You may know Russell Kirk (1918-1990) as “the father of American conservatism.” You may not know faith was a key part of his writing—and that there’s far more to that writing than just politics. During his life, Kirk gained the respect of presidents and poets, from Richard Nixon to Ray Bradbury. While some of his writing is harder to locate today, his key ideas continue to be important—in fact, they may be especially important today.
Let’s take a look at Kirk’s wide-ranging life.
What Made Russell Kirk an Important Writer?
Kirk became a landmark author when he published The Conservative Mind in 1953. The book defines conservatism as following six principles:
- Believing in a transcendent order that rules society and our conscience: “political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems.”
- Valuing human existence’s variety and mystery, refusing systems that try to make everyone uniform
- Believing that civilized society requires orders and classes, and the natural ones should be maintained while ensuring everyone is treated equal before God and law. In classless societies, “oligarchs fill the vacuum.”
- Seeing freedom and property as closely connected: “separate private property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all.”
- Valuing customs and conventions that restrict “man’s anarchic impulse and the innovator’s lust for power.”
- Recognizing that change will happen, but change must be prudent to preserve society.
Kirk follows up these principles with a look at American and British thinkers who followed these ideas, starting with British politician-philosopher Edmund Burke. Burke was famous for critiquing how the French Revolution destroyed all tradition while remaking the country—an example of social change that destroys rather than heals or preserves.
Kirk’s explanation of conservativism and why it matters signaled a huge shift. As publisher Henry Regnery explained, “It would be too much to say that the postwar conservative movement began with the publication of Kirk’s book, but it did give conservatism its name and, more important, the coherence that had been lacking.”
Who was this man who managed to change American politics with his first book?
Events in Russell Kirk’s Life
Russell Amos Kirk was born on October 19, 1918, in Plymouth, Michigan. His family was extremely poor—he recalled as a child overhearing his parents say they had only 20 dollars, and being grateful they had that much.
Thanks to a scholarship, he attended Michigan State University in 1936, graduating in 1940. He would later work at Michigan State as a history teacher but resigned after publishing The Conservative Mind. He felt the school had become more interested in athletics than in the liberal arts.
Two months after Kirk began attending Duke University in 1941, he made a surprising announcement: he had decided his master’s thesis and would finish it in half the usual time. The faculty challenged him to take the expected two years, but he met his goal anyway.
The rest of the 1940s were somewhat aimless. He returned to Michigan and worked for the Ford Company’s Greenfield Village. He spent World War II serving as an Army clerk at Dugway Proving Grounds near Toole, Utah. After leaving the army in 1946, he spent two years running the Red Cedar Bookstore in East Lansing, Michigan.
His life took a new direction in 1948 when he entered the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. When he earned his PhD in 1952, he was the first American to get a doctorate of letters from the university. His PhD thesis became the basis for The Conservative Mind. The book was recognized as an important work early on. Kirk’s friend Peter J. Stanlis wrote that “within a few months of its appearance The Conservative Mind had established itself as one of the most important books on social, political, and cultural thought published in the twentieth century.”
While many colleagues lived in cultural hubs like New York City or Washington D.C., Kirk chose a rural life. After resigning from Michigan State in 1953, he moved to Piety Hill—the house his grandfather built in Mecosta, Michigan. Other than vacations and traveling for lectures, he spent the rest of his life there. However, he accomplished a considerable amount from his small base. He was a founding member of both The National Review and The Modern Age. He wrote numerous books and syndicated columns on conservative principles. While he didn’t return full-time to university teaching, he regularly spoke at Hillsdale College and the Heritage Foundation.
Kirk generally avoided getting involved in individual politicians’ programs, other than helping Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign. However, he corresponded with some of his day’s most famous political figures. Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal in 1989.
Outside of his writing, Kirk became known for combining eccentricity and generosity. Friends often called him “the Duke of Mecosta” for his regal manners and carrying a swordstick. Particularly after marrying Annette Courtemanche in 1964 and having four daughters, he became known for aiding people in need. By his life’s end, Piety Hill had hosted scholars and battered women, journalists and Ethiopian refugees.
What Are Some Surprising Things Kirk Wrote?
While Kirk is rightly well-known for insightful political commentary, it was only part of his writing career. In fact, his bestselling book to this day is a novel called Old House of Fear.
Kirk began writing fiction at St. Andrews and eventually wrote two dozen short stories and three novels. Most of these stories are gothic ghost stories or thrillers, set in either Scotland or Michigan. Like many writers, he sought out like-minded storytellers to spend time with. He particularly remembered meeting Flannery O’Connor in 1955 and hearing her read aloud “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” He became lifelong friends with Ray Bradbury, particularly bonding over the fact they both wrote ghost stories and were fathers of many daughters.
Kirk’s fiction won considerable attention. In the 1960s, Kirk was made a knight of the Count Dracula Society and received the Anne Radcliffe Award. In 1971, “Soworth Place” was adapted for Rod Serling’s anthology TV show Night Gallery. In 1977, “There’s a Long Trail-A Winding” won the World Fantasy Award, thanks to a campaign by Harlan Ellison. In a 1980 interview for Christianity & Literature, Kirk observed, “I’m the only writer, I’m sure, who has created fiction highly praised at the same time in the Wall Street Journal, Christianity Today, and Penthouse.”
While Kirk’s fiction doesn’t quite fit the “Christian thriller” label we use today, it was informed by Christianity even before he joined the church. Birzer notes that he became especially inspired to write fiction after meeting Anglican priest Basil Smith in 1949.
Several noted Christian authors admired his work for its mix of fine storytelling and compelling spiritual themes. For example, Madeleine L’Engle praised his collection The Princess of All Lands for its “stories of heavenly and profane love which deal with the grand theological themes.”
Kirk drew on Christian authors, particularly the Inklings, to describe how the stories he wrote and liked fit a Christian worldview. In “A Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale,” he described how writers like George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams use fantastic concepts to explore important moral ideas. He enjoyed J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings so much that he sometimes called his house Rivendell. In the 1970s, he contributed to a study on G.K. Chesterton and three Inklings: Myth, Allegory & Gospel edited by John Warwick Montgomery.
Birzer suggests there are also parallels to the Inklings in Kirk’s nonfiction: he emphasized the need for a republic of ideas everyone could draw on. Owen Barfield made a similar argument in his 1940 article “Effective Approach to Social Change,” praising “the sober effort to build up and maintain a common stock of ideas.”
How Did Faith Inform Russell Kirk’s Life?
Kirk had an unusual spiritual journey that began in a dark place, but belief in God (and later in Christ) became central to his thinking.
Birzer explains that Kirk’s early childhood gave him a belief in the supernatural, not necessarily an orthodox Christian view. His grandfather, Frank Pierce, followed the teachings of Emmanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish theologian who claimed to have divinely inspired teachings (for example, Heavenly Doctrine reports the Last Judgment happened in 1757).
Like many Americans and Europeans of their generation, Kirk’s grandparents were also interested in spiritualism. Kirk recalled his great-aunt Norma telling stories about conducting seances on Piety Hill. Throughout his life, Kirk reported seeing ghosts and that he believed Piety Hill was haunted. After Piety Hill house burned down on Ash Wednesday in 1975, he reported the ghostly behavior had stopped, and believed the fire freed those spirits to leave.
During his early adulthood, Kirk fluctuated between several worldviews. When he worked at Greenfield Village in 1941, he gave Sunday messages in the Mary-Martha chapel as a job duty. However, he appears to have been more interested in Stoicism than in Christianity during the 1940s.
Several experiences nudged Kirk closer to the church. Birzer observes that a key turning point came in the summer of 1951 when Kirk was visiting York Minster for a concert by the Hodderfield Choir and the London Symphony Orchestra. Over the next decade, he became increasingly interested in Catholic liturgy. Birzer notes that The Conservative Mind “showed that he already possessed a very Catholic, sacramental and liturgical view of the world.” While teaching at the University of Detroit in 1953, he befriended Jesuit priest Hugh O’Neill, who instructed him on Catholic theology.
Kirk finally joined the Catholic church in 1964, shortly before marrying cradle Catholic Annette Courtemanche. Later in life, the couple befriended and sought spiritual advice from noted clergy like Father Martin D’Arcy (also a friend of Evelyn Waugh, whose work influenced Kirk’s novel Creature of the Twilight).
Kirk’s attitude about the supernatural stayed eclectic. In 1967, he warned against getting involved in the occult: “some mediums are charlatans, but others possess genuine, if inexplicable and dangerous power.” He continued to believe in ghosts, believing most are harmless souls struggling to reconcile with God. Given his sympathy with Catholicism even before joining the church, this may fit with some views on Purgatory.
While Kirk’s views on ghosts may be unconventional for many Christians, but his Judeo-Christian worldview permeates his work—including works written before he became a Christian. His church attendance became scattershot after Vatican II changed Catholic liturgy in the 1970s, but he practiced Christian fellowship and charity in radical ways. In the 1960s, the Kirks took in a drifter with a small-time criminal record named Clinton Wallace (a “tame hobo” as Kirk called him). Annette convinced Wallace’s parole officer to let him stay with the Kirks. Wallace frequently left to roam for a month or so, but stayed with the Kirks the rest of his life. The Kirks continued to welcome him even after Wallace fell asleep tending a fire that burned down their home in 1975. After his death, they provided his funeral. Kirk fictionalized Wallace as a heroic warrior named Frank in “There’s a Long, Long Trail A-Winding.”
What Makes Russell Kirk An Important Writer Today?
As a fiction writer, Kirk is important today because he shows how Christians can address even scary topics—like ghosts, black magic, and spiritual warfare—in compelling stories that even secular readers can appreciate. His scary stories may be closer to Catholic writers like William Peter Blatty than to evangelical writers like Frank Peretti, but his themes (particularly the emphasis on heroically standing against supernatural evil) are ones that Christians across denominations can appreciate.
While conservativism has become a divisive term since Kirk’s death in 1990, his nonfiction may matter more than ever.
His six principles of conservativism provide a coherent view of what it means to preserve and promote the best of the old ways, regardless of what party people follow. In fact, Birzer notes that Kirk “rejected a left-right spectrum,” seeing conservatism as a philosophy above that division.
Kirk also refused to follow the crowd for the sake of it. For example, Luke Sheahan notes a recurring villain in Kirk’s short stories like “Ex Tenebris” is bureaucratic urban planners destroying old towns for the sake of newness. While many 1950s-1960s conservatives promoted urban planning no matter its purpose, Kirk warned that change for change’s sake hurts communities.
Even though Kirk wasn’t afraid to attract controversy, he didn’t glory in being a maverick. He was generous to people outside his political circle: democratic socialist John B. Judis recalled visiting Kirk at Piety Hill in 1982 to discuss William F. Buckley and Kirk offering him dinner and a bed for the night.
In a time when politics often divides people, Kirk’s approach to conservativism—living the best of tradition, stating beliefs clearly while treating everyone with respect, generosity to all—offers a vital remedy.
Where to Start Reading Russell Kirk
1. John Randolph of Roanoke: A Study in American Politics. Kirk’s first book, based on his master’s thesis. An engaging look at a little-known conservative thinker.
2. The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot. Kirk’s masterpiece was updated several times—the final edition goes from Burke to T.S. Eliot. A summary of over two centuries of conservative thinkers in a coherent, readable form.
3. Eliot and His Age: T.S. Eliot’s Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century. Kirk’s study of Eliot, whom he knew and corresponded with for years, was the first book-length biography of Eliot’s life and remains an important resource.
4. The Roots of American Order. Probably Kirk’s best-known political book after The Conservative Mind, this book is particularly useful for readers seeking to understand what genuinely makes “the American experiment” unique.
5. Old House of Fear. Kirk’s first novel is a dark adventure story about Hugh Logan, an American lawyer visiting a Scottish isle to resolve a castle sale. When he arrives, Logan discovers a Soviet spy cell, whose leader dabbles in black magic, has taken over the isle.
6. A Creature of the Twilight. A dark political satire resembling Waugh’s novel Scoop, this story imagines a coup occurring in a small African country. Adventurer Manfred Arcane plays foreign diplomats against each other so they don’t explot the locals, while facing past secrets and seeking a way to stabilize the crisis.
7. Lord of the Hollow Dark. Arguably Kirk’s best novel, this story follows a group of “spiritualists” who have rented a notorious castle to host a ceremony on Ash Wednesday. Mysterious heroes work to unlock the castle’s past secrets before the diabolical ceremony takes place.
8. Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered. If Eliot was the most prominent living influence on Kirk, Burke was the most prominent past influence. Here, he goes beyond a summary of Burke’s ideas to give a full-fledged look at the man’s life and legacy.
9. The Sword of Imagination: Memoirs of a Half Century of Literary Conflict. Kirk’s second autobiography was left unfinished, but it is a fairly complete look at his life from childhood onward. Other than his unusual writing style (talking about himself in the third person), it is an engaging summary of his unusual life.
10. Ancestral Shadows edited by Vigen Guroian. This book collects most of Kirk’s 22 short stories, along with a 1984 expanded version of “A Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale.”
Many of Kirk’s lectures are available through the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal.
More information about his writing can be found in The Wizard of Mecosta: Russell Kirk, Gothic Fiction, and the Moral Imagination by Camilo Peralta. More information about his life can be found in Russell Kirk: A Critical Biography of a Conservative Mind by James E. Person Jr. and Russell Kirk: American Conservative by Bradley J. Birzer.
Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/Dusan Ladjevic
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