A recent article at Transpositions entitled C.S. Lewis’ Guidelines for a Christian Journal takes an interesting approach to the subject of Christian art. In it, the author Cole Matson quotes Lewis’ advice to Laurence Whistler about the creation of a Christian literary journal. His three guidelines for such a journal:
- ‘I think the Periodical ought to come before the public with no explicitly religious pretension at all’.
- ‘[T]hose who run it should in fact all be Christians’.
- ‘The standard they actually apply in admitting or rejecting contributors should not be that of agreement or disagreement with the Christian Faith, but that of agreement or disagreement with what may be called the “good Pagan” range of rationality and virtue’.
A Christian periodical… with no explicitly religious pretension at all? How is this possible?
The same way that a Christian can (and should) write fiction with no explicitly religious pretension at all.
It all comes back to this concept of the “good pagan.” Lewis believed that Christianity was “myth become fact,” and that many pagan myths foreshadowed Universal Truths that were eventually articulated through the revelation of Scripture.* In this way, paganism is not inherently antithetical to Christianity, as many assume. Thus, good pagans are those who embrace biblical archetypes and Universal Truth, without expressed religious ties. Good pagans yield to God, however crudely, first through the light of General revelation.
Which is where Christian fiction should start.
Rob Moll wrote in his article C.S. Lewis, the Sneaky Pagan,
In order to write to a post-Christian culture, Lewis used pre-Christian, pagan ideas.
…Contemporary people have no background at all in Christian faith. They need to be brought to paganism to prepare the way to become Christians…
Such an approach seems intolerable in contemporary Christian fiction circles. Rather than being implicit with our worldview, we demand religious transparency. Rather than allowing “the ‘good Pagan’ range of rationality and virtue,” we require “agreement or disagreement with the Christian Faith.” What follows are puritanical guidelines and doctrinal checklists. Is it any wonder skeptics and seekers walk past the Christian fiction section without so much as a second glance?
As Matson concludes:
Christian artists often face pressure to make their art explicitly religious and/or evangelistic, in order to justify it. Even when they do not face such pressure, many Christian artists still create in the hope that others will find God in their work, and that their work may help others come to faith in Christ, even when they do not believe that such outcomes are the only justification for artistic creation…
What Lewis does is suggest that Christians who do have evangelistic aims with their work can actually accomplish those aims more effectively by not creating explicitly evangelistic work…
Which means, If we really want to be more “Christian” in our fiction, perhaps we should start by being “good pagans.”
* For an interesting essay on this subject see Paganism and C.S. Lewis: Rethinking Christian Attitudes by the mysterious Rev. Rebecca.
This is fantastic. As a science fiction and fantasy author and the worship leader at what I call a “science fiction church” (even though it says Baptist on the sign), this is much-needed affirmation. Thanks much!
Best regards,
Gray R.
I like that..”science fiction church”
Thanks! And, of course, if you’re ever in Cary, North Carolina, you’re welcome to visit us at North Cary Baptist Church!
Best,
Gray
familiar with lewis’ good pagan/true myth lingo… here’s a great lecture on paganism, for those (like me) who like delving into vocab and not just nodding my head to sun-bleached words:
http://www.labri-ideas-library.org/download.asp?fileID=374
O’Connor’s Mystery and Manners is another way of saying all this, I think.
Very interesting and enlightening. While the contemporary Christian in me balks at the thought of “good pagan”, I can definitely see the rational behind it and agree that to reach a lost world we cannot come off as overly righteous/religious. Being overly religious turns many people off, even other Christians.
I think there may be a rejection of the word “pagan” that comes, for some people, before they can truly evaluate the phrase “good pagan.” Pagan = bad, therefore “good pagan” = “good bad,” this argument goes.
And yet, there can be no argument that there are non-Christians (sometimes even anti-Christians) who embrace the need for living a good, ethical, moral, worthwhile life (there is one of these people in my novel A Place to Die, in fact). I believe Lewis’s “good pagan” construct is simply saying that if a person has already accepted that one should live a good, ethical, moral, worthwhile life, then Christianity requires less of a change in lifestyle and beliefs than if one does not, and, perhaps more importantly, that it is easier to encourage people to adopt this sort of a life (even as a precursor to encouraging them to adopt Christianity) if it is done without overt reference to Christianity.
Indeed, I believe that this is the basis of the most successful sort of missionary work. If I come into your community and say “You are sinners! Repent and be baptized!” the effect will probably not be as beneficial as if I come into your community, build a clinic, dig a well, plant some crops, and then answer the inevitable “Why are you doing this?” with “Because my God wants me to.”
I know for a fact (because I know some of them) that there are Christians who will tell you flat out that all pagans are evil, that paganism is evil, that there is no such thing and can be no such thing as a “good pagan,” while openly accepting the concept of the mundane in ministry and missionary work. Seems to me that the argument could be made that a Christian periodical could be seen as missionary work.
I agree. But at some point you have to tell people why Jesus died, why he was resurrected from the dead, and why this Christianity thing is so wonderful. If we just go around doing good deeds and never telling people why God loves us and why Christ did what he did, then all the good deeds do is prepare people for this life, not the next.
But then the question is whether that type of thing is more effective in a fiction book, or one on one with someone. If we catch them with a story that contains the principles of the Gospel, without spelling it out specifically, it provides a point of contact in which a person “witnessing” to that other can then relate the Gospel. If you attempt to do that with the book itself, it is much more likely they’ll put it down and ignore it. Much like Tolkien was able to help Lewis make the connection between the pagan myths and the historical reality of Christ, and the light clicked on for him.
You’re right, at some point they have to be introduced to Christ. But maybe the story itself isn’t the best medium to do that. Appropriate for sermons, self-help books, bible studies, and person to person discussions. But a fiction book’s first responsibility is to entertain, that’s why people pick them up. And that often gets ruined the moment they sense there is an agenda driving the story other than “I want to tell you a great story.” Not to say fiction doesn’t have an agenda, but once it becomes overt like that, no matter the agenda, it takes away from the entertainment value of the story, especially if the agenda is obviously not one that the reader agrees with right off the bat.
And if they don’t read your story, there is zero chance to present the Gospel to them, at least through that avenue.
Steve, I definitely wouldn’t be advocating for a Christ-less presentation. As I’ve suggested elsewhere, spiritual growth is a continuum, not a box. People exist all along the continuum, from possessing a rudimentary belief in a Supreme Being, to a grasp of the implications of the Gospel, to genuine contrition. My suggestion is that we craft art that reflects this continuum, rather than a box. For the most part, Christian fiction has come to be directed at folks to the right of the spiritual spectrum.
Mike, I agree, we need both the continuum and the box. And I have no problem with people who decide to tone down or leave out explicit Christian references in their art, be it a book or other. What bothers me is the insinuation that if we don’t tone down those things, we’re only preaching to the choir and they don’t need to be saved. I don’t think either “side” to this conversation is the right one — we have to try from both angles. Some people respond well to a subtle message. Others need a good kick in the pants. I was one of the latter.
And frankly, God will do just find saving souls regardless of which method we as artists/authors choose.
“Christian artists often face pressure to make their art explicitly religious and/or evangelistic, in order to justify it.”
That statement really strikes me because I was once told by an agent, “Good vs. bad isn’t enough for the Christian market.” She told me my character had to “show growth in her Christian faith.” My character isn’t labeled Christian in the first place–everything even remotely “Christian” in my book is symbolic. The experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I refuse to force an evangelical message into a story to justify the creation of that story. Especially because I know my faith was the source of that story.
I don’t think I’d read that specific aspect of Lewis’ thinking, but it jives very well with where I’m coming from in my pointing out that dividing such things into “of God” and “of Satan” and the two shall not meet, is a secular view of the world, not a Christian one.
And it is interesting that St. Paul had no qualms about relating a pagan idol as pointing to God in Athens. What Paul did is the exact same concept that Lewis is talking about. So we even have a Biblical example of that truth.
I went off and read the whole “Sneaky Pagan” article. It’s actually quite a refreshing view of storytelling.
“I think he wanted to create a climate in the reader, an imaginative and intellectual climate that would make the reader more able to receive the gospel when they heard it. He was preparing the ground for the gospel because he felt that the gospel itself was pointing to the deepest reality about nature—the kind of values and virtues that we were meant to have in order to be fully human. He was trying to make his readers more human. He was giving them the benefit of his deep learning to bring them on in this direction. So in a way he was humanizing his reader.”
There’s this argument among Christian writers about “moralists” vs. “Christian values”, talking about how having characters with morals isn’t enough. You have to have them working for Jesus or not at all. So it’s liberating to have Lewis’s viewpoint, where you’re actually addressing a post-Christian culture on its own ground. Everybody agrees that we have to have morals. So we till the ground to emphasize that and make the reader more human.
Not being raised in the Church, I think this is excellent. When I share Christ with others, I start by talking and listening to them in everyday language. Then find a way to mention how at Church, this happened or that. But it’s so important to be real- we weren’t born or born again as super saints.
My last job in Computing was a nightmare job. I finally resigned, after my husband got a stable job. I was so filled with joy in the end. Some of the ladies cornered me and told me, “You keep smiling. It’s driving the bosses crazy, they can’t figure out why you keep smiling.” So, I told them I’m a Christian. They exclaimed, “I knew it! You knew it too didn’t you Adora?” One of the guys in HR stopped me before I left and asked what my plans were next. So I told him, “I’d like to help homeless people, do something of value.” (this hasn’t worked out yet, I started a blog about the Bible).
His jaw dropped, and he said, “I consider people who care about others to be of the highest value to the world. You’re a Christian aren’t you?” So, the old saying to, “show, don’t tell,” applies a lot in both being and writing about Christianity. If I had set out to evangelize instead of working, I would have become a trouble maker with no value to the company. They would’ve been right to let me go.
So if you want to reach the lost, put aside the Church language. Create a character that makes people want to be like them. Make them want to understand what makes this person different. And in the end allow the character to answer their questions.