Faulkner and Religion

An examination of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, Walt Disney and William Faulkner might lead a person to the conclusion that Faulkner was the most religious of the three.  After all, Tolkien never makes mention of the Christian tradition in his fiction.  Disney goes to great effort to remove any hint of religion from his work.

Faulkner's work, however is pregnant with Christian themes.  The characters make reference to Christian figures and often are part of church communities.  He uses the name of David's son Absalom as one of his titles.  The narrative structure of his novel The Sound And The Fury takes place in Holy Week.

Tolkien was a devout Catholic whose faith was an important part of his daily life.  He took great pride in the fact that one of his sons became a priest.  But he avoided religion in Middle Earth because he saw it as a pre-Christian world.

Disney was raised in a very religious home, but never made religion a central part of his life.  He enrolled one of his daughters in a catholic school for a few years as a child, but moved her to public school when he felt she was becoming too deeply involved in the religious aspect of the education.  He did once write a devotion for Guidepost Magazine, but he never attended church.  He seems to have had some minimal form of faith.

William Faulkner became very familiar with the Bible as a child.  But he doesn't seem to have committed himself in any way to Christian practice.  He was married in a Presbyterian church, but that appears to be the extent of his religious observance.  He seems likely to have considered himself an agnostic.

For a non-religious person, the references and allusions to Christian themes are surprising in both their accuracy and their deft application.  When asked about this Faulkner said that to write about the South, one had to write about religion.  He believed, what he called the "Christian legend" to be an important way to understand the people who populated his world.

The Christianity practiced in Faulkner's narrative world is very much like that in real life.  For some of his characters, religion is a crutch and a sham.  For others, it is their consolation and hope in the midst of desperation.  The church bells ring with hypocrisy, racism, community and compassion.  And it is always ambiguous for God never clearly intervenes in the stories.

Without being a Christian, you can understand the worlds created by Tolkien and Disney.  But without a Christian background, much of Faulkner is lost.  It seems ironic that the author who arguably had the least religious faith of the three was least afraid to address it in his books.

Faulkner may have doubted the existence of God, but he certainly understood the universal hunger of people for God.