"The Finale" by Calvin Miller

Calvin Miller’s trilogy The Singer, published in the 1970s, took the basic accounts of the books of the New Testament and turned them into epic myth. The Singer was based on the gospels. The Song was set in the world of the Book of Acts and the epistles. And The Finale is a mythologized account of the Book of Revelation, although it must have been something of a challenge to take a text that already existed in almost-mythic language and extend it.

What Miller did in The Finale was to simplify the story of Revelation to its most basic narrative. The old world of Terra is dying, and a new Terra is being born. Before that can happen, there will be a final battle between the forces of the Singer and the forces of the World-Hater. The story includes horrific battles and destruction, but the Singer overcomes evil and darkness, and New Terra is born.

Miller (1936-2012) was a pastor at Westside Church in Omaha, Nebraska for 25 years and then joined the faculty of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for seven years and later the Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. He was the author of some 40 books on popular theology, writing, and other subjects, but was best known for The Singer Trilogy. 

The trilogy was extremely popular, remaining in print for some two decades and then republished in the first decade of this century. But the cultural context for its first publication was very different from contemporary times. The Jesus movement was at full tide, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were enjoying a huge burst of interest by young Baby Boomers (there was even an animated movie based on The Lord of the Rings), and the first Star Wars movies were released shortly after. 

Politics and the world economy were in broad upheaval as well. OPEC had implemented the first oil embargo in 1973, inflation and interest rates were in double digits for most of the decade, the Watergate scandal had brought a President down, and the decade ended with American hostages being held more than a year by Iranian Islamic radicals. That was the environment Miller’s mythic trilogy was born into and likely somewhat propelled by.

Calvin Miller

It’s also worth noting that the trilogy had both a direct and indirect influence on Christian literature. While most writers of Christian fantasy today will point to Tolkien or the King Arthur stories as primary inspirations, Miller’s epic stories (told in a kind of poetic form) have been an influence as well. I was surprised at how much Miller’s epic reminded me of the stories of C.S. Lakin and similar authors.

The Singer Trilogy is both a period story, very much the child of the decade in which it was born, and a more contemporary story as well. Using the mythic or epic narrative format allowed Miller to escape being forgotten. And it is still a good story, and an interesting story, even if you don’t know the New Testament.

Related:

“The Singer” by Calvin Miller.

“The Song” by Calvin Miller.

"The Song" by Calvin Miller

The first volume of Calvin Miller’s mid-1970s The Singer Trilogy was a retelling of the Gospel story in mythic or epic form. The second volume, The Song, focuses on the period covered by the New Testament books of Acts and the epistles, and especially the persecutions in Rome. 

The Song tells the story of four characters – Sarkon, whom we met in The Singer when he was called World-Hater; Madman, the character from The Singer who was liberated from the demons that possessed him; and a new character, Everyman, a young man much enamored with science and who rejects any notion of a Creator; and Anthem, an original follower of the Singer. The story begins in the Great Walled City, the place where the Singer was killed and rose again. Soon a persecution against the Singer’s followers breaks out.

Calvin Miller

Everyman and Anthem sail to Urbis, capital of Terra, “the shining temple-city of all the mountain gods.” One of the passengers is Praxis, known as the Builder, who is designing a great temple for Urbis and soon will be commissioned to sculpt a statue of its greatest god – one that bears the likeness of Sarkon.

The Song reads almost like a fantasy story, and one wonders how much Miller may have influenced whole generations of Christian fantasy writers. And while it may be tempting to identify the fictional characters with New Testament counterparts, the author did not write an exact transposing of the events and people of the New Testament.

Miller (1936-2012) was a pastor at Westside Church in Omaha, Nebraska for 25 years and then joined the faculty of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for seven years and later the Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. He was the author of some 40 books on popular theology, writing, and other subjects, but was best known for The Singer Trilogy.

The Song is an entertaining and thought-provoking volume in its own right, apart from its predecessor or its successor. Miller had an essential grasp of human nature, and his characters seem almost stunningly contemporary.

Next week: “The Finale” by Calvin Miller.

Related:

“The Singer” by Calvin Miller.

“The Singer” by Calvin Miller

Context is important.

In the mid-1970s, national politics had taken a decidedly dark turn with Watergate. The economy was something of a basket case, with an inflation rate of just over 11 percent in 1974 and more than nine percent in 1975, partially driven by the spike in world oil prices following the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74. 

The Jesus Movement was surging, beginning to approach its high-water mark. Nostalgia was big. Fantasy was big; the Baby Boom had begun to discover J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. George Lucas had begun to write and film what would become Star Wars in 1977. Into all of this cultural and religious ferment came a book, The Singer, a mythical and almost poetic retelling of the life and death of Jesus, written by a relatively unknown pastor in Omaha. 

Along with the companion The Song and The Finale, Calvin Miller’s trilogy could be found in both general and Christian bookstores into the 1990s. A 25^thanniversary edition was published in 2001, and there have been additional editions since then. 

Calvin Miller

The main character in The Singer is the Singer, sometimes called the Troubadour. He’s called to sing the song that hasn’t been heard before, and experiences some of the well-known events of the New Testament, except told in mythic form. Events include the healing of the demoniac, the healing of a cripple, and the meeting with Mary Magdalene. The allusions and the scenes would have been broadly familiar in the 1970s, but perhaps less so today. 

At the center of the story is the conflict between the Singer and the character known as “World-Hater,” who offers various temptations and appears disguised as the high priest who condemns the Singer to death. The singer is hung on a wall, and after his death and collapse of the wall and the machine supporting it, his body isn’t found.

Miller was a pastor at Westside Church in Omaha, Nebraska for 25 years and then joined the faculty of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for seven years and later the Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. He was the author of some 40 books on popular theology, writing, and other subjects, but was best known for The Singer Trilogy. 

The Singer is a beautiful story, told beautifully and written well. It’s more like reading a song than it is reading poetry, but that doesn’t detract from the story.

Next week: The Song, the second volume of The Singer Trilogy by Calvin Miller.

Dear Calvin Miller

Dear Calvin Miller,

I hope it’s okay to call you Calvin. Reverend Miller is a bit formal. You don’t know me, but I know you, and you have had something to do with my life.

I just finished reading your Letters to Heaven: Reaching Beyond the Great Divide. I have to admit, with a subtitle like that, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. But over the years I've read The Singer Trilogy, Letters to a Young Pastor, the Philippian Fragment and quite a few others of your books, and I figured that this book would be something other than what the subtitle suggested. And I was right.

You’ve written letters to 26 people who have died, and most of them have gone on to heaven. Some of these people are well known – Todd Beamer, Farrah Fawcett, C.S. Lewis, Norman Vincent Peale, Madeleine L’Engle. Some should be better known – Paul Brand, Harold Shaw, George Sayer, Jim Elliott. And some are unnamed – like the girl in the iron lung, and Mr.Achiever.

Each of the 26, you say, touched you in a significant way, had an influence upon you, or made your life different and often better. Like the experiences of life itself, not all of these people and the people associated with them were positive, but all were important. Some you knew, and knew well; some you never met.

Calvin, I found myself strangely moved, and moved often, as I read your book. I understood the book and the reason for it better than I anticipated. You’re writing in the full winter of your life; I’m beginning to feel the first touches of frost. You’re leaving a kind of testimony, because it’s important to name the people who made a difference in our lives. Especially in the winter.

I have to confess something. While I liked them all, two letters stood out for me. One was to Dickey, your brother, the brother who drowned when you were not yet four years old. I cried with that letter, Calvin. I haven’t had that kind of loss, but you made me experience yours.

The second letter was the one to Oscar Wilde. I was surprised when I saw it listed in the table of contents. But not when I read it. You grasped his tortured soul; you understood how the cage of prison ultimately destroyed him. And you recognized “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” for exactly what it is, one of the finest poems in the English language. I cried when I read that letter, and I read it four times.

We may never meet this side of heaven, Calvin, but I hope we will on the other side. If such things are allowed, I’d like to talk with you about The Singer Trilogy, I’d like to play ball with you and Dickey, and I’d like to sit next to you as we read “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” together. And for all we know, perhaps Oscar will be there to read it with us.

Sincerely,

Your Reader Friend

Glynn Young