Denominational Coyness in Evangelical Christian Fiction

 Some time ago I consulted a book about how to write (Evangelical) Christian fiction and read the following advice: the church in your fiction should not be Faith Baptist Church or Grace Pentecostal Church. Instead, just call it Faith Church, or Grace Community Church.

Now, my first impulse was to run out and claim that if you drop the 'Catholic' from Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church or Immaculate Conception Catholic Church that would make it all neutral and non-denominational.

But I see the purpose in the advice. 'Evangelical' encompasses a wide variety of denominations (and non-denominations) and by being neutral as to church names, a wider group of readers can feel like the church in the Christian novel they are reading is just like their own church.

Another aspect of denominational coyness is that the author bio on normal Evangelical Christian books almost never gives a hint as to the author's denomination. If the author's home church is mentioned, it is sure to be a non-denominational church, or at least to have a non-denominational name.

One problem with this denominational coyness approach is that most Christians today are highly ignorant about the many church denominations and their beliefs. Many Christians had the good luck to attend religious education classes of some sort during childhood, and some of these classes actually taught the basics of what that particular church believed--- perhaps even got into the history of the denomination. But even those Christians likely know less than nothing about what the church down the block of some other denomination believes and teaches.

As a result of this ignorance, there are some Christians out there who honestly believe that nearly every Christian church in the country teaches the pre-tribulation Rapture theory. That's what was taught in most of the churches they attended in their life, and so they think it's taught everywhere.

Other Christians have attended a variety of Bible-believing churches and never met with one that taught the pre-tribulation Rapture theory. These Christians might look upon the Rapture theory as something taught only in the oddest 'fundamentalist' churches where you can't play cards or drink beer but you are encouraged to handle poisonous snakes.

Another problem with denominational coyness is that it often helps a naive Christian to hang on to a belief that the Christian world is divided into 2 groups--- the churches who do everything exactly the way their church does it, and the churches who 'don't believe the Bible'. For example, if the Christian's home church rejects infant baptism and quotes proof-texts to back that up, they assume that every church that does infant baptisms is a church that rejects the Bible. They are often amazed to discover that the other side has proof texts, too.

Denominational coyness can sometimes produce (Evangelical) Christian fiction that is Christian fiction 'lite'. Vast amounts of Christian topics are scrupulously avoided since they would require the author to take a side on some issue of doctrine or church practices, and thus spoil the illusion that the church in the book is just like the reader's church. Even basic things like baptisms or church services may have to be hidden from the reader lest the reader discover the writer's preferred doctrines and practices and find them wanting.

The best Evangelical Christian fiction defies denominational coyness. Think of the Left Behind series which broke out of the Christian fiction ghetto to achieve best-seller status. (I read that series while I was a Neopagan and enjoyed it.) That whole series was based on the controversial pre-tribulation Rapture theory which is far from universally accepted even among Evangelicals. I think it was in large part the authors' boldness in standing up for what they believed, even though there were many Christians who disagree with them, that made the Left Behind series strong fiction and worthy of reading even if you don't agree with all the theology.

The reality is that Christians today live in a world of many different denominations and non-denominations. More Christians than ever switch from one denomination to another--- even between denominations that are pretty far apart like Pentecostal and Catholic. I think that the intelligent reader of Christian fiction today is aware of these differences, and doesn't demand the old illusion that all churches are like their church. Look at the popularity of Amish fiction, featuring a religious group that has significant differences with the Evangelicalism of the readers and writers.

I think most of us are ready to move on to 'meatier' Christian fiction, written by authors from throughout the Christian spectrum of denominations and theology. I myself am a Catholic (convert) and yet I read fiction by Evangelicals, Protestants and Mormons without freaking out that the characters don't go to confession or pray the rosary. I may particularly like fiction by faithfully Catholic authors, but I'll accept fiction by any follower of Jesus Christ as something I might identify with as a Christian. I mean, if I read secular books by authors that seem actively hostile to Christianity, I can surely put up with a little 'wrong' theology from my fellow Christians of different denominations.

What do you think? Do you think it pays for Christian authors to hide their exact denominational background? Or do you think most Christians are ready to accept fiction from a variety of Christian denominations?

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Spotting "Fake Christians" along Doctrinal Lines

I just read a disturbing blog post at an Evangelical blog that I follow: 7 questions that help spot fake Christians Go there and read to understand what I'm talking about.

Back? OK. Now, in my opinion the term 'Fake Christian' should be reserved for an in-name-only Christian who has no commitment to the faith, is not 'saved' and is likely not bound for heaven. For those of us who are non-fake Christians, that's an important distinction. A nominal Christian--- who usually knows little of the faith and either does not attend church or does so for social reasons only--- needs to be educated on the faith, and may cast a bad light on the faith by their actions since some perceive them as Christians.

There were several things that bothered me about the 'Seven Questions'.

1. The tone of the questions was very specific to a certain type of Evangelical Christian. People outside those Christians circles, no matter that they are devoted Christians, may be perceived as 'fake Christians'.

2. Some of the 'Seven Questions' can be answered only by God. 'Are they controlled by the Holy Spirit?' 'Do they have a new nature?' Only God can know for sure.

3. The 'Seven Questions' encourage us to disobey the 'judge not' command of Jesus. If we are examining other people's lives for clues that they are not Spirit-controlled, we are judging them in a way Christ forbids. Besides the sin aspect of this, when real non-Christians see us making such judgments they decide that Christians are all unloving and judgmental. Plus, we will find situations like this: Jerry looks at possible 'fake Christian' John and sees that John still drinks a beer now and then, still smokes cigarettes, and still goes to visit his elderly homosexual great-uncle Bill in the nursing home without preaching fire-and-brimstone at him. "Aha!" Jerry says. "A fake Christian!" No, it's more likely that John is simply from a church with different teachings (doctrines) that does not require giving up alcohol and tobacco for salvation, and that teaches that one should show the love of Christ to homosexual persons, even if those persons are seriously sinful (as not all homosexuals are, some are celibate, voluntarily or otherwise).

4. The seventh question may be designed to expose Catholics as 'fake Christians'. Catholics ask for the prayers of saints in the same way they ask their living friends to pray for him, but certain hostile-to-Catholic Evangelicals go around preaching that Catholics trust to Mary instead of Jesus for salvation.

5. This 'Seven Questions' post leads to another post with a lot more evangelization questions. One of the questions on this second post, meant to be asked to the subject of the evangelization and which presumably detects the 'unsaved' state, is 'Are you 100% sure you'd go to heaven if you died?" This is a question which is specific to the 'once-saved always safe' dogma believed by some but not all Evangelicals and which is not what the Bible and Early Church teach. It IS possible for a Christian to fall away from the faith, even to become hostile to the faith. Some even go from being a 'saved' Christian child to being an adult who, like Josef Stalin, hates and kills Christians. The only way the 'once saved always safe' believers get around this fact is to claim that those who fall away weren't saved properly. Which leads to what I experienced as a child in Presbyterian Sunday School. I 'got saved' by praying a version of the 'Sinner's Prayer', but my life was not wholly transformed in the way some Christian books said would happen. I was the same little kid with problems (undiagnosed Asperger Syndrome) which didn't go away and make me like the joyful spirit-filled, doubt-free Christians in the books. So, I figured I wasn't REALLY saved--- a possibility the OSAS folks mentioned. So I got saved again. And again. And always worried I was hell-bound and without Christ in my life. The uncertainty caused by that false doctrine may have contributed from my later falling away from the faith for many years. Well, now I'm a Catholic. I know I'm not 100% guaranteed of heaven because I have the free will to turn away from God at any time, and as a mere human I can never be sure 100% of what choices I will make in the future.

The Take-Away for Christians
We are not called by Christ to judge who is for-sure saved and who not. Even when we are in the position of helping to choose someone for a responsible position in the Church we can only judge whether that person, right now, seems to be a faithful Christian living a Christian life. So if we want to evangelize, rather than judging we should be dropping 'seeds' of faith whether we are talking to a foul-mouthed streetwalker or a Christian evangelist or even the Pope.

The Take-Away for Christian Writers
In our local church we learn what our denomination (or 'non-denomination') teaches about what it means to be a Christian and what the Christian life would be like. And some denominations are more accurate than others. But as writers we are speaking to a broader group of Christians than at our church, and we need to understand the other Christian 'faith-languages' so we will not be leading other Christians astray by our writing.

The Take-Away for Non-Christian Writers
Wow! Thanks for sticking with me through this post. As an ex-non-Christian myself I know it may have been dull. But the take-home for you is simply this: for a Christian, the word 'Christian' has a specific meaning. It may vary a bit around the edges but the core is the same. (To discover this meaning, perhaps read C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. Or at least the common Evangelical tract The Four Spiritual Laws--- Google it.) Some non-Christian writers of the past have used 'Christian' to mean 'a nice person', but Christians don't understand it that way--- in fact, Christians believe that many Christians are not nice at all, though nicer than that specific person would be without Christ. Other non-Christian writers use 'Christian' to mean 'those uneducated Fundamentalists I've read about and don't like'. Well, if you are on that path I won't try to talk you out of it. I might have done the same thing at one point in my life. But I think the more sophisticated and knowledgeable among the non-Christian readers--- the only readers you will get with that approach--- may take exception, perhaps because they have Christian family members and friends that the love, and may even respect as thinking human beings who simply have the 'wrong' opinion on the religion thing.

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