Marshall Tankersley

Joseph Pearce is a prolific author formerly from the United Kingdom. Mr. Pearce has written a multitude of biographies and studies of various historical figures, ranging from G.K. Chesterton to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Above all, Mr. Pearce is a dedicated convert to Christianity who seeks to apply his faith to his academia. 

ME: First of all, I do want to thank you again for taking the time to come down and speak to us.

PEARCE: Thank you, my pleasure.

ME: First question that I have: as a Christian academic, you’ve had a lot of experience working with varying types of academic programs. Where are you based now?

PEARCE: Well, I work from my home in South Carolina not that far from here, under an hour’s drive, but I do work for various entities. I’m a senior editor with the Augustine Institute which is based in Denver, Colorado, I’m the editor of the online journal of the Cardinal Newman Society (Catholic educational think-tank), and I’m the Tolkien and Lewis Chair of Literary Studies at Holy Apostles College in Connecticut. I edit a magazine called St. Austin Review, so I do lots of different things, basically.

ME: Your life since your conversion has been filled to bursting with both academia and Christianity. Do you have any advice that you’d give to anyone else looking to go into Christian academics?

PEARCE: That’s a great question. Yes, I think that you need to be aware that if you want to live as an active, devout Christian and have Christianity expressive of your life, not something you have to keep hidden in a closet, you need to be aware of the sort of institution you want to teach at if you go into academics. For instance, personally speaking, I don’t think that I would be at home in teaching at a secular school because I do like to be able to be outspoken about the Christian dimension of things, certainly teaching literature. Most of the great writers have been Christians, and Christianity is expressed in various ways in their work, and in the modern academy these days (the secular academy), there’s been a conscious, shall we say, intolerance of the Christian dimension of the great works of literature. I would find that I would probably be expected to self-censor myself if I wanted to talk about the Christian dimension of literature at many secular schools. If other people want to go into academics and take their Christianity seriously, they might want to look at good, solid, independent Christian schools. That’s just why we are here at Southern Wesleyan University, for instance.

ME: You’ve written also that G.K. Chesterton specifically was instrumental in bringing you to Christianity. What specifically about Chesterton attracted you?

PEARCE: I was very anti-Christian when I was growing up, so nothing would have enticed me to read an overtly Christian book. But I became interested in Chesterton and [Hilaire] Belloc’s political position, their understanding of politics and economics (what’s called distributism), and it’s based upon the social teaching of the Catholic Church. So I started reading Chesterton just for the politics and economics, but I found myself charmed by him. In fact, there’s a wonderful passage in C.S. Lewis’ autobiography Surprised by Joy where Lewis speaks about the first time he read Chesterton, which was in the trenches during World War One (he reads a book of Chesterton’s essays). He said although he was an atheist, he couldn’t help liking Chesterton, and that Chesterton had more common sense than all moderns put together except, of course, [for] his Christianity. Well, that was exactly how I felt. I didn’t buy into Chesterton’s Christianity, but everything else he said made such sense. And of course I began to realize that the more I read Chesterton, the more it made sense because of his Christianity, so bit by bit, if you like, I was seduced into the Christian vision by the reading of Chesterton. Under grace, Chesterton is the single biggest influence upon my conversion. In that sense, my biography of Chesterton was an act of thanksgiving: to God for giving me Chesterton, but also to Chesterton for giving me God.

ME: That’s a really profound way of putting it. G.K. Chesterton’s work seem to have a timeless quality about it, as it can be enjoyed about as much today as it was when he initially wrote it. Do you have any insights about why you think that is?

PEARCE: I think that Chesterton (to use the technical term) was a realist philosopher. In other words, he believed in the perennial philosophy of Christianity, but he applied to Christianity the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and then St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. This realist philosophy is basically that metaphysical realities such as love, goodness, truth, beauty – all of these metaphysical realities are realities, they’re not just human constructs. That realism, if you like, offers an insight into reality, which is timeless. As Chesterton sees everything in these terms, he is showing us the real in that profound way. And of course the real is something that is going to be relevant in any generation.

ME: That’s sort of like what you talked about in your lecture earlier, especially about the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant and how that same kind of idea bleeds through even to today, and how democratically we need to consider those who have come before as well. Chesterton isn’t the only famous individual you’ve studied or written about too, you’ve done lots of biographies from all sorts of thinkers, writers, and individuals. What other figures are you most proud to have been able to write about?

PEARCE: I had the opportunity to meet Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian dissident writer (won the Nobel Prize for literature), a great hero of mine when I was growing up. I went out to Moscow to interview him for my biography of him; that was one of the greatest moments of my life. I do feel honored to have had the opportunity to meet him, interview him, and write his biography. That certainly comes to mind, but as a convert to Christianity myself, I’m fascinated by Christian converts. So a lot of my work has been about writers, mostly literary converts, writers who are converts to Christianity.

ME: Out of those, whose story do you find the most fascinating?

PEARCE: You know, sometimes people ask my favorite, and when I answer them they look bemused. Even those who’ve read most of my books, because it’s a book most people haven’t read of mine. I read a biography of a poet called Roy Campbell, and most haven’t heard of Roy Campbell (that’s one of the reasons I wrote the book, because people need to hear about him) but he had a very interesting life. He was involved in the Spanish Civil War, he saved the archives of St. John of the Cross from destruction by the Communists, and then he just lived in South Africa, England, Provence, Spain, and Portugal, so he was such a very, very interesting man. Grappling with him in writing his biography was very special and I think I did a very good job with that particular biography. I also think I’m very happy with my biography of Hilaire Belloc, Old Thunder, so that’s another one that springs to mind.

ME: Continuing on the theme of biographies, as a biographer, what would you say are some of the singular benefits and challenges that come with that style of writing?

PEARCE: Well, I love people, and the beautiful thing about writing a biography is that you get to know the person you’re writing about very well. If you’re doing your research thoroughly—reading just about everything that they’ve written, everything written about them, getting access to unpublished letters, unpublished manuscripts— then this is a great adventure into becoming friends with people. I sometimes say jokingly that most of my best friends are dead, in the sense that you get to know Chesterton, you get to know Belloc, you get to know these people when you spend six months basically living with them throughout the whole of your waking life, and then communicate that knowledge in the writing of the biography. I love the fact that it gives me the ability to get to know people that are as fascinating as the people I’ve studied.

ME: You did mention C.S. Lewis earlier, and I wanted to ask a question specifically about Lewis and his experience. C.S. Lewis once said that joy was a primary factor in his conversion, yet it seems that a lot of modern Christianity tends to avoid talking about Godly joy much. What is your experience with joy in your Christian life and walk?

PEARCE: Well, I concur completely with C.S. Lewis’ account of the desire for joy and the experience of joy and the memory of the experience of joy as being crucial to the life of the Christian. So thanks to Chesterton and the way that he opened my eyes to wonder, and the dilation of the soul that’s a consequence of that wonder, that I’ve had many such joyful experiences. This is only possible through the infusion of grace, and I always remember to thank God for this experience of joy, but the Christian life should be a life full of joy. Even in moments of suffering, and in fact perhaps especially in moments of suffering, there’s this joy. Because joy is not the same thing as mere happiness, mere pleasure, joy is something that goes much deeper. It’s something which gives you a sense of peace and serenity and trusting in the love of God and in the glory of the cosmos as something which is divinely spoken into being, every moment, by the will of God. That knowledge becomes a wellspring of joy even more during times of trial and tribulation than times of so-called pleasure and happiness.

ME: That’s very true. What have you perhaps learned in your pursuit of joy? Is there anything specific that you do to try and draw your attention back to joy instead of focusing on external troubles?

PEARCE: It’s certainly about having an active prayer life, always offering up your labors every day to the glory of God, and also asking for God to open your eyes to the wonder of the cosmos and also that my words would always be His words, and if you have that intimate relationship with Christ on a daily basis, your life is infused by joy, with joy, because the joy is just the manifestation in our psyches of the presence of Christ. That presence of Christ within us is only possible if you actually have a living relationship with Him.

ME: That’s very profound and very true. Thank you for that. Finally, one last question about G.K. Chesterton himself. He’s written a lot in both the fiction and non-fiction genres. Do you have any particular favorites from both that stand out to you?

PEARCE: That’s a great question. The difference between that which is ‘best’ and that which is ‘favorite’ – that which is ‘best,’ the criteria for judging that has to be objective, you have to be seeking objectivity, whereas ‘favorite,’ you don’t have to be worried about that, it’s just what you subjectively like best. Certainly, ‘favorite’ – I’m a literature person, so I always tend towards the more literary works. I love Chesterton’s novels, especially The Man Who Was Thursday, so I’ve taught it many times, I love it to bits and I want to write more on it than I have (I’ve only written once, I think, on Man Who Was Thursday). I mean ideally, I’d like to write a whole book on it, but whether that ever happens… I also love his novel The Bull and the Cross. There’s a few of his poems, there’s a wonderful poem called “The Crystal,” which is Chesterton’s alarm at the fact that his wife dabbled with spiritualism after her brother committed suicide, and she was so desperate to reassure herself that he wasn’t in hell that she actually consulted a spiritualist, a crystal ball, and Chesterton was horrified that she should be doing that. There’s another one called “The Secret Music,” which is just sublime. Certainly those, but I love The Everlasting Man, I love Orthodoxy, I love his biography of St. Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas, and I love his essays. You get his collection of essays, there’s so many gems amongst Chesterton’s essays. I’m not as big a fan of the Father Brown stories as many people. I like them and I enjoy them, but they’re not up there amongst my favorites.

ME: Well, thank you again for coming by to speak to us and for taking the time out to give this interview. We all really appreciate it!

PEARCE: My pleasure!