When Church of England envoy Terry Waite was held captive in Beirut by Hezbollah in the late 1980s he famously received a postcard from well wishers in England. It bore an image in stained glass of John Bunyan writing in prison. The meaning was - good can come from confinement.
It is impossible to overestimate the literary and spiritual value of Pilgrim's Progress, a book so skilled that people of any religion and none can enjoy it while deep-thinking Christians can mine it and children can engage easily with its story. It is inevitably still mentioned in lists of primary English literature.
Yet Bunyan spent about 12 of his 60 years in gaol. He was primarily known in his day as an Independent/Baptist preacher but his lasting fame belongs to his writing and his writing owes much to his years of lockdown.
Very unwise it is of us to dismiss lockdowns as unproductive. Had Bunyan been a Baptist Pastor today he would have been out of prison more but, if he had written anything, it probably wouldn't have outlived him. I feel I know - I've read what today's preachers write . ..
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