1. religion and spirituality
2. christianity
3. catholicism

INTERVIEW
P.D. James and the
Mystery of Iniquity
Ralph C. Wood
READERS OF MYSTERY NOVELS know that P.D.
James is the reigning British Queen of
Crime, a worthy successor to Agatha
Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. She is
indeed the master of all the English crime
novel conventions: a cozy bourgeois atmosphere (preferably a professional enclave), this complacent world horribly
disrupted by a murder, the naming of
internal as well as external suspects, a
further set of complicating murders, the
sorting out of various alibis, the inevitable false leads, and the ultimate solution by her detective hero, Adam
Dalgliesh. The criminal is finally caught
and punished, and moral order is restored, even though much good has been
destroyed in the process.
What many readers do not know, however, is that James is a writer whose work
is imbued with deep Christian convictions. Her novels are concerned to detect
not merely who "done" it but also why.
She probes human motives with an unusually keen eye for the mystery of iniquity. James's criminals are never evil
through and through. Among the strange
RALPH C. WOOD is University Professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor University. He received his doctorate in theology and literature
from the University of Chicago and is the author
of The Comedy of Redemption (University of
Notre Dame).
anomalies of sin that they reveal, perhaps
the chief is this: they often kill in the name
of good. James's novels do not offer pleasing literary escapes into unreality. They
wrestle, on the contrary, with the very
largest moral and social questions: abortion, euthanasia, environmental destruction, terrorism, multiculturalism, homosexuality, etc.
A spry octogenarian who has been
writing for more than forty years, James
has fourteen novels to her credit. Among
her best known works are A Taste for
Death (1986), Innocent Blood (1980), Devices andDesires (1987), Original Sin (1994),
The Children of Men (1992), A Certain
Justice (1997), and Death in Holy Orders
(2001). She has also written Time to Be in
Earnest: Fragments of an Autobiography
(1999). That James fleshes out her characters with complex motives and particular
features, that she renders the atmosphere
and setting of her novels in convincing
detail, and that she writes with extraordinary eloquence—these qualities have
won her much high acclaim and many
literary prizes. In recognition of her
achievements, she has been created Baroness James of Holland Park.
Wood, together with his wife Suzanne,
interviewed Lady James on August 7,2000,
during lunch in the Royal Park Hotel overlooking the Round Pond in Kensington
Gardens, London.
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WOOD: Your novels all deal with the
crime of crimes: the taking of human life.
And so I'm interested in what you think of
the death penalty. You probably know
that the United States is the only major
nation, perhaps other than Japan, that
has retained this ultimate sanction, and
that Texas is notorious for exercising it.
We execute, I suppose, some 30 or 40
people per year. From reading your novels—where no one is completely a culprit—I would assume that you would be
opposed to it.
JAMES: Oh yes, yes. I do oppose it. I've
always opposed it. I don't think my attitude to it is entirely logical because, unlike most people who oppose it, I do think
it does in fact deter. I suppose I think so
because it would certainly deter me. And
I think it used to deter professional criminals with guns. In a way, that's illogical
because I'm saying that I'm willing for
other people to be at a greater risk of
being murdered in order that I can have a
clear conscience about not having a death
penalty. But I still have an abhorrence to
it. I don't think that here in England we
make many mistakes. I think maybe you
do because you have such an odd system.
It seems to me certain people don't perhaps get the defense that they should get.
WOOD: Well, now with DNA testing,
there may be even greater proof of guilt or
innocence. Even so, there could still be
mistakes.
JAMES: I won't say we haven't executed people who are innocent; undoubtedly we have. I can take these
strongly liberal views about such things,
of course, without having to look after
very dangerous murderers in prison.
WOOD: Your fiction implies, does it
not, that we're all such guilty sinners that,
were any of us to get justice, it would be
a grim world indeed? Your last novel, A
Certain Justice, complicates matters even
further. There you showed, did you not,
that even the murderously guilty do not
always get justice and that we have to find
ways to live with this unhappy fact.
JAMES: I did. It was what Portia said,
wasn't it, in The Merchant of Venice:
In the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation.
We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to
render
The deeds of mercy.
Portia's speech also relates to one of
your other questions. There are certain
people in life, though not too many, who
are evil in a rather special sense.
WOOD: Those who take delight in the
sheer thrill of murder, as in A Taste for
Death. The murderer there is not seeking,
as in so many of your novels, to vindicate
someone who has been wronged or else
to seek his own revenge for hurts he has
suffered. He simply delights in the terror
flashing through the eyes of the person he
is about to murder.
JAMES: But in that book it is the murderer who discovers that the little boy is
ill, isn't it? The murderer, in that way,
saves the child's life.
WOOD: Pornography is an increasing
problem in our country, and it seems to be
an evil indulged almost for its own sake.
It's not primarily a perversion of something good which, by the classical Augustinian definition, evil usually is. Vandalism is another example. You may remember the famous pear-stealing episode in
St. Augustine's Confessions. The young
Augustine and some of his buddies strip
this tree, not to enjoy its luscious fruit,
but literally for the thrill of it.
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JAMES: We see this too. It's almost as
if anything that's beautiful has to be destroyed, for the sheer pleasure of destruction.
phemy. Huge! We had terrible trouble. It
was the first time someone on the radio
had impersonated Christ, and it caused a
huge furor.
WOOD: The vandalism of cemeteries
is something that frightens me. What is to
be made of people who go out and desecrate a grave?
WOOD: I have discovered that the
Dorothy L. Sayers Society is very grateful
to you for the support you've given them
over the years. In fact, at the Sayers Study
Centre in Witham, I found a copy of an
address you had given to the Sayers Society 21 years ago.
JAMES: Well, some kind of terrible and
horrible thrill. I think there are differences when we talk about wrongdoing.
There's everything from just not obeying
the law, which is one kind of wrongdoing,
to not doing what we know we should do,
to taking a positive and active pleasure in
evil. I'm afraid this last may be getting
more common. It seems to me it is.
WOOD: On a happier subject: Two of
my students have done master's theses
on the work of Dorothy L. Sayers. One of
them discovered that, in a production
last summer, you played the role of Evangelist in three of her plays, is that right?
JAMES: Oh yes, the part was supposed
to be shared with Lord [Michael] Ramsey
[the late Archbishop of Canterbury] but
he was too ill, so I had to do all of it.
WOOD: Tell us about that.
JAMES: It was a very interesting production.
WOOD: Where was it done? In a
church?
JAMES: It was performed in a city
church and promoted by the Dorothy L.
Sayers Society. We didn't do the whole
cycle, just a selection. There were a few
professional actors but most of the cast
were amateurs. It held up remarkably well.
I can remember the huge sensation caused
at the time The Man Bom to Be King was
first broadcast. Great accusations of blas-
JAMES: On Monday, I am unveiling a
plaque to her on the flat where she lived
in London. We have a system here by
which blue plaques are put on houses
where famous people lived. I'm unveiling
it on Monday.
WOOD: If we might talk about your
novels for a while: I have surmised that
you deliberately portray your chief detective, Adam Dalgliesh, as a skeptic rather
than a churchman, perhaps to guard
against making him your mouthpiece. Is
that a false surmise?
JAMES: Yes. One's central character
always contains a little of oneself, whether
it's a man or woman. When I'm asked why
I didn't make Dalgliesh a Christian, I can
only retort: "Because he isn't one. He is a
reverent agnostic." Having had a father
who was an Anglican priest, he has been
steeped in Anglican theology. It's interesting for me to have a detective like that
when you get a situation such as occurs
in A Certain Justice. There the priest has
information which was given him in confession and which he will not divulge.
Dalgliesh doesn't really waste any time
attempting to get him to divulge it. He
understands that the priest can't and
won't. But because Kate Miskin [his fellow detective] has had no religious education, she thinks the priest's totally and
absolutely unreasonable. "We're trying
to solve a murder," she says, "and here's
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a man who has evidence and won't give
it." Dalgliesh understands why he won't.
I find it more interesting to have Dalgliesh
as he is.
WOOD: What about the two novels in
which Dalgliesh doesn't appear, Innocent
Blood and The Children of Men? Am 1
wrong to think that, unlike your detective
novels, these two are virtual thesis novels
because they have a moral and theological argument that drives them? Is that too
strong?
JAMES: No, I think it isn't. I'm not sure
how far I set out with that i ntention. When
I began The Children of Men, I didn't set
out to write a Christian book. I set out to
deal with the idea I had. What would
happen to society with the end of the
human race? At the end of it, I realized I
had written a Christian fable. It was quite
a traumatic book to write. Yes, I was quite
glad to get back to murder mysteries!
WOOD: You mentioned in your autobiography that The Children of Men has
not been one of your better sellers. I'm
disappointed to know that it has not sold
as well as some of the others.
JAMES: Nor did the autobiography.
What people really want from me is a
classical detective story. But I'm very
lucky: I've always written, always, what I
wanted to write. Always. By carrying on
with my ordinary jobs, I ensured that I was
never in a position where I had to write
the next book for money. Some people do
their best work like that. I know we're all
different, but I couldn't.
WOOD: I like the oblique approach
that you take in your "fragment of an
autobiography," as you call it, rather than
giving us another one of those dreary tellall confessions so popular in our time.
There's something refreshing, it seems to
me, about using the events of an entire
year's social calendar to reflect upon your
past life.
JAMES: It wasn't a complete diary or a
complete memoir. But I needed to do it, I
needed to say these things. A lot of people
felt it was too reserved. But then I'm not a
confessional writer, except insofar as any
novelist is a confessional writer. You can't
prevent yourself from being so. I seem
never to write a book which doesn't have
a practicing Christian in it.
WOOD: You mentioned in your autobiography that there was a time when
your father stopped going to church. I
wonder whether he might be a distant
model for Dalgliesh.
JAMES: No. Not at all. I don't think
Dalgliesh had a model. I think he represents what I admire in human beings. He
has the qualities that I think are important. I have great admiration for and great
faith in high intelligence. Dalgliesh is also
sensitive, and he is compassionate without any sentimentality, which I hate. And
he's reserved, and he's a poet.
WOOD: And he's named after one of
your English teachers.
JAMES: My English teacher. Of course,
she was Scottish because it's a Scottish
name. I didn't at that time quite appreciate what a Scottish name it is. Yet he's not
in the least bit Scottish.
WOOD: In Innocent Blood, the sociologist Maurice Palfrey has a TV show called
"Dissent" where, on one particular occasion, he interviews an Anglican bishop.
There Palfrey spouts his atheistic denials
of Christian belief (if I may quote from my
own notes): "the monstrous notion that
there is a God who created us in His image,
when it is obvious that we have made Him
in our own likeness; the pathetic injustice
of blaming people for original sin, when
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they have no choice in the matter; the
laughable contradiction between the Virgin Birth and the idea that sex is so sacred
it. must be confined to marriage; and of
course the terrible doctrine of Atonement with its barbaric idea that the Son
must propitiate His Father's desire for
vengeance." After the bishop has remained virtually silent throughout this
grilling, the narrator comments: "Poor
bishop! He could only win by saying things
that he'd be too embarrassed to utter and
which neither the BBC nor the viewers—
especially the Christians—would in the
least wish to hear." Isn't this a devastating indictment of the entire church—
that one of its bishops would not answer
a vitriolic attack with a clear confession
of his own faith, and that his fellow Christians would have been scandalized if he
had?
JAMES: It's an indictment, really.
WOOD: When I first read the following
passage, I thought 1 had detected a similar kind of indictment. But now, after
reading your autobiography, 1 wonder
whether there might be a good deal of
sympathy in this description of the
bishop's own Anglicanism as "a satisfying compromise between reason and
myth, j ustif ied by the beauty of its liturgy,
a celebration of Englishness; but essentially it was the religion of liberal humanism laced with a ritual to suit each individual taste." That sounded rather close
to what I read in your autobiography.
JAMES: I think that's very true for a
certain kind of Anglican. It's the kind I am
most familiar with. Of course the growing
part of the church is charismatic and
evangelical. But I find that kind of Anglicanism very difficult, a matter of temperament, I suppose. For me, organized religion, the church, is the body within which
I can continue my personal search for
reality. I wouldn't say my personal search
for God because I'm so convinced of His
existence and of His love that I don't
doubt them. Much else has been puzzling
to me, including evil and suffering. But
the church remains the framework for my
search. Had I been born a Roman Catholic, I would still be a Roman Catholic. I
wouldn't necessarily believe in the
dogma, but I would see no reason for
throwing it over. For I would feel that, by
tradition, this is how I must run my race.
I think that so many of my friends, like me,
were brought up in Anglicanism. They
love the beauty of the liturgy, though
now, alas, it's being increasingly lost, the
order and dignity of it. Yet my friends are
not going to bail out, even if our bishops
sometimes deny the central dogmas.
WOOD: In America we have our own
denier of central dogmas, a notorious
retired Episcopal bishop named John
Shelby Spong. Another retired bishop
has recently said of him, "Bishop Spong
cannot repeat the Apostle's Creed without perjuring himself."
JAMES: I think these things are really
interesting. For example, how much of
the Creed do we accept literally? Let's
take " He came down from heaven." We
don't any longer believe that it's up there,
do we? To me, heaven is a dimension. It
isn't up or down anywhere. At least I can't
conceive it is. So, I thought: What do the
bishops say? They don't say very much,
except to exhort us to live better lives,
which is very useful, no doubt. And they
don't do that often enough. But I feel very
strongly that when we are exhorted by
politicians to behave in a certain way, we
take no notice of it and rather despise
them. That's not their job. But it amazes
me that the Archbishop of Canterbury
and other bishops don't speak up much
more firmly about matters of faith, because it's expected of them. And they
would get is more respect if they did. The
church is very weak, and when it does
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speak out, it's always somehow quasipolitical. Should you take that action or
the other? Is the government right in cutting down this or that? What the bishops
should really be saying is that we should
be looking at ourselves and our own sinfulness. If we were not sinful and selfish,
all of us, the social wrongs would be
righted.
WOOD: At the last major Anglican
gathering in 1999, Bishop Spong was terribly offended by the African bishops who
called the church to its senses by making
very clear, traditional declarations about
homosexuality. Bishop Spong wound up
virtually calling them primates in the biological rather than the ecclesial sense!
Wags in the States thus began to speak of
Spong as "culturally challenged."
JAMES: I had a friend who was there.
He said they practically came to blows.
An African flew at Spong. He was culturally challenged almost irreversibly! The
serious thing to me is that in Africa they
see homosexuality as a great sin. These
bishops have members of their congregation who have been martyred rather than
become homosexual lovers of local chiefs.
When you've seen your fellow Christians
martyred for that belief, then you get a bit
disconcerted when at the annual conference you hear Canadian, American, or
English bishops saying we should ordain
these people. There can't possibly be a
meeting of minds on this matter, can
there? Can't possibly be.
WOOD: I have heard that there are now
more Anglicans in Africa than in England.
JAMES: I can well believe that. It's
getting to be a minority religion here.
WOOD: What about the future of the
church in this country?
JAMES: Well, I can get depressed about
it. Yet there may be a renascence. If so, I
think it will have to face what to me is the
fundamental difficulty, and one of the
characters in my new book says it: People
have a belief in God and a great need for
God and a need for prayer and a need for
God's power, but I don't think they believe the theology of Christianity any
more. I honestly think they don't. They
don't really accept the theology of the
Redemption. They don't really see that
God would send his Son to the world, to
suffer this terrible death and be tortured
to death in order to redeem us. I don't
think they believe in the Virgin Birth. If
they are told to go to the Bible, they see
very conflicting reports in the Gospels.
And they have so much now that enables
them to forget about death or sorrow or
sin or the great problems. Our ancestors
sat in these dark little churches, and their
lives were "brutal, nasty, and short" and
full of pain. You had to do something
about wrongdoers, and you had the comforting feeling that they would go to hell.
And they believed they would. And if you
were good you went to heaven. Now you
see what people fill their lives with. Honestly, football is the national-international religion now. And it has all the
marks. It's got its heroes, it's got its high
priests, it's got its martyrs, it's got its
rituals, it's got its theology.
WOOD: 1 see mere kids buying £40
[$60] T-shirts celebrating Manchester's
winning football [i.e., soccer] team.
JAMES: Exactly. And then there's shopping and do-it-yourself, and holidays and
stores and pop music. So they're able to
stamp out these deep questions. But when
aterrible disaster happens, it's very often
to the church that they look. The social
workers come to counsel, but people recognize that something else is needed.
WOOD: Or they collapse into the kind
of sentimentalism that followed Princess
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Diana's death and that you decried in
your autobiography.
JAMES: Absolutely.
WOOD: The tons of flowers were placed
right here in Kensington Gardens [which
our restaurant overlooked], weren't they?
JAMES: There were flowers all around.
The interesting thing is that it wasn't a
great field of flowers but a field of plastic
and tissue paper. They were never even
undone; it was all papers, a field of plastic. She was not, how do you say, a lady
whom I admired, although I was sorry for
her. I think that Prince Charles should
never have married her. A disastrous
match. To that extent he was at fault. But
I am quite sure that, when he did marry
her, he intended to be faithful and that he
did his best.
WOOD: When we lived here in 1987-88,
it was evident that their marriage had
already begun to be an affair of separate
lives. We'd see pictures of her attending
rock concerts and sitting among the
screaming crowds as if she belonged
there. She struck me as a nice but rather
empty girl, but maybe that's too harsh.
JAMES: Yes,shewasaverydisturbed
young woman. I think partly because she
was so harmed in childhood: her mother
walking out on her, and the very acrimonious divorce that followed. That harmed
them all so much. She was totally without
any education.
WOOD: We've read that Prince Charles
has declared that he and Camilla Parker
Bowles will not marry. Is this because the
nation would not have her as a prospective queen?
JAMES: I think it may well be.
WOOD: We joke that Prince Charles
will probably be a nursing home resident
when he finally becomes king.
JAMES: He very likely may be, they
have such a long-lived family.
WOOD: What do you make of my suggestion that liberalism of the classic kind
has a certain canker at its core—namely,
an unwillingness to define the good, an
eagerness to give all men the freedom to
achieve this undefined freedom in their
own way, no matter how outrageous. Is
that a fair criticism?
JAMES: Yes, I think that is a fair criticism. But of course liberalism doesn't
pretend to be religious because it says
you can do exactly what you like as long
as you don't hurt others. Whereas religion says you can do exactly what you
like, as long as you don't harm yourself as
well as others or disobey God. It's a different kind of paradigm, isn't it?
WOOD: St. Augustine's famous motto,
as you know, was "Love God and do what
you will." But that's a different kind of
doing "exactly what you like." Loving God
means that we will put all of our other
loves in order, and that this will produce
the kind of freedom which puts real constraints on some of our loves. Our contemporary world, by contrast, regards all
constraint as a loss of freedom.
JAMES: We've bandied these words
around and talked a great deal about the
necessity of love but, in many of my books,
I show how dangerous obsessive love
can be.
WOOD: Your novels demonstrate that
fact ever so powerfully. But where do
such theological insights come from?
They seem to well up naturally in your
novels. Do they have a specific source?
Or do they spring from a lifelong existence in the church?
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JAMES: I think they must come partly
from real infant childhood, from a childhood in which every Sunday 1 went to
church. And of course every school day
began with an act of worship. I come from
a strong Anglican family, so that was bred
in me. But I also think that a natural interest in God was planted in me, a natural
longing to believe in Him, to feel He was
there. It's come from a lifelong experience
of praying for help and receiving that
help. But as you probably gathered, I do
find huge difficulty with much of the
dogma. Recently I thought, "I will go back
to the Gospels and read them as if I were
coming to them fresh and see what I think
about this man they portray." And it was
interesting because I was led to an immense admiration for him. Not a feeling
that I was reading about somebody who
was the incarnate Son of God. I felt there
were certain things like the destruction
of the swine and the cursing of the fig tree
that were almost petulant: surely that
was not God's behavior! And then, of
course, you get the story of the Passion:
"Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do." Here you feel, whether he
was divine in the sense which the creed
suggests he is, here is somebody who
should be worshipped and followed.
WOOD: C.S.Lewissaidthat.afterspending a lifetime reading Greek and Roman
myths about rising and dying gods, he
found it impossible to regard the New
Testament as a mythic book. It certainly
has its mythic elements, but "crucified
under Pontius Pilate" is not a mythic
claim.
JAMES: And the great mystery of the
empty tomb which is at the heart of Christianity. How far are any of us entitled to
call ourselves Christians if we don't affirm
the physical resurrection?
WOOD: Speaking of such fundamental
religious matters, I notice that your nov-
els are larded with quotations from
Shakespeare, as we should perhaps expect. But I was happily surprised by the
wonderful quotation you lift from Bunyan
in Innocent Blood. Would you have read
Bunyan as a young child?
JAMES: Yes, as a child.
WOOD: But it has remained locked in
your head so precisely all these years?
JAMES: No. It's probably locked there,
and then I probably look it up and make
sure I have it right. It comes like so many
quotations.
WOOD: It's from Part II of The Pilgrim's
Progress, the usually unread part of
Bunyan, and it's a splendid warning
against all attempts to bypass the hard
and steep road to truth: "Some also have
wished that the next way to their father's
house were here [in a green meadow filled
with lilies], and that they might be
troubled no more with either hills or
mountains to go over, but the way is the
way, and there is an end."
JAMES: I know.
WOOD: It's marvelous. My wife and I
are Baptists, and he's our only great Baptist writer.
JAMES: Yours is a much less compromising religion, isn't it? And therefore
you have fewer of these problems.
WOOD: We have our own problems, of
course, when it comes to authority. President Clinton's Baptist pastor in Arkansas,
for example, offered no clear declaration
that the president's public repentance
should have first occurred in the church,
nor that his candor about his sin should
have drastic consequences, both in the
church and in the world. Even we Baptists
could use a few bishops who are willing at
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times to say No, especially in matters
moral and doctrinal!
vices consist of a concert followed by a
lecture.
JAMES: As long as they do! If you had
ours, they wouldn't.
JAMES: The church I often go to, All
Saints MargaretStreet.isavery fine church
in which the Creed and the Gloria are
often sung in Latin. They have the Angelus, and they have a professional choir.
The priest doesn't like it when people ring
up and ask what the music is, because
that is not what you are supposed to be
going to church for. 1 absolutely agree. Of
course, I think the Eucharist has to be the
heart of the action; and I suppose this is
also true in the Baptist church too, that
Holy Communion is the heart of the worship? Or is it?
WOOD: You may be interested to hear
that our daughter and son-in-law have
both become Anglicans, Episcopalians
as we say, for reasons you will find interesting. They argue that the average evangelical Christian service of worship makes
them feel like spectators rather than participants, whereas in Episcopal liturgy, in
Anglican liturgy, they are actively engaged
and involved from the moment of the
procession to the final recession. Of
course, our daughter is a very good musician, and she often sings in the choir. But
she makes the valid point that Anglican
worship engages all five of her senses—
and thus her entire bodily existence—in
rightly glorifying God. She and her husband are either genuflecting, or making
the sign of the cross, or singing the liturgical responses, or listening to the homily, and sometimes they are even smelling
the incense! The Anglican service doesn't
stand or fall upon the quality of the sermon, as so often happens in many Protestant services.
JAMES: Of course the Eucharist is the
central service. But you do not have that
same degree of participation?
WOOD: Our own congregation has
monthly communion, which is much more
frequently than in many Baptist churches.
MRS. WOOD: But our Baptist church
does have a liturgy, a very modest one with
a processional and a litany. Yet you often
have Baptist services where, except for the
hymns, there would be no other active
participation within the congregation.
WOOD: You may have heard the nasty
jibe that many Protestant worship ser-
WOOD: Honestly, it's not. It's secondary, even at best. The Swiss theologian
Karl Barth put our case well when he said
that the sermon should be the central
Protestant sacrament. It's the point at
which, we believe, the Word of God comes
to life in a vital and ongoing way. There we
encounter the living Christ as He engages
us and our world. That's a risky claim, of
course, because preachers who discourse
on current events or spout their personal
opinions destroy the true act of worship.
But we can certainly be agreed that the
fundamental meaning of the word
eucharist is "grace gift," and that in the
Redemption wrought by our Lord on His
Cross we have received the supreme favor. I would add that this unparalleled
Gift enables us to understand the nature
of all other good gifts. Perhaps it is not
inappropriate to observe, in conclusion,
that you have received one of God's good
gifts in having just completed your 80th
year of life while retaining sprightly health.
JAMES: I think I have. I have received
a huge blessing. I get the old aches and
pains—who doesn't?—though I'm very,
very lucky, and I thank God. I think very
often that the basis of my religious belief
is gratitude.
Fall 2002
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