that insight girds his theological twist on Socrates: The unexamined human life is a lost chance to behold the divine.

" In 2002, Richard Kauffman interviewed Buechner for The Christian Century upon the publication of Speak What We Feel ( Not What We Ought to Say ).

Buechner answered the question " Do you envision a particular audience when you write?

" by saying " I always hope to reach people who don't want to touch religion with a ten-foot pole.

The cultured despisers of religion, Sehleiermacher called them.

Maybe some of my books reach them.

But most of my readers, as far as I can tell, aren't that type.

Many of them are ministers.

They say, ' You've given us something back we lost and opened up doors we didn't think could be opened for people.

'"