The CommonPlace
If I be lifted up, I will draw all men to Myself
A Letter From The Publisher
A shot rang out in Dallas, in 1963; and on that day, our suffering
world found itself deprived of Reason's Voice. While Castro dema-
gogued in Cuba, and LBJ took the Oath on Air Force One, many
in America and England wept; and still weep. Many on that day not
yet born, have reason to regret that passing. Paul stayed on, for the
Galations. On November 23rd, 1963, C. S. Lewis was taken. And from
that day to this, the World of Christian Letters has suffered violence,
and men take it by force.
Lewis told us that what the world needed was not Christian
Math professors, but math professors who were Christians, or in
other words, regenerated hearts in every profession, lifting up our
Lord by working for Him, doing the job with excellence, honesty,
and proficiency, and honoring Him therein; such that we might do
the job at least as well and honestly as the Children of this Age. We
here at The CommonPlace Quarterly believe likewise that Math-
ematics, Garbage Collection, and the Written Arts fall under this rubric.
Our math skills are poor. We are too fleshly proud to pick up Garbage
unto the Lord. So we will write.
There is no dearth of locale where the messages can be found.
On the purely evangelistic end America is singularly blessed with
churches, parachurches, and ministries of every stripe, all dispensing
the pure milk of the Word. For the politically conservative, talk radio,
National Review, and a plethora of syndicated columnists choke the
field. But the Literary Orchard, whether secular or sacred, is just
about as fruitful as the dishes searching the heavens for radio waves
from the Intelligences. Dude, no one's transmitting.
So we are. John Milton is our man. We see it this way: Edmund
Spenser, Sir Philip Sydney, John Milton, John Donne, George
Herbert, Anne Bradstreet, Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen, Sir Walter
Scott, Charles Dickens, Charles Kingsley, George MacDonald, G.K.
Chesterton, Laura Ingalls Wilder T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien,
Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers...and...Us!
Lewis remarked that since no one was writing the kind of thing
that he and Tolkien liked to read, they would be obliged to write it them-
selves. Thus, to a certain extent, were Narnia and The Lord of the Rings
begotten. Well, for the most part no one's writing what we want to read;
our wives have exhausted our library shelves; and rather than suffering
their ennui, we'll have to write it ourselves.
By the same token, Rush Limbaugh's rule is this: If it interests
the host, it will interest the audience; whereas, if it does not interest the
host, it will be Bad Radio. We do not intend to produce Bad Radio, but
substance and solace of the highest order. We know what we like, and are,
as Lewis wrote of Joseph Addison, interested in everything - so long as it
adheres to the admonition in Philippians:
Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever
is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute,
if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind
dwell on these things.
There are many out there just like us. At this day, those teachers
from the backest woods, like the late J. Vernon McGee, or the National
Southern Baptist preachers, not to mention such luminaries as John Mac-
Arthur and our own Pastor, G. Harry Leafe, are, for the most part, those
only fluent in a variant of Homer's tongue. The Evangelicals alone can still
read the King's English. It's not Doctors of Literature purchasing all those
copies of Pilgrim's Progress, or of those expositors reprinted by Puritan
Press, or Robinson Crusoe, or Narnias by the millions. Our friend a
pastor's wife recommends Dickens, his contemporary biographer and
friend, John Forster, and George MacDonald. We Christians almost
exclusively read these things from Love, for fun and profit.
This is our shot across the bow (or our bow at a venture):
We at The CommonPlace Quarterly shall strive to produce, firstly, a web
site attractive and satisfactory to that portion of the population still both
literate and decently wholesome, a kind of New Jerusalemer, full of
sparkling essays and potent odes, encouraging testimony, Truth, and
Family Fun, followed, in short order we hope, by, at the least a
quarterly and well-produced physical magazine brought to their homes by
U.S Mail (essay soon on The Praiseworthiness of The Postal Service).
In the words of my favorite singer,
Here We Go!
David Coulson Adams