I wanted to like this book. I tried to like this book. I was captivated by Surprised By Oxford, and I was prepared for her second book to be quite different. I simply didn’t appreciate the differences.
While Surprised By Oxford was filled with independent thought and phraseology, Holy Is The Day is a good deal more domesticated on both counts. I don’t know what to make of that. Weber certainly seems more settled within the faith and within herself in this book, which is a delight to see. However, her thought seems to have conformed itself to the faith in such a way that the individuality which I found so attractive in the first book is absent from this work. I was hoping that as she matured in the faith, she would explain what is familiar to me in fresh ways. Instead, in this book, at least, she explained what is familiar to me in quite familiar ways.
I find this familiarity particularly frustrating because poor Weber had to give up so much in terms of career to write about Christianity. Given how much she had to give up to write about the faith, I was hoping for insights that weren’t so readily available. Since literature is intentionally a rather God-less discipline, Weber’s choice to write about her conversion seems to have closed many professional doors. What makes this blacklisting even more frustrating is that Weber, in her rather Anglo-Catholic way, does not stress any divisive doctrines. The poor woman has been blacklisted for writing about realities that appeal to most anyone; Weber’s writing does not deal with such matters as conviction of sin or the blood earnest call of the gospel; she writes about matters such as beauty and kind providences and it seems that even this is enough to raise red flags in academia. Having been involved in literature, I’m not at all surprised. So much of the discipline seems aimed at finding novel interpretations that exalt the self and identity over all else and nothing could be more hostile to the faith than exalting the self and identity above all else.
If you are interested in reading this book, read both the first and the second chapter. The first is by far the best and while quite different from Surprised By Oxford, I still found myself turning the pages quickly. The second chapter was more typical of the book and will give you a better insight into whether you would gain from it.