A constant topic of debate among my Christian novelist friends has to do with market aim — Should they aim for the mainstream market or the Christian market? One reason that many Christian writers choose to publish in the Christian market is because of a perceived hostility toward religious themes in the general market. According to that sentiment, you can’t write about God or explicit Gospel content without running the risk of censure. Well, it turns out that’s not true. At least, not exactly.
A recent article in the NY Times confirms that “religion is the last taboo” in YA fiction. In Is Any Topic Off-Limits When You Write for Teenagers? Maybe Just One, YA author Donna Freitas writes,
Of course, it’s for all the right reasons that talk of religion in the mainstream Y.A. publishing world makes people nervous. We worry someone might be trying to convert or indoctrinate teenagers; we resist preachiness about certain moral perspectives. Religions and religious people have done and still do reprehensible things in our world, to women, to children, to some of the people I care most deeply about.
Calls for censorship of novels for children and young adults typically arise from religiously affiliated quarters; Harry Potter has been banned because of fears of witchcraft, and His Dark Materials has been banned because Philip Pullman is an outspoken atheist.Talk of religion makes me twitchy for all those reasons, and because I am feminist, liberal, pro-L.G.B.T.Q. Religion can make me enraged, dismayed, disgusted.
And yet, it is a part of me. Maybe one of the best parts.
According to Freitas, “talk of religion in mainstream. Y.A.” is indeed something we should be concerned about. But why? Is it because religion has done unimagineable harm to humans or foistered precepts that have poisoned generations of innocent souls? Sort of. “We worry someone might be trying to convert or indoctrinate teenagers; we resist preachiness about certain moral perspectives.”
“Certain moral perspectives.” This is the phrase of import here.
Let’s assume for a moment that indoctrinating teenagers with “certain moral perspectives” is above the gatekeepers of mainstream YA. I mean, their aim is simply to entertain and tell a good story. It’s only religious folks who have such nefarious aims. So what kind of “indoctrination” of our young adults should we fear from religious authors? What “moral perspectives” might taint their sensibilities? Apparently it’s those “perspectives” that counter Freitas’. “Talk of religion makes me twitchy… because I am feminist, liberal, pro-L.G.B.T.Q. Religion can make me enraged, dismayed, disgusted.”
In other words, the “indoctrination” or “moral perspectives” that make mainstream YAers “twitchy” are those that are not shared by the “feminist, liberal, pro-L.G.B.T.Q” ally.
Interestingly, Freitas’ advice is not that we should ban religious content from YA lit, but that we should only ban certain content to ensure that it conforms to a specific “moral perspective.”
To ignore religion in Y.A. cedes the entire conversation about religion and spirituality, and all that it stands for, to exactly the kind of intolerant voices that Y.A. publishing has fought so hard against. Teenage readers search for themselves in books. The world of Y.A. is an activist one — an ideal sphere in which to interrupt the toxic religion-speak and attitudes that dominate our politics and culture at the moment, and to model the kind of spiritual longing so many young adults harbor, often secretly. Like me, they learn to be ashamed of it.
Central to the author’s argument here is an appropriate caricature of the particular religion she fears. What religion is that? Well, pretty much any religion that is counter to her “feminist, liberal, pro-L.G.B.T.Q.” one. Elsewhere in the article she describes this toxic religion as “conservative, antisex and intolerant.”
Make no mistake, the “religion” that the author is inferring is “off-limits” in YA fiction is traditional evangelicalism. You know, the kind that is “conservative, antisex and intolerant.” But is there any other kind?
I suppose it should hearten Christian authors to know that there are those in the YA community who will cede some religious topics for inclusion in the genre. What should concern us, however, is that that concession demands conformity. We may write about religion in YA lit, but only providing that it hews closely to progressive values. The “God” of YA fiction must be LGBTQ-affirming, inclusive of all religions, and theologically ambiguous. The only “moral perspective” an author is allowed to convey in YA are perspectives that don’t make others “twitchy.”
If only I could get God to comply with those demands.
Bottom line: Religion IS off-limits in YA fiction… unless it caricatures conservative believers as narrow-minded bigots and their morality as toxic, bigoted, hate.
Though I’m not a big fan of the Christian fiction market, it’s articles like Freitas that remind us why so many conservative evangelical writers do not cross over. Not only is there a vocal disdain in the industry against the type of religion many of these authors practice, but there is a contrary “moral perspective” that they are required to embrace.
Well, that leaves me up a crick without a paddle… given my books are Christian YA. I’m considering dropping the YA off that–I have been considering doing that for a while. Sometime soon.
There was a big discussion about this in the YA community on Twitter when this article first came out, and a lot of it was people bringing up example after example of recent YA books that *do* address religious faith respectfully and feature teen characters for whom religion — Christianity included — is a major part of their lives. The general conclusion seemed to be that the author of the article was behind the times, and needed to read more widely and currently before concluding that her own books were somehow edgy or groundbreaking in portraying a “progressive” form of Christianity.
I certainly agree that YA books which portray Christians with Biblical convictions living out their faith in a sympathetic and well-rounded way are a rarity. But I think a lot of Christian authors are too quick to conclude that their books are being (or will be) rejected for reasons of ideology, when they’re actually more likely to be rejected for reasons of execution. It’s tough to write well about something we care so deeply about, and easy to tip too far into preachiness in our zeal and lose sight of the fact that we need to be telling a compelling story. Especially if we’re afraid that other Christian readers will criticize us if we don’t make the message “clear enough” compared to the books they’re used to reading in the religious market.
I think the part about the fear of ‘not making the message clear enough’ especially rings true to me. I try not to overdo the message (since that pushes readers away even if they agree with it!), but then worry if It’s not clear enough when I imagine my Christian friends reading it.
It’s a balance, I think, between avoiding any details about faith (like in Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy) and being ‘clear’ to the point of beating-over-the-head preachiness.
P.S.
Susan Beth Pfeffer’s The Dead & the Gone is a good example of faith in a mainstream YA novel. It’s very present, yet many (secular) reviewers had very nice things to say about the book. I’m not %100 certain she herself is a Christian though.
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine was pitching a book to a big publisher. This friend was an award-winning, multi-published author who is a member or a liberal mainline church and who is very progressive in her Christian faith. She was pitching a picture book biography. The book was about a woman in the early days of this country, who had done a notable thing. The women happened to be married to a minister and she was of the Christian faith.
The editor, to whom my friend was pitching, said, “I like it, but you need to get rid of the husband.”
My friend said, “It’s a biography. Nonfiction. This woman’s faith was a big part of what caused her to act as she did. The church was a huge part of her life. I can’t just get rid of that husband and the church and the faith.”
And the editor said, “Let me put it to you this way: you will not have big G God in any book we publish.”
I had been going around the country teaching at Christian writer’s conferences that you can have God but not Jesus in your books. But I had to change my tune after that. Not only can we not have Jesus with his exclusive claim to being Savior, we also cannot have big G God with his exclusive claim on being Creator.
Of course this is not true of all publishers and it was not even true for all editors in that one publishing house–that editor, in her zeal to tamp down on Christianity overstated the rules. I’ve seen books by that publishing house with big G God in them. He is a kind of neutral God with not many opinions, but he does have a big G, at least.
The reason I found her statement so chilling, though, is this: Had my friend pitched a book with a gay mommy character to an editor who was opposed to homosexual marriage, that editor would never have said, “you cannot have gay mommies in any books we publish.” She would not have dared to say such a thing for fear of being called a bigot and, in fact, for fear of losing her job.
But this editor had no fear of being called a bigot for blackballing big G God. She did not fear losing her job. She knew, and she was right in thinking this, that you can be a bigot toward Christians and you will not lose your job.
This is not necessarily something that should shock us. It should anger us–it’s horrible to see God treated with disdain and his people persecuted. But in the end, it’s not like the Bible doesn’t warn us that others will slander us (and it is slanderous for them to paint Christians as haters and evil people) and persecute us and hate us. We simply have to keep working regardless. We have to keep writing and speaking–the truth in love–regardless of what others say about it.