From classic literature, religious lessons

Jane Austen, long revered in literature classes and more recently on movie and television screens, has become part of the iconography of another group: Christians.

Austen acolytes' hearts are being warmed this winter with a "Masterpiece" series of television movies based on the British novelist's books. The project boasts a particular Austen-Boston link, in that WGBH 2 produces "Masterpiece."

It is hardly surprising that public television sensed audience interest in the woman who penned such staples of English lit classes as "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice." What's more intriguing is her particular appeal to Christian writers and readers. Last year, at least three Christian publishers brought out books about Austen.

This burst of interest might surprise some who are familiar with her writing. For one thing, Austen's characters who are clergy are a decidedly mixed bunch, some laudable, some loutish. And more importantly, Austen, in both her life and her literature, was not of the evangelical, religion-on-the-sleeve school.

In "A Walk with Jane Austen," published by WaterBrook, the evangelical imprint of Random House, author Lori Smith admits that some would cringe at the notion of Austen as a Christian writer.

And Ruth Perry, a literature professor and Austen scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, treasures Austen's whispered piety. She "was a quiet Christian; Church of England practitioners were very undemonstrative in her day," Perry said in e-mail. Austen's letters about her father's death in 1805 "are Christian in the way she was Christian, deeply and wholly unostentatiously believing," Perry wrote.

So what draws Christian readers and writers to her?

"Jane's books are Christian in that there is a solid Christian moral foundation throughout her writing, [though] they are not Christian books per se by today's definition," Lori Smith wrote.

For an example of "solid Christian moral foundation," some readers look to one of Austen's least acclaimed books, "Mansfield Park." Its heroine, Fanny Price, is a poor, sensitive girl sent to live with rich relatives who treat her shabbily. An admirer of the novel, writing some years ago in the conservative religious journal "First Things," conceded that the book is "frequently despised as Austen's worst novel," with many modern readers dismissing Fanny alternatively as a prudish stiff, a timid mouse, and a smug moralist.

But the character's later kindness to the relatives who mistreat her calls to mind the Gospel of Luke, said Debra White Smith in "What Jane Austen Taught Me About Love & Romance" (Harvest House Publishers).

Smith notes the verses in Luke in which Jesus teaches, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . . Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked."

"I believe Jane Austen, a minister's daughter, fully understood this as she unfolded these truths in her heroine's life and decorated the novel with shades of kindness," Smith wrote.

In "Pride and Prejudice," the sin of pride besets the character Mr. Darcy - he proposes to the heroine, Elizabeth, as he simultaneously disses her family - while Elizabeth harbors the self-certain prejudice of the title against Darcy.

The book details her growing awareness of Darcy's hidden generosity and the shedding of her prejudice against him, allowing them to marry. This plot prompts Debra White Smith to write that "Austen creates multidimensional people who have positive attributes as well as blatant flaws," thereby reinforcing Jesus' famous admonition in Matthew's gospel: "Stop judging, that you may not be judged."

Or, as Alice Mathews, academic dean at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Hamilton, put it, the books show "you can wrestle through [flaws] and come out as a moral person in the end."

Another aspect of that book that appeals to Christians is its depiction of marriage, said Mathews, who taught a course on feminism at Gordon-Conwell that required students to watch an Austen film.

Elizabeth's parents aren't the best match: He's intellectual; she's not. "People who are married come off as very real people, [with] all kinds of clashes and misunderstandings between husbands and wives, but it's the way they work through them," Mathews said. "People just don't walk away from relationships."

This traditional morality may give Austen wider appeal. Perry said that she has noticed appreciation for Austen to run highest among Asian students from traditional cultures, and they're often Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist.

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