Agnostic Years
Lunn was the son of a Methodist lay preacher, but in his book Now I See (1933) he writes that the religious instruction he received at school was so "woolly" that "I was never a Methodist, nor, for that matter, an Anglican, in any proper sense of the term." As a result, when he read Leslie Stephen's An Agnostic's Apology, "I found myself defenceless — thanks to the miserable deficiency of Anglican education — against his onslaughts." Lunn became an agnostic.
In 1924 he published Roman Converts, which consisted of highly critical studies of five eminent converts to Roman Catholicism: Newman, Manning, Tyrell, Chesterton and Knox. Rather to Lunn's surprise, the book drew good-humoured responses from Knox and Chesterton, the only two of his "Roman converts" still living. This, plus a number of questions left unanswered by his three years of research for Roman Converts, left him with a sense of unfinished business in relation to the Roman Catholic Church.
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Famous quotes containing the words agnostic and/or years:
“An agnostic position is one that leaves open the question whether there exists a god or gods, professing to find such a question unanswered or unanswerable. For the atheist, the question has been answered, and in the negative.”
—Jaroslav Pelikan (b. 1923)
“Mee of these
Nor skilld nor studious, higher Argument
Remaines, sufficient of it self to raise
That name, unless an age too late, or cold
Climat, or Years damp my intended wing
Deprest, and much they may, if all be mine,
Not Hers who brings it nightly to my Ear.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)