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... ave naively accepted the goodness of God without wondering what that truly means to their beliefs and how such a belief survives in the world they live in everyday. This was an imperfection of the church as an institution, which is something Stevie came to recognize as no longer part of God, but as part of man who had tainted his message of love and acceptance. Sanford Sternlicht, professor at Syracuse University and author of Stevie Smith, noted, She was progressively disillusioned by Christianity.
She saw dishonesty in the churches, and disagreed with the conventional construct of God as demeaning, vain, jealous, revengeful, (or) eager to sacrifice the innocent (Sternlicht 106). This slowly developed distaste for Christianity did not come out of her disbelief in God, only in the God who was presented to her by those involved in a particular religion. Smith was not an atheist, and she even once mentioned to a friend, how very imperfect an agnostic I am (Barbera 214). However, as an imperfect agnostic and a non-atheist, one is only left the option that she is a Christian, which is also a term she chose not to associate herself with very often at all. As a matter of fact, Smith was so abhorred by the confusing ideas adopted and supported by Christianity that she created a poem, for which she has become known, entitled Oh Christianity Christianity. This poem features multiple questions posed to God that He does not answer.
Smith ponders, How could he take our sins upon Him? /... Was he horrible? Did he feel guilty? / (because if he was) Man without sin? Perfect Man without sin is not what we are (Smith 102). These questions Smith brought up deal heavily with sin and death and the wages thereof and how Jesus, the perfect son of God and Son of Man, was able to take on mortal sins and live as a mortal human. Once again, existentialism has polluted this situation because once Jesus became a knowledgeable individual completely cognitively entranced in His situation, he changed the circumstances from what they were.
Thus is the logic of the existentialist. For Jesus to have come down to Earth and behaved as though He were mortal, Smith would argue He needed to not be informed who is Father was. No mortal boasted familial blood from the veins of the Lord of the Universe so this gave Jesus an unfair advantage to being a mortal over others on earth. Smith hosts multiple amounts of questions about Christianity and the churches and why no one within the church answers her questions.
The answer to that lies in the reaction of churches in the last century. Many churches have slowly veered away from the word of the Lord as set forth in the Bible, allowing them to be governed by a political office as opposed to the Old and New Testaments. Smiths complaint with the church was its continual separation from the Lord and studying of the Word as opposed to a more separatist notion supporting the apocalyptic teachings of Revelation and the hell that can be sent down my God to strike down those who doubt God. In the same way Stevie Smith took some time to get to know herself and have the courage to be herself, it is similarly that way with those who are coming to the Lord. Smith struggles with concepts of the Lord because she does not know the Lord and it is virtually impossible to hold one on one conversation with Him so as to get to know who He is and what His plan for us is. Smith must rely on the teachings of the priests and clergymen in the churches she disagrees with due to the material and quite non-existential attitude hosted by the churches during her lifetime.
Stevie Smith is striving to find the truth in a world where it is better to be safe than truthful. According to Paul Tillich, Christian theology should decide for truth against safety, even if safety is consecrated and supported by the churches (Tillich 141). Some religions have strayed from the idea of relaying Gods word to herding others to one central church location and Smith feels as though God is getting left behind in the brimstone and damnation speeches utilized to attract crowds and bring the masses to church. So this poet tried to communicate with the God of the Christian orthodox slightly differently.
She wrote poem after poem calling upon Him, demanding he speak, even speaking for Him once. Michael Tathum, author of That One Must Speak Lightly, quoted Smith as having said her goal as a poet was to sustain a dialogue with God in which there was no pretense that a comfortable response was possible (Tathum 323 - 4). Speak she did, numerous times in numerous ways, each time awaiting a possible response other than the dirty looks she received from Christians on the church pews who were aghast she would even attempt to question God. In response to negative reactions Smith received from Christians, Paul Tillich stated, One does not feel spiritually threatened by something which is not an element of oneself (Tillich 141).
Saying that were true, then each Christian Stevie Smith met also harbored their doubts about the church organization or about Christianity itself. Smith does not seem to nor is there any evidence to support that she does not believe in God entirely. Likewise, those who felt threatened by her comfort of self and willingness to question were not immediately doomed individuals who did not believe in God, they simply desired to explore another avenue of divine analysis. Smith did not desire to analyze whether or not God existed, rather why He did what He chose to do and why we as His people seem to be losing what our purpose is here on Earth. Frances Spalding, author of Stevie Smith, argues Stevie was approaching topics with a strategy, confined within the areas of rational discourse regarding subject matters, that belong in the language of faith (Spalding 242).
Perhaps Spalding is correct. Perhaps Smith is stabbing randomly into the dark to try to make sense of the Christianity, God, and the role of the two in her life either together or separate. However, Smith was most likely intelligent enough to have been familiar with the analogy of comparing apples to oranges and she knew better than to put matters of faith into sound logistical answers and vice-versa. Stevie Smith was simply trying to make sense of a world slowly becoming devoid of church and God in the only way she knew how. Her existentialist views are no longer applicable to the successful shelf life of a church congregation. Smith believed humanity was full of generally good individuals.
She believed God was a generally good God, who desired to help and not hurt those who were made in His image at the time of the divine creation. She did not believe that the church was the most appropriate venue for dispensing Gods word due to their clash of presentation styles, she being an existentialist and many churches shying away from that form of preaching style today. By questioning the motives of God and the reasons as to why something has been done on Earth, Stevie Smith came across to many readers as an atheist without any interest in the Christian God. Stevie Smith dared to look beyond what was handed to her. She pressed the limits of what was socially acceptable within her class and status, refusing to accept what was handed to her and accept it on the basis that everyone else was.
She refused to be a native chanting that her God was good without really knowing if He was. She refused to leap into an ocean that had consumed so many others without knowing whether or not she desired to be there in the first place. As an existentialist, she knew who she was and what she believed in and refused to compromise her beliefs for anyone or anything regardless of how unacceptable her action seemed to be. Bibliography: Works Cited Barbera, Jack and William Mc Brien. STEVIE. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Mahoney, John L. Seeing Into the Life of Things: Essays on Religion and Literature. New York: Fordham University Press, 1998. Smith, Stevie. New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith. New York: New Directions Publishing Company, 1937.
Spalding, Frances. Stevie Smith. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988. Sternlicht, Sanford.
Stevie Smith. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990.
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