midkiff@uiucdcsb.Uiuc.ARPA (07/07/85)
Just thought I would pass along an article I read today about Garrison
Keillor.
Keillor's Gospel is 'not for nice people'
Bruce Buursma, Religion Writer
Chicago Tribune, July 6, 1985
copied without permission
He hails from a place where the mosquitos grow to the size
of crows and where "the women are strong, the men are good-
looking and all the children are above average."
The town, of course, is Lake Wobegon, Minn., which cannot be
found on any road atlas but is as real as Toledo or Peoria to the
faithful radio congregation tuning in each Saturday evening to
Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" broadcast.
Thousands of devoted listeners are transported weekly to the
main street of Lake Wobegon where the aroma of buttermilk bis-
cuits hangs in the air behind the Chatterbox Cafe and inside
Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery, whose motto is "If you can't find it
a Ralph's, you can probably get along without it."
Keillor, favorite son of the fictional town, provides whim-
sical reports on the news from Lake Wobegon on his radio variety
show, a monologue that celebrates the homely pleasure of small
town America and enduring virtues of religious belief and prac-
tice.
Lake Wobegon is populated by churchgoers who attend Pastor
Ingqvist's Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church or Father Emil's Our Lady
of Perpetual Responsibility Catholic Church, but for his part
Keillor grew up in a strict fundamentalist sect called the Sanc-
tified Brethren, whose adherents adorned their automobiles with
Bible verses that glowed in the dark.
The religious complexion of Lake Wobegon is a rich mine of
humor for Keillor, but it is never mean spirited fun. Keillor,
in fact, has embarked on a real-life spiritual pilgrimage of
religiously avoiding regular church attendance, but nevertheless
considers himself a "born-again" fundamentalist Christian.
In an interview in the current issue of the Wittenburg Door,
a bimonthly magazine of Christian humor, Keillor speaks frankly
of his strait-laced fundamentalist childhood and his deeply held
convictions about God and the gospel.
"Life is not for the timid", says Keillor, who write wry
essays for the New Yorker in addition to hosting the weekly
variety program, which is produced by Minnesota Public Radio and
distributed to more than 250 public radio stations in the United
States. In Chicago the show is broadcast at 5 p.m. Saturdays on
WBEZ FM [91.5].
"I don't know that we're promised a continual diet of feel-
ing good", he adds.
Keillor was baptized at the age of 14 in the small and
separatist Plymouth Brethren movement, a demanding denomination
that strongly encouraged its charges to avoid alcohol, tobacco,
dancing, card-playing, moviegoing and for a time, television. It
was a tightly controlled world, which prompted Keillor to feel
"conspicuously different from my friends ... but I also felt very
secure."
We were so separated from the world with our restrictions
and discipline that it encouraged us to have a greater love for
each other, which was more than I have found in any other kind of
church," Keillor continues.
In adulthood, Keillor, 42, has fallen away from churchgoing,
asserting he would "rather sit at home and watch [television
evangelist] Jimmy Swaggart."
Swaggart, says Keillor, is "a very emotional performer. He
knows how to walk right to the edge and put it out there for peo-
ple. He actually weeps on his show. He weeps for the sins of
the world.
"And that is how evangelists are supposed to be," he says.
"They are the rock 'n' rollers of the church. Evangelists are
supposed to get out there and shake it. They are not supposed to
be cute.
"Evangelists are almost always deeply flawed people. Their
passion comes out of their flaws. If evangelists are able to
live with their flaws, it somehow enables them to do what they do
... Good people are probably philosophers. Philosophy is a
better line of work for a good person."
The gospel according to Garrison Keillor is "not easy [and]
not for nice people. It is not for people who believe that what
is important is to eat the right foods, enjoy good entertainment,
dress well, get regular exercise and have better and better sex."
It is more apt to be revealed in the modest miracles of the
performance of the gospel birds at the Lake Wobegon Lutheran
Church, and in the expression of bemused wonder on the faces of
the parishioners.