John Updike

In a November, 2004 article on John Updike published online in the Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly magazine there is the following comment on Updike's Christianity:

While much of his earlier work contains traces of Updike's furious immersion in Christian theology, he said he looked more to the congregation of his hometown Massachusetts church as the rock of his faith today.

"When I haven't been to church in a couple of Sundays I begin to hunger for it and need to be there," he said. "It's not just the words, the sacraments. It's the company of other people, who show up and pledge themselves to an invisible entity."

And in a quote from one of his books (one of the Rabbit tetralogy)

"When on Sunday morning then, when we go before their faces, we must walk up not worn out with misery but full of Christ," he tells a disconcerted Eccles. "Make no mistake. There is nothing but Christ for us. All the rest, all this decency and busyness, is nothing. It is Devil's work."