there followed a period of time in which she scrutinized my face-for any telltale indication of the race of my missing male ancestor, I would guess. But that's all I remember. Dan refused to have anything further to do with them. I cannot think that they played any role at all in the four-year 'engagement.'
And what with all the comparing and contrasting of a theological nature, there was no end of religious approval for matching Dan and my mother; there was, in fact, double approval-the Congregationalists and the Episcopalians appeared to be competing for the privilege of having Dan and my mother come worship with them. In my opinion, it should have been no contest; granted, I was happy to have the opportunity to lift Owen up in the air at Sunday school, but that was the beginning and the end to any advantage the Episcopalians had over the Congregationalists. There were not only those differences I've already mentioned-of an atmospheric and architectural nature, together with those ecclesiastical differences that made the Episcopal service much more Catholic than the Congregational service-CATHOLIC, WITH A BIG C, as Owen would say. But there were also vast differences between the Rev. Lewis Merrill, whom I liked, and the Rev. Dudley Wiggin-the rector of the Episcopal Church-who was a bumpkin of boredom. To compare these two ministers as dismissively as I did, I confess I was drawing on no small amount of snobbery inherited from Grandmother Wheelwright. The Congregationalists had pastors-the Rev. Lewis Merrill was our pastor. If you grow up with that comforting word, it's hard to accept rectors-the Episcopal Church had rectors; the Rev. Dudley Wiggin was the rector of Christ Church, Gravesend. I shared my grandmother's distaste for the word rector-it sounded too much like rectum to be taken seriously. But it would have been hard to take the Rev. Dudley Wiggin seriously if he'd been a pastor. Whereas the Rev. Mr. Merrill had heeded his calling as a young man-he had always been in, and of, the church-the Rev. Mr. Wiggin was a former airline pilot; some difficulty with his eyesight had forced his early retirement from the skies, and he had descended to our wary town with a newfound fervor-the zeal of the convert giving him the healthy but frantic appearance of one of those 'elder' citizens who persist in entering vigorous sporting competitions in the over-fifty category. Whereas Pastor Merrill spoke an educated language-he'd been an English major at Princeton; he'd heard Niebuhr and Tillich lecture at Union Theological- Rector Wiggin spoke in ex-pilot homilies; he was a pulpit-thumper who had no doubt. What made Mr. Merrill infinitely more attractive was that he was/w// of doubt; he expressed our doubt in the most eloquent and sympathetic ways. In his completely lucid and convincing view, the Bible is a book with a troubling plot, but a plot that can be understood: God creates us out of love, but we don't want God, or we don't believe in Him, or we pay very poor attention to Him. Nevertheless, God continues to love us-at least, He continues to try to get our attention. Pastor Merrill made religion seem reasonable. And the trick of having faith, he said, was that it was necessary to believe in God without any great or even remotely reassuring evidence that we don't inhabit a godless universe. Although he knew all the best-or, at least, the least boring-stories in the Bible, Mr. Merrill was most appealing because he reassured us that doubt was the essence of faith, and not faith's opposite. By comparison, whatever the Rev. Dudley Wiggin had seen to make him believe in God, he had seen absolutely-possibly by flying an airplane too close to the sun. The rector was not gifted with language, and he was blind to doubt or worry in any form; perhaps the problem with his 'eyesight' that had forced his early retirement from the airlines was really a euphemism for the blinding power of his total religious conversion-because Mr. Wiggin was fearless to an extent that would have made him an unsafe pilot, and to an extent that made him a madman as a preacher. Even his Bible selections were outlandish; a satirist could not have selected them better. The Rev. Mr. Wiggin was especially fond of the word 'firmament'; there was always a firmament in his Bible selections. And he loved all allusions to faith as a battle to be savagely fought and won; faith was a war waged against faith's adversaries. 'Take the whole armor of God!' he would rave. We were instructed to wear 'the breastplate of righteousness'; our faith was a 'shield'- against 'all the flaming darts of the evil one.' The rector said he wore a 'helmet of salvation.' That's from Ephesians; Mr. Wiggin was a big fan of Ephesians. He also whooped it up about Isaiah-especially the part when 'the Lord is sitting upon a throne'; the rector was big on the Lord upon a throne. The Lord is surrounded by seraphim. One of the seraphim flies
to Isaiah, who is complaining that he's 'a man of unclean lips.' Not for long; not according to Isaiah. The seraphim touches Isaiah's mouth with 'a burning coal' and Isaiah is as good as new. That was what we heard from the Rev. Dudley Wiggin: all the unlikeliest miracles.
'I DON'T LIKE THE SERAPHIM,' Owen complained. 'WHAT'S THE POINT OF BEING SCARY?'
But although Owen agreed with me that the rector was a moron who messed up the Bible for tentative believers by assaulting us with the worst of God the Almighty and God the Terrible-and although Owen acknowledged that the Rev. Mr. Wiggin's sermons were about as entertaining and convincing as a pilot's voice in the intercom, explaining technical difficulties while the plane plummets toward the earth and the stewardesses are screaming-Owen actually preferred Wiggin to what little he knew of Pastor Merrill. Owen didn't know much about Mr. Merrill, I should add; Owen was never a Congregationalist. But Merrill was such a popular preacher that parishioners from the other Gravesend churches would frequently skip a service of their own to attend his sermons. Owen did so, on occasion, but Owen was always critical. Even when Gravesend Academy bestowed the intellectual honor upon Pastor Merrill-of inviting him to be a frequent guest preacher in the academy's nondenominational church-Owen was critical.
'BELIEF IS NOT AN INTELLECTUAL MATTER,' he complained. 'IF HE'S GOT SO MUCH DOUBT, HE'S IN THE WRONG BUSINESS.'
But who, besides Owen Meany and Rector Wiggin, had so little
