For Theirs Is the Kingdom
- Fiction
- Publisher: Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2021
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Publisher's Description
Ben Cabot, a millennial Boston lawyer in the midst of a personal crisis, is deployed to Montreal for eighteen months, where he chances on the Bishop of the Anglican Church. Mired in a multimillion-dollar project to build a metro stop and shopping mall underneath the cathedral, the Bishop asks Cabot to review his legal rights to stop a plan he adamantly opposes. Unwittingly drawn into the world of the church, Cabot asks the Bishop about an outdoor community he has seen after dark in the streets of Old Montreal. So prompts Cabot's first encounter with its enigmatic cleric, Luke Hale. The renegade priest, and once apprentice to a shaman, inspires Cabot to embark on a spiritual journey through the privileged life he is living. But when a young, charismatic American rector becomes Dean of the cathedral, money and greed jeopardize Hale's community, Cathedral in the Night. On the journey, Cabot comes to question the church's commitment to the poor, and to confront the loss of his country's moral compass in an increasingly bankrupt time.
Endorsements (5)
“Carlisle elegantly and evocatively describes the rarified world of Ben Cabot, a peripatetic Boston Brahmin who, like the great Montreal cathedral at the center of his tale, loses the ground under his feet. Amid wood-paneled walls, fine scotches, and expensive toys, Cabot slowly disassembles his spiritually burdened, privileged life. Carlisle offers his readers delicate meditations on interconnected themes, distributing his story into chapters reminiscent of Chopin's etudes. We glimpse faith in search of acts, privilege in search of duty, artifice in search of beauty, and ambition in search of purpose. Carlisle's timely and important book helps to frame today's social upheavals.”
“A personal story of a young American thrown into the world of jealousy and greed in the Episcopal Church. Riveting, painful, and brilliant!”
“In his Gospel, Luke tells us that during the visitation, Mary tells Elizabeth that God 'has filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent away hungry' (1:53). This, it seems to me is, at the heart of Chris Carlisle's novel. Beautifully written and engaging, it tells a story of unadorned Christianity. Jeans, not collars. Feeding the poor. Housing the homeless. Christianity on the streets, in the manner of Jesus.”
“Here is a novel that will stick with you long after you've read it. Carlisle writes about worlds he knows . . . asking the quintessential questions about life's meaning and offering, among the witty and charged exchanges, a wealth of profound answers for the reader to ponder.”
“One of the best characters in Christopher Carlisle's For Theirs is the Kingdom is the city of Montreal. Westmount, the Old City, Place Ville Marie, Le Plateau, the Golden Mile--they all play a part in this story of a man's search for a fulfilling life path. Attorney Ben Cabot meets a sad bishop at Saint Joseph's Oratory atop Mount Royal and a renegade street priest on Place d'Youville, and finds that the church has been looking for God in all the wrong places.”
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