“What sort of group are you? Do you always meet here in this church? Are you some kind of religious organization?” It was Miriam who answered. “No. As Rolf explained, Luke is a priest, although he hasn’t a full-time job or a parish. Julian and he are Christians, the rest of us aren’t. We meet in churches because they’re available, they’re open, they’re free and they’re usually empty, at least the ones we choose are. We may have to give this one up. Other people are beginning to use it.” Rolf broke in, his voice impatient, over-emphatic. “Religion and Christianity have nothing to do with it.
...more
One of the major themes of this book is the place of good (lower-case 'g'; specifically Christian) faith to a society spiraling into hopelessness. Not to give the game away, or anything.
Where as, this interloper group is starting to negotiate away the subject-object relationship (as seen above) from our protagonist Theo, this exchange ratchets up the sub-textual, thematic tension massively by trying to negotiate away its Christian specificity -- while also using a BCP study group (and deeply well-observed commentary on them) as a way of creating more specificity.
And this is really well done. My palms are sweating. 😅
