Amy Riley at My Friend Amy, on her Faith and Fiction Saturday, recently posed an interesting question regarding Books Where the Main Character Rejects Faith. She asked about the
…lack of books where characters consider faith or religion but decide against it for one reason or another.
Rejecting faith is a part of the faith experience like embracing it so do you know of any books where the characters have considered faith and rejected it?
That question probably divides differently along religious and traditional market lines. Portrayal of “faith experience” in the general market can be as stereotypical as that of the Christian market. The conversion-to-rejection rate of the characters no doubt bears that out. Nevertheless, in the Christian market, I think it’s safe to say, “there’s a lack of books where characters consider faith or religion but decide against it for one reason or another.” In other words, most main characters in Christian fiction who are confronted with faith, inevitably “accept” it.
Admittedly, I don’t read enough Christian fiction to comment authoritatively on the actual percentage of conversion-to-rejection ratio of characters. However, the majority of Christian fiction I have read does include — in fact, center around — some form of “conversion,” whether it be a backslider returning to the faith or a seeker discovering it. So I think it’s safe to say that conversion scenes and/or conversion processes are one of the earmarks of Christian fiction.
This conversation fascinates me for several reasons. For one, as Amy mentions, “Rejecting faith is a part of the faith experience.” So why don’t we see more “faith rejection” in Christian fiction?Are we afraid to show someone (albeit fictionally) deciding against the religion we defend?
The second has to do with my upcoming novel. What I’m about to say may require a minor spoiler alert. So be forewarned. But a central character in The Resurrection, after rigorous “Christian evidence,” remains largely agnostic. While conversion is an issue throughout the story, it is unresolved in this character’s case. After much thought, I believed that ambiguity was so true to the character and so integral to the story, that I could not remove it. When my publisher approached me about edits, I was prepared to concede a lot… but not that. If my editor asked me to convert this character, I would have refused. Which is one of the reasons I am so thankful that Strang let me tell that story.
Anyway, I’m interested in your take in that conversation. Do you agree that most characters in Christian fiction who are confronted with faith, inevitably “accept” it? And if not, can you name some Christian fiction books that don’t?
I have to admit, I haven’t read much Christian fiction (at least knowingly). I hardly knew this genre existed up until about a year ago. However, if it is true that in MOST Christian fiction that those who are confronted by the Faith eventually find it, would it not be a misrepresentation of Christianisty as a whole? After all, the road is narrow, is it not? Of course, one would then have to assume links between some, if not all Christian fiction and the worlds that are created within their respective pages. For instance, if the protagonist is the only character (or one of the few characters) in a novel to accept the Faith, then I could be ok with almost all protagonists accepting Faith in their respective novels as not misrepresenting Christianity. On the other hand, if in taking a sample of Christian fiction and finding that 95% (purely made-up) of protagonists accept Faith, then one would have to question whether or not Christian fiction is justly representing Biblical truth.
Or… we could just let fiction be fiction. 🙂
Interesting idea, I would come to the opposite conclusion. How many people, in reality, respond to the “call” when they are presented with it? If it’s fewer than how Christian(ized) fiction makes it out to be, then I don’t see it as a negative; the stats don’t matter because fiction is about the unusual, not “everyday life”.
I think you’re asking the right questions, Nik. Like I said, I don’t read a lot of Christian fiction, so I may be way off in my conclusions. But I’d agree with you, if the majority of “protagonists accept Faith, then one would have to question whether or not Christian fiction is justly representing Biblical truth. ” Unless, of course, conversion is the primary distinction of Christian fiction. Thanks for your comments, Nik!
More and more Christian fiction doesn’t have conversion, let along conversion scenes. I suspect romance still does, so you might be right about the “most.”
I agree with you that a character rejecting faith is an important aspect. But then I couldn’t very well disagree since I have such a character in The Lore of Efrathah. 😉
Becky
I too haven’t read much Christian fiction. Then again, that depends on how we define “Christian Fiction.” Are we just talking about CBA venue fiction, or all Christian fiction no matter the publisher or outlet?
If the later, in all the slush reading I’ve done I read more stories where conversion simply doesn’t happen, or the protagonist only moves in the right direction, but the conversion, if it happens, is only hinted at.
I would say if we’re speaking of the later group, you would see a balance, maybe even no conversion at all being the bulk of the stories, whereas those converting would be second. If the former group, it may lean more to conversion being more represented than no conversion.
But to have someone who rejects the faith, while probably more true to life, isn’t what a Christian reader would want to read, especially for the protagonist. It is akin to the bad guy winning.
I remember a movie I watched, don’t recall the name, but it climaxed with a duel between two guys, the good guy and the bad guy. When the shots were fired, the good guy died and the bad guy won. The credits rolled. And I felt terrible. I was in shock. How could this happen?
I think that would be the feeling for a Christian reader, to have a protagonist who rejects the faith. Satan won. The “good guys” lost. And not too many Christians are going to feel good about that.
I could see more having a secondary character reject the faith, for then you could show the protagonist holding to his in the face of it, and that would be a strong message. But I bet that doesn’t happen as much either.
Incidentally, all my protagonist where faith plays a part in the story, start out as Christians. Usually they have a lot of growing to do in certain areas, but they don’t need to convert. However, where conversions have happened, they are usually in the secondary characters.
I guess some of my secondary characters could be said to have rejected the faith, though we don’t really know what they did. One would assume they were affected by what they went through, but whether they rejected later or accepted, we don’t know.
“…to have someone who rejects the faith, while probably more true to life, isn’t what a Christian reader would want to read, especially for the protagonist. It is akin to the bad guy winning.”
Rick, I think you’re right — Christians, by and large, don’t want to read about people who reject their faith. I don’t either and would be suspicious, frankly, of professing Christians who could tolerate a steady diet of it. That said, having a percentage of conflicted, even antagonistic main characters could provide a needed dose of realism to the Christian fiction enclave.
Demon by Tosca Lee: no conversion. Comes A Horseman by Robert Liparulo: no conversion. All of the Patrick Bowers Thrillers by Steven James: no conversion. Try Dying, Try Darkness, Try Fear by James Scott Bell: no conversion. To name a few.
But I would agree that the primary separation point between general market and CBA fiction involves evangelism. I freely admit there is the evangelical methodology/theme in my work. However, there are also those who reject the gospel within the stories. And sin is portrayed as is without judgment.
If Christian fiction doesn’t feature Christians or someone who converts, what makes it Christian? (And yes, I keep struggling with this even while I keep reading Robin Parrish’s great books.)
No, not every character needs to be a Christian. But I really do wonder why a Christian author would write a book and sell it in the Christian market without Christian characters.
“If Christian fiction doesn’t feature Christians or someone who converts, what makes it Christian? … I really do wonder why a Christian author would write a book and sell it in the Christian market without Christian characters.”
Mark, I don’t personally think a story has to have a Christian character to be “Christian.” But I realize I’m probably in the minority. Christian themes can be present in many different types of works, not just those explicitly labeled as “Christian.” However, I do agree with you that trying to sell a book in the Christian market “without Christian characters” is not feasible.
Christian fiction with no conversion is like an action movie where the hero gets blown up, or a love story that ends in divorce, or a comedy that ends with a person dieing of pancreatic cancer.
And if you are a real writer the above mentioned immediately started you down the thought process of “I could write that story and make it work.” But please stop. It wont work.
There is a formula people and to quote that classic theological movie, the Three Amigos, “You stray from the formula. You pay the price.”
I don’t see a reason why EVERY Christian story has to have a conversion in it, just as I don’t see a reason why EVERY sci-fi story has to have a scene set in outer space in it. It depends on the story being told. Not everything in our faith is about salvation. Salvation is what starts the process of change in our lives, not the end all of it. There’s discipleship and other areas we have to deal with, and I mean Biblicly not just a “discipleship class”. I would have absolutely no problem with a book that clearly shows the spiritual reality of God that Believers “believe” in and where everyone stays the same by the end of the book as far as where they stand with Him is concerned.
Mike, Pelagian-influenced assumptions about evangelism may contribute to this trend. Many Christians assume that if someone has rejected faith, it’s merely a problem of lacking information. Once they’re told about it, and in more loving ways than that bad Christian/church/institution that put a bad face on it before, they’ll inevitably profess faith in Jesus, right?
Aside from the question about whether Christian novels should include conversion scenes is another question: conversion for what reason? Is it to solve life’s problems, or get-out-of-Hell-free, or mainly to glorify God and see Him as the most incredible Being in the universe, worth loving?
Disagree, RJB, because conversion is not the ultimate goal of the Christian life. That would be glorification. Similarly, to use the romance example, isn’t a wedding (as amazing as that is) simply the start of a couple’s life of love and commitment? And yet so many romance movies roll the credits right after the wedding (or implied hook-up or whatever) and seem to assume the actual marriage is dull story material.
Example 2: Christian novels that only ever follow a conversion arc would be like constantly rebooting a superhero movie and telling the hero’s Origins Story every single time. But what happens then?! Yes, I already know about the alien/radioactive/mad science/magic backstory! What conflicts and changes come next?
That is why a Christian novel that spends all its time trying to save the pagan or backslider or all-around disillusioned angsty person, while necessary in places, does get a little old to me. It also could be more than a little patronizing to pagans, backsliders, etc., who might benefit along with the Christians from seeing more-positive and honest examples of mature Christianity in action! Hebrews 6 encourages Christians to move into deeper territory — not that we ever get beyond the Gospel, but we should be exploring it in more detail than simply the pray-a-prayer-and-get-saved part that Christians have already done.
And why do more Christian novels not focus on the struggles and conflicts that happen frequently to already-Christian-for-years characters? I can think of two: Francine Rivers’ And the Shofar Blew, which is actually a contemporary story about a megachurch pastor who begins forsaking his family in favor of “ministry,” and Frank Peretti’s excellent The Visitation, about a false messiah in a small Washington state town, and his attempts to draw out a depressed former pastor. By the way: no conversions in the first novel, and flashback-and-summary only conversions in the second novel; they’re simply not necessary to the stories, which were written mostly to challenge and engage existing Christians on a much deeper level.
E. Stephen Burnett: Love those two novels. (And good points.)
This is actually the reason I largely stopped reading Christian fiction over a year ago: I felt the genre was entirely too predictable. Real life, in my opinion, is often messy even for believers. Yet I don’t feel that Christian fiction accurately portrays this messiness. Rather, I feel the genre tends to present the view that if you’re a believer, everything works out in the end. When we reach heaven, that will be perfectly accurate. Here on earth, however…I just can’t accept that view. I have two close Christian friends from college who have already been through divorces. I’m 30, and they’re younger than I am! Yet I don’t think a novel in which the couple actually went through with the divorce would ever be found in CBA fiction. Mind you, I don’t want every novel I read to have a “depressing” ending. But if real life sometimes has depressing endings, why shouldn’t Christian fiction offer “depressing” endings that cause us to reflect on our own lives in the hope of never falling into the trap we just read about? This is why I hope that if God calls me to write Christian fiction, he gives me ideas and opens doors that allow me to stretch the market’s comfort zones!
Nathan, I understand what you’re saying, and it’s true of many CBA novels. However, off the top of my head I can think of several which feature divorced/in the process of being left, characters. I think the concept in Christian fiction is even with a not-so-happy ending, there should still be at least the element of hope. Even though your friends have experienced the ugliness of divorce, this doesn’t mean their lives are over–especially under the age of 30! God can work through all the messes we make of our lives, and He certainly does. I’m considerably older than you, have managed to make several ugly messes, and God has always prevailed. Yeah, the walk gets hard especially when we make it that way. And, yes, this should be a solid part of Christian fiction. However, the sad ending can be accurate, the imperfect ending can be the best, but the hope element should be tangible. JMO>
I think we need to keep in mind, while reflecting reality is a good thing in general, very few fiction stories reflect real life, and if they did, few would want to read them.
What I mean is we have events happen to our characters that are really out there. We have people who may respond in very over-the-top ways. If I experienced even half the things I’ve put my characters through, I wouldn’t make it. What people want to see, in most any speculative fiction story, is people who overcome great obstacles, whether internal or external. They generally don’t want to see someone who fails unless they are the antagonist. But for the protagonist and supporting characters, they want to see them succeed, whatever that is defined as being.
In real life, people die for pointless reasons. People get sick and die. People divorce and live the rest of their lives in depression and poverty, never rising above it. Some do rise above it, by God’s grace, but many never do. That’s reality. But that is precisely the kind of thing people don’t care to read about.
I’m not saying one cannot kill off characters, have them get sick and die. I’ve killed off my major share of them. But it always factored into the plot, into some meaning. They didn’t die for nothing. They didn’t just get sick for no reason than they did, and then died. Not a major character. Why? Because no one really cares to read about that reality. And that’s what I mean.
There is a balance between showing reality and being entertaining, and communicating something of meaning at the same time. Get too much of reality in your story, and it no longer becomes entertaining. Not enough, then it isn’t as believable. And that goes back to what a reader is willing to suspend disbelief on. Some can’t over a simple factual mistake. Others can swallow whole plot holes (movies seem to get away with this much easier and stay real popular, consider how many continuity problems LOTR had in those movies).
Now I’ve not read many “conversion story” books. I guess it just goes to show what type of reading I like. Most people seem to do it too preachy. I like Jesus’ approach better. He was unpredictable in how he approached people, dealing with them as individuals. I think when it breaks away from the standard conversion formula and instead moves toward redeeming the person in their situation and life, applying the Gospel creatively, then it is more realistic even for the secular reader. When they can see the motivation, it clicks. But few conversion stories show that well enough. It isn’t easy.
Yet, if the story is a conversion story, people want to see that person succeed, not fail. Secondary characters, you’re more open to show one fo them failing, I would think. Just like my healer character had people die on him, who God did not heal. If everyone died on him, it would make for a horrible story. But one or two scattered here and there, keeps people realizing not every story has the perfect ending. Same with a secondary character, maybe a seeker, who eventually turns away and rejects the faith. I think that would be doable without destroying the whole message.
And as for antagonist, few of them get saved in my novels. There were a couple who were given something to think about and in my mind made a turn even if not yet fully accepting. But I’ve had some demons for antagonist, so what do you expect. 😉 But in one novel, I did have the bad guy eventually convert. How well that plays is yet to be determined. But most of my antagonist don’t convert, even if confronted with the Gospel.
I agree, if every story has everyone getting saved and everyone lives happily ever after, that doesn’t reflect reality. Doesn’t mean that story isn’t entertaining if done well. But more reality infused in it would make for a more interesting story, with more depth. But speculative fiction if it is entertaining, is rarely totally true to life. It is by nature an unusual situation. And I’m not talking about just the speculative elements. And I don’t mean it couldn’t happen, only that it is highly unlikely that very many of us will experience those things like they do in stories.
For instance, I just finished expanding my first novella into a full novel. There is now a total of 15 shorts, and in most of those, my character experiences life-death or some critical challenges. How many of us will ever experience that many? After 50 years of life I have never had anyone literally try and kill me. It is possible it might happen once, maybe twice before I die. But 15 times? Not unless you’re a cop, soldier, or something similar. And those are unusual situations that most of us will never experience.
It seems to me the real question here is whether this is realistic enough to convey the reality we all experience. Maybe not, but is that totally bad either? I think it boils down to what are we trying to do with our Christian stories. Depending on that, the real question is how much reality do we infuse our work with, not whether it is there or not. Because every story has some reality in it, and every story doesn’t represent reality one hundred percent either. Otherwise we’d have our protagonist going to the bathroom every few hours.
I’ve only written one “Christian” novel. I haven’t yet found a place for it, and I’m not sure whether that place will be in the Christian market if I do. I will say that at the end, when deciding what, if any, decisions about faith my main character would make, I was forced to conclude that he wouldn’t make any. I couldn’t write about him accepting Christianity and stay true to his personality, in light of the experiences described in the novel.
Still, that leaves us with an interesting question. In our fiction, when we create non-Christian characters, we give them personalities, including reasons not to believe. When we write stories, we write the experiences of the characters. Most people, given the right set of experiences, would change their beliefs. It wouldn’t be easy, and at times would require enough of a cluebat to cause head trauma. But if you’re willing to write a Damascus experience, you can make it work for your character.
But is that your job? Do you change the character so that he’ll be convinced by the story? Or change the story to convince the character? God doesn’t do that. If he wanted to, he could convince each and every unbeliever. He doesn’t. So it seems odd that we feel that we must in our own stories.
In the Great Divorce, a busload of hell’s inhabitants are afforded a visit to heaven. All but one of the damned _reject_ it and go back “home” – even though paradise is right there in front of them for the taking.
I think that if a great proportion of the books seem to have a population of “saved,” a picture is unintentionally painted that ignores the critical component of “remnant-ness” inherent in God’s rescue plan. Because, by rule, no one is arbitrarily forced into fellowship with the Savior, God’s cluster of friends is small. The worldwide smallness of the remnant can be lost in personal stories of individual, “inevitable” salvation.