The Indictment of Mark Powell

Abstract

The Indictment of Mark Powell Denton Loving (bio) Inside St. John University's Abbey, in Collegeville, Minnesota, stands a particularly memorable statue of John the Baptist. This version of the saint is an emaciated, haunting form. Towering over visitors to the church, the bronze image is tall and thin and represents John during his time in the desert when he survived on a diet of locusts and wild honey. John's right hand extends forward as if in invitation to all who enter. Mark Powell and I spent a week in July 2010 as writing fellows at the Collegeville Institute, in association with St. John's. One evening, while exploring the abbey, I found Mark standing before this image of John the Baptist, their fingers stretched toward each other, touching tip to tip. Mark told me this statue felt to him like an indictment. I remember being surprised by his choice of words. I knew by Mark's countenance that the feeling had to do with his faith, but in my view, Mark already exemplified the kind of person I wanted to be. Foremost, he was more like Christ than most of the Christians I had encountered in my life. I knew this from my earliest conversations with Mark, although it took me a while to comprehend the difference between these two very different and sometimes opposing ideas. Eventually, I understood that to Mark, the starved form of John the Baptist manifested a number of difficult questions: "What have you done for your fellow man? What have you given up? Have you hungered with your brother?" These were not new questions. These are the questions Mark carries with him always. In an article Mark wrote for Yale Alumni Magazine, he addressed where he believed men like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Deitreich Bonhoeffer would find today's church. Mark answered: "I think they might find the church in the ghettos of major cities where Catholic workers and Quaker communities stand in solidarity with the poor, or among the rural poor of Appalachia where local activists literally risk their lives to end Mountain Top Removal mining, or amid the modern Tom Joads circulating between migrant camps as they move through the central valley of California. I am certain they would find the church in the [End Page 35] slums of Lagos or Sao Paulo, in the wastelands of Sudan and Chad. Whether or not they might find traditional 'Christians' wouldn't really be relevant: they would find people imitating Christ." It's this imitation of Christ that drives Mark as a person and as a writer. Mark's novels are undeniably bleak. His characters are weary and beaten down by the world. Emotionally, they are as hungry and emaciated as the statue of John the Baptist. But they are beautiful, too. They are beautiful in their weaknesses, in their battles, and in their own quests for salvation. Mark has often advised me that the greatest risk yields the greatest reward. I would dismiss advice like this from many people, but it's difficult to dismiss Mark when you see him live by these words and put his faith to action: When I first met Mark in 2006 at the Appalachian Writers Workshop, he was pursuing graduate studies at Yale Divinity School. I later learned he had given up a good job and a comfortable life in Charleston, South Carolina, in order to follow a calling to better understand his faith. In 2007 he traveled to Colombia with Christian Peacemaker Teams, where he volunteered in an accompaniment program where his simple presence as an American in a Colombian village potentially saved Colombian lives. And for the past three years, Mark has taught fiction writing to inmates at the Lawtey Correctional Institute in Raiford, Florida, where he jokes, there's no dropping the class—just parole. I list these examples of Mark's work to show he is a man engaged with the world, not detached from it. When he articulates what he believes Christianity to be about, it isn't a place that can be found, but rather a way that must be continuously followed. I have come to see Mark's...