The Rise of Nonconformist Preacher John Bunyan

One of the biggest selling books in the history of America is The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. Among the early settlers, only the Bible was found inside more homes than this book. John Bunyan began writing The Pilgrim's Progress while he was in imprisoned for speaking his mind. Bunyan was one of the original Nonconformists, spelled with a capital N unlike today's term which broadly covers people who for the most part only nonconformists because they don't wear the same T-shirts as the masses. Give me a guy who wears a dress rather than sports tattoos and you've got a real nonconformist even back in the 50s when tattoos still had a slight bit of rebellious cache. Today, of course, a tattoo is the ultimate in conformity.

John Bunyan was a very popular Nonconformist preacher at a time when being so could mean prison. And, of course, it meant exactly that. The Pilgrim's Progress became a popular volume because it is an easily understandable (at least back then) allegory that preaches while also telling a fairly good story. At least back then. The hero is named Christian, so you can see as allegory it is a bit less than subtle. Christian embarks upon a long and dramatic journey that teaches and preaches. What separated The Pilgrim's Progress from other works of fiction at the time was that it was written along the lines of the Bible. Told in simple language, Bunyan nevertheless managed to engage the full extent of his rather prodigious imagination and religious intensity to express one of the most extraordinary visions of personal faith ever put to paper. The commonality of the language immediately captured the imagination of readers who may have been semi-literate at best. The method by which John Bunyan wrote also lent an air of dignity to the tale of Christian even when the events were not exactly dignified themselves.