![]() I don't use the word values to describe this. So I walked away from the Plymouth Brethren, and I've had thirty years now to think about it, and I still don't know what I think. I didn't feel it as a judgment that had the weight of Scripture or divine authority behind it. I only felt it as hostility from individuals. It was unfriendly, and I couldn't understand why. But it's hard to stay in that world and still keep one's curiosity. There was something in them that suited that temperament, that intellectual passion for a perfect and ordered world. My people were Scottish they sort of came by their Calvinism naturally. And yet you apparently felt the need to step away from it to embrace a larger circle. You seem careful not to renounce or to ridicule your strict Plymouth Brethren upbringing. In your stories, you clearly identify with the values that came out of your religious background. Leadership editor Marshall Shelley and New York pastor Gordon MacDonald, who has closely followed Keillor's work as a writer and performer, visited Keillor's American Humor Institute office and asked him about his spiritual and professional pilgrimage. ![]() More recently, Keillor moved from his native Minnesota (which he calls "a Northern European nation") to Manhattan, where he writes for The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, and is in his third year with his radio show "The American Radio Company." His live variety show, "A Prairie Home Companion," gained a loyal national audience in its thirteen years on American Public Radio. Keillor's books, Lake Wobegon Days, Leaving Home, and Happy to Be Here were national best sellers. Garrison Keillor's attention to detail, speech patterns, and his understanding of human nature all combine to make many of his readers feel like they have lived in his fictional town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. But there's a dichotomy between the values and the politics that is really crucial at this point. Mueller's cat sitting in the shade of an old green lawn chair, one of the ministers tells the mayor about their tour: "We've gotten an affirmation of Midwestern small-town values as something that's tremendously viable in people's lives. 'Good to see you, glad you could be here, nice of you to come, we're very honored,' they said to him, although they were guests and he was the host."Īs they walk down the alley behind Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery, past Mrs. Men in their forties mostly, a little thick around the middle, thin on top, puffy hair around the ears, some fish medallions, earth tones, Hush Puppies but more than dress, what set them apart was the ministerial eagerness, more eye contact than you were really looking for, a longer handshake, and a little more affirmation than you needed. There to greet them as they step off the bus is the mayor of Lake Wobegon, who, according to Keillor, observes: One of Garrison Keillor's stories describes the twenty-four Lutheran ministers who visit Lake Wobegon as part of their "Meeting the Pastoral Care Needs of Rural America" study tour. We will be presenting them in chronological order. We are highlighting Leadership Journal's Top 40, the best articles of the journal's 36-year history.
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