I wrote a novel called Sabbath that was explicitly Christian, and it was work-for-hire, and it was very violent, and it was anti-Trump, and it confused absolutely everyone including the people who'd hired me to write it. As always, nobody made any money.
The problem is that most Christian fiction published today is from evangelical Christianity (that's where the publishing money is) and this is almost entirely garbage, because it's written explicitly to evangelize. Frank Peretti has little to no interest in engaging with the nuanced implications of spiritual warfare -- it's all about choosing the right side and not getting abortions or believing in evolution.
Even the best evangelical novelist (CS Lewis) is mostly only interesting to other evangelicals. He's an incredibly imaginative storyteller, but the only non-Christians I meet who seem at all interested in him are those who grew up evangelical and are trying to understand it better. Go and read Narnia as an adult. It doesn't hold up in the way that, say, The Hobbit does. Tolkien knew to keep his Christianity under the surface of his writing (and he was probably a better writer outside of that too).
The best "Christian Novels" may be those written by authors who either keep it subtext (like Tolkien) or aren't exactly Christian but are interested in it. Mary Doria Russel converted to Judaism from agnosticism, but THE SPARROW is probably one of the best Christian novels I've read.
Yes that's the whole point! People don't write good Christian fiction, because who would publish it? But why shouldn't Knopf or FSG or the Paris Review publish it? What I'm saying is the moment something seems explicitly Christian, they just turn away from it, but in doing so they apply a standard to contemporary fiction that they don't apply to, say, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy or even to Graham Greene. Like, THE POWER AND THE GLORY is very Christian--it's explicitly about how the weight of the Catholic Church--its history and power--can imbue even a philandering whiskey priest with a kind of super-human power.
I like C.S. Lewis! I read all the Narnia books as a kid, but I read AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICISM as an adult and found it really formative and helpful in understanding why so many people seem to like such terrible fiction
I guess that's fair, but it's also assuming that Knopf/FSG/etc is getting a lot of pitches for high quality, thoughtful, and explicitly Christian novels. Obviously we can't prove this premise one way or the other, but based on my experience in that world, I would be surprised. I just don't think the currently predominate version of Christianity produces a deep well of thoughtful creativity. A few here and there, but not many. Earlier versions of Christianity, sure. But not the kind that's dominant today.
I appreciate certain aspects of Lewis. He's incredibly inventive. The Space Trilogy takes a delightfully weird approach to sci fi (even if I dislike many of the ideas contained in it), NARNIA basically established a genre, and SCREWTAPE is a legitimately good book. But he's so didactic that it often gets in the way of his storytelling, and most of the time he's really not great at just the sentence-level parts of writing. I, too, read all of NARNIA as a kid -- then I tried to re-read them as an adult and couldn't get through the first (and probably best) one. His nonfiction has aged even worse for me -- MERE CHRISTIANITY, supposedly his magnum opus, is just not good. Really weak arguments presented as profound. Admittedly, I haven't read much of his more straightforward literary criticism. I think the only one I read was ABOLITION OF MAN, which I had mixed feelings on.
Speaking as someone raised evangelical, and who attended an evangelical college, I agree that while secular elite society is unnecessarily resistance to explicitly Christian work, the culture to produce good Christian art barely exists within most Christian circles today. The Boomer mentality of making preachy caricatures of popular culture has killed most Christian art. The problem is that most Christians have been trained to look for answers to soothe their souls rather than questions to sustain them for their lifetimes. But there are a remnant who are trying to rebuild!
I think the knee-jerk reaction against Christian fiction from literary journals is Christianity's association with earnestness, it's tendency to produce propaganda rather than wrestle with the ironies and ambiguities of the world.
Of course, there's a strong Catholic literary and intellectual tradition that is both open-minded and mystical in the way literary types appreciate. Catholicism also has a strong counter-cultural pull in a secular (or evangelical Protestant) world. But Catholic integralists neglect these facts, assuming they speak for the "American heartland" and neglecting to examine possible downsides of a theocracy.
That being said, I agree that it would be nice to see more Christianity (or religiosity in general) in the literary world.
I do think there’s a related weird thing where books that actually have pretty significant “Christian” content get treated like they don’t—like three out of Sally Rooney’s four books have it, but you would never know lol. Nobody touches it.
It’s a pretty significant part of BWWAY and Frances reads the Bible & has a religious experience in a church in CWF. Also part of the new one but I don’t think I am allowed to say much about it.
This is really phenomenal! There's this really skewed idea that art that comes from a place of faith is somehow dogmatic, or interested in converting the reader. Sometimes, artists just want to tap into the great tradition of religious art! I feel that myself as a secular (non-believing) Catholic. The church creeps into nearly everything I write, because how can't it? I was raised in believing that heaven and hell physically exist, of course those beliefs are going to sneak into my work in some way!
"I think fiction by its nature is somewhat liberal. Because fiction creates a world. You can choose to accept that world to whatever degree you'd like. You can praise a fictional creation, even praise it unstintingly, without believing the ideology of its creator ought to be forced upon you." Maybe this is why so many people who aren't Christians love the show, The Chosen. Still, I think publishers in America still give push back to anything Christian. The Chosen had to be crowdfunded. It might be because have separation of Church and state has been hammered into us all throughout school and it's ingrained. We innately don't feel comfortable with the secular world offering Christian content. I'm a Christian and was skeptical about The Chosen, but now I think its writing is marvelous. It does belong in the public sector because people do want to see the life of Jesus for the reasons you shared above. It is liberal. People are free to believe or to just enjoy.
I wrote a novel called Sabbath that was explicitly Christian, and it was work-for-hire, and it was very violent, and it was anti-Trump, and it confused absolutely everyone including the people who'd hired me to write it. As always, nobody made any money.
You did!
The problem is that most Christian fiction published today is from evangelical Christianity (that's where the publishing money is) and this is almost entirely garbage, because it's written explicitly to evangelize. Frank Peretti has little to no interest in engaging with the nuanced implications of spiritual warfare -- it's all about choosing the right side and not getting abortions or believing in evolution.
Even the best evangelical novelist (CS Lewis) is mostly only interesting to other evangelicals. He's an incredibly imaginative storyteller, but the only non-Christians I meet who seem at all interested in him are those who grew up evangelical and are trying to understand it better. Go and read Narnia as an adult. It doesn't hold up in the way that, say, The Hobbit does. Tolkien knew to keep his Christianity under the surface of his writing (and he was probably a better writer outside of that too).
The best "Christian Novels" may be those written by authors who either keep it subtext (like Tolkien) or aren't exactly Christian but are interested in it. Mary Doria Russel converted to Judaism from agnosticism, but THE SPARROW is probably one of the best Christian novels I've read.
Yes that's the whole point! People don't write good Christian fiction, because who would publish it? But why shouldn't Knopf or FSG or the Paris Review publish it? What I'm saying is the moment something seems explicitly Christian, they just turn away from it, but in doing so they apply a standard to contemporary fiction that they don't apply to, say, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy or even to Graham Greene. Like, THE POWER AND THE GLORY is very Christian--it's explicitly about how the weight of the Catholic Church--its history and power--can imbue even a philandering whiskey priest with a kind of super-human power.
I like C.S. Lewis! I read all the Narnia books as a kid, but I read AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICISM as an adult and found it really formative and helpful in understanding why so many people seem to like such terrible fiction
I guess that's fair, but it's also assuming that Knopf/FSG/etc is getting a lot of pitches for high quality, thoughtful, and explicitly Christian novels. Obviously we can't prove this premise one way or the other, but based on my experience in that world, I would be surprised. I just don't think the currently predominate version of Christianity produces a deep well of thoughtful creativity. A few here and there, but not many. Earlier versions of Christianity, sure. But not the kind that's dominant today.
I appreciate certain aspects of Lewis. He's incredibly inventive. The Space Trilogy takes a delightfully weird approach to sci fi (even if I dislike many of the ideas contained in it), NARNIA basically established a genre, and SCREWTAPE is a legitimately good book. But he's so didactic that it often gets in the way of his storytelling, and most of the time he's really not great at just the sentence-level parts of writing. I, too, read all of NARNIA as a kid -- then I tried to re-read them as an adult and couldn't get through the first (and probably best) one. His nonfiction has aged even worse for me -- MERE CHRISTIANITY, supposedly his magnum opus, is just not good. Really weak arguments presented as profound. Admittedly, I haven't read much of his more straightforward literary criticism. I think the only one I read was ABOLITION OF MAN, which I had mixed feelings on.
Speaking as someone raised evangelical, and who attended an evangelical college, I agree that while secular elite society is unnecessarily resistance to explicitly Christian work, the culture to produce good Christian art barely exists within most Christian circles today. The Boomer mentality of making preachy caricatures of popular culture has killed most Christian art. The problem is that most Christians have been trained to look for answers to soothe their souls rather than questions to sustain them for their lifetimes. But there are a remnant who are trying to rebuild!
Also, shameless plug for my friend's forthcoming novel from Passage Press, "Something of the Springtime." https://passage.press/products/springtime
I like friends who plug friends! I just pre-ordered it =]
I think the knee-jerk reaction against Christian fiction from literary journals is Christianity's association with earnestness, it's tendency to produce propaganda rather than wrestle with the ironies and ambiguities of the world.
Of course, there's a strong Catholic literary and intellectual tradition that is both open-minded and mystical in the way literary types appreciate. Catholicism also has a strong counter-cultural pull in a secular (or evangelical Protestant) world. But Catholic integralists neglect these facts, assuming they speak for the "American heartland" and neglecting to examine possible downsides of a theocracy.
That being said, I agree that it would be nice to see more Christianity (or religiosity in general) in the literary world.
I do think there’s a related weird thing where books that actually have pretty significant “Christian” content get treated like they don’t—like three out of Sally Rooney’s four books have it, but you would never know lol. Nobody touches it.
What? They believe in Christ in those books?! I do not remember that part at all.
It’s a pretty significant part of BWWAY and Frances reads the Bible & has a religious experience in a church in CWF. Also part of the new one but I don’t think I am allowed to say much about it.
This is really phenomenal! There's this really skewed idea that art that comes from a place of faith is somehow dogmatic, or interested in converting the reader. Sometimes, artists just want to tap into the great tradition of religious art! I feel that myself as a secular (non-believing) Catholic. The church creeps into nearly everything I write, because how can't it? I was raised in believing that heaven and hell physically exist, of course those beliefs are going to sneak into my work in some way!
"I think fiction by its nature is somewhat liberal. Because fiction creates a world. You can choose to accept that world to whatever degree you'd like. You can praise a fictional creation, even praise it unstintingly, without believing the ideology of its creator ought to be forced upon you." Maybe this is why so many people who aren't Christians love the show, The Chosen. Still, I think publishers in America still give push back to anything Christian. The Chosen had to be crowdfunded. It might be because have separation of Church and state has been hammered into us all throughout school and it's ingrained. We innately don't feel comfortable with the secular world offering Christian content. I'm a Christian and was skeptical about The Chosen, but now I think its writing is marvelous. It does belong in the public sector because people do want to see the life of Jesus for the reasons you shared above. It is liberal. People are free to believe or to just enjoy.