[Sly Fox]

I'm interested to hear CJ's take on this admittedly slanted diatribe ...

ESSAY
Has Fiction Lost Its Faith?

By PAUL ELIE
Published: December 19, 2012

here's the gist of it ...

This, in short, is how Christian belief figures into literary fiction in our place and time: as something between a dead language and a hangover. Forgive me if I exaggerate. But if any patch of our culture can be said to be post-Christian, it is literature. Half a century after Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Reynolds Price and John Updike presented themselves as novelists with what O’Connor called “Christian convictions,” their would-be successors are thin on the ground.

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I have some opinions but I'd love to hear from others.

[Purple Haize]

I haven't read the article yet but look forward too it. IMO it has the same issue that Christian music has. It no longer sets trends I'm not saying it ever did. This Present Darkness and Left Behind series are great fiction in general but after that we are in a grey area. Of course if you want to go'way back' to Lewis and Tolkein.....

[Cider Jim]

I think Angela Hunt would beg to differ: she's written over 100 Christian works--most of them novels. And if her name sounds familiar, that's because she is a Liberty alumnus (magna cum laude) from our English Department, class of 1980.

http://www.angelahuntbooks.com/bio/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Hunt

Also, popular novelist John Grisham is a Southern Baptist and works many Christian themes and elements into his novels; when I was going to Ole Miss in the 1990s, Grisham and I attended the same Baptist church in Oxford.

[Sly Fox]

Grisham was the first person I thought of when I read the article. But frankly, it seems to me that most Christian writers have shifted their focus away from fiction as society places more of an emphasis on the here & now. There are some really talented writers who are using their skills in journalism today because there is more access to income. And Christian literature in general seems primarily focused on non-fiction where the best seller lists are generally crowded with authors with well-documented Christian credentials.

[olldflame]

I think Angela Hunt would beg to differ: she's written over 100 Christian works--most of them novels. And if her name sounds familiar, that's because she is a Liberty alumnus (magna cum laude) from our English Department, class of 1980.

http://www.angelahuntbooks.com/bio/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Hunt

Also, popular novelist John Grisham is a Southern Baptist and works many Christian themes and elements into his novels; when I was going to Ole Miss in the 1990s, Grisham and I attended the same Baptist church in Oxford.

I went to school with Angie in the 70s. Back then she was better known for her singing. She was in the Chorale (which later evolved into the Sounds of Liberty), and before coming to LU spent time in Derrick Johnson's Regeneration.

[Purple Haize]

I read the article and a little bit of it was past me. However, here are some issues with Christian Fiction
1. You can never have an Anti-Hero. To equate it to TV, your main character can't be a Tony Soprano or Vic Makey. How can you come up with a Christian counterpart to Jason Bourne or Mitch Rapp? Not a lot of born again CIA assassins.
2. The post apocalyptic genre is limited. Since Christianity is the originator of The Apocolypse we can got the Left Behind route, but there is only so much there. No Zombies in Revelation either.
3. Sci Fi. Not a lot of room for a universe of aliens trumpeting Gods grace.
4. Doctrine issues. Far be it for an author to stray Doctorinaly from some sect or the other.
5. The definition of Christian Fiction. Is John Grisham a Christian author in the way U2 is a Christian band?
6. Romance novels just aren't as spicy. I know they have a spin off of these but they are not the same and its a very popular if unread by me, genre. Ask SMOOTH!

[phoenix]

Artists flee the "Christian artist" label in literature just as quickly as they do in music, and for the same reasons. Too much recent Christian fiction is substandard and overly-preachy. Even when I can get an ARC for an upcoming Christian fiction release, I tend to not do it just because I know how bad a lot of it has been.

Even Alister McGrath, who is one of the best non-fiction writers I've read, wrote a painfully bad novel recently (http://pewreviews.wordpress.com/2011/03 ... r-mcgrath/ for my review). There is a pretty good bit of spiritual fiction out there, but the stuff I've read that I liked wasn't Christian -- not really anti-Christian, but definitely non-Christian.

I think we're going to have to rely on writers who are Christians writing fiction rather than authors writing Christian fiction. The worldview and spiritual themes will be there, but it will be more like Middle Earth than Narnia.

[jimflamesfan]

Don't worry flamefans...I'm working on my first fiction book right now. I have no clue what I'm doing, but I'm not really worried about it at this point.