Others may give up blogging for Lent, but I've decided to increase my blogging instead. The idea came from my minister, who has asked us not to give something up, but to take something up instead. So I'm taking up an increased pace of blogging, as well as redirecting the focus of the blog. By the way, I am not going to rename the blog, as I think that could cause some confusion. Just bear in mind that many posts will be of a journal-type nature during Lent. I am going to provide large boldface titles to make the Lent posts stand out from the rest of the blog.
I am going to be reviewing John Bunyan's classical masterpiece The Pilgrim's Progress. It is a thirty-four chapter work, which fits well in the forty days of Lent. So I'm going to handle one chapter a day except Sundays (which are not counted in the forty days anyway) and Wednesdays, when I'm going to be at my church's Bible Study, and blogging will be a distraction that day. In the process of this review, I am going to reread the book (the chapters are not long), and post each evening. I'm reading a "translation" of the book into modern English, by L. Edward Hazelbaker; the chapters seem to be a lot longer when read in seventeenth-century English.
First some background:
Who was John Bunyan, and why did he write The Pilgrim's Progress?
John Bunyan was a Puritan, or Separatist preacher in England. In 1660, freedom of worship was taken away from the English Puritans, and Bunyan was imprisoned for twelve years. Refusing a release conditioned on his giving up his preaching, he wrote Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners in 1666. He may have written the first half of The Pilgrim's Progress at this time as well. He was released in 1672, but after a renewal of persecution, was imprisoned again for six months in 1677. He wrote the second half (if not all) of The Pilgrim's Progress from this second period in prison.
Why read The Pilgrim's Progess?
Quoting from the appendix: "The Pilgrim's Progress has been translated into many languages and is held in high regard around the world. There was a time when there was hardly an English-speaking Christian household without a copy. Next to the Bible, this classic allegory has been the best-selling Christian book and the leading allegory in all of English literature. Its influence can be seen in Christian writing, preaching, literary criticism, commentary, and song lyrics spanning the centuries since its writing."