Church life in Fiction

There are Christian novels without any character who is a Christian, or at least without any overtly Christian character. There are Christian novels with essentially a single Christian character. But is there much contemporary Christian fiction with numerous Christian characters? A whole group of Christians? A church as one of the settings? Isn’t this an altogether more challenging scenario, and one which Christian writers these days tend to avoid?

The thing is, your single character can be quietly Christian, expressing or hinting at Christian attitudes and ethics, perhaps even occasionally uttering a quiet prayer, but not unduly disturbing the neutral, secular setting, or ruffling the agnostic reader’s sensitive feathers. Or the character may be more overtly Christian, but craftily portrayed so as to be sympathetic: perhaps with a not very creditable past, perhaps rather fallible, self-deprecating, or mildly comical, and certainly not aggressively Christian or (heaven forbid) preachy. Such approaches seem to work well, though it would be interesting to see statistics regarding the reactions of unbelieving readers.

Why include the odd Christian character? As a Christian writer, you may wish at  least to have a thread of quiet witness running through the fabric of your story. Or the story itself may be more overtly Christian, but presented in a disarmingly understated way. Or you may simply want to reflect reality: since Christians still exist in our society (just), why should they not occur in your story? Or indeed, if a story can centre on a mad scientist, a harebrained single woman in search of love, or a serial killer, why not on a Christian? 

But equally, Christian churches exist, so why should they not form part of the setting of your story? If you can have scenes set in scientific laboratories, space stations, mafia cells, or detective agencies, why not in church meetings? People should be as willing to imbibe the atmosphere of the one as much as that of any of the others. But here, I suggest, is where the problem arises. You cannot have a whole churchful of engagingly self-deprecating, consciously fallible, craftily non-threatening Christian characters. This would be stretching reality to breaking point. Churches are a gallimaufry of personalities, who are not all instantly attractive to the outsider, and some of whom are, frankly, downright off-putting.

Is there a solution, or must Christian writers avoid, as fictional settings, the very scenes where much of the most important part of their lives are spent? Do we just have to walk away muttering something about ‘dirty linen in public’? My problem with this is that it seems dishonest. Churches exist and no one knows more about them than us, their members. Surely we want secular people to know what they are like? Yet we are not writing about them, possibly because we are afraid to portray them factually. I must emphasize that I’m not advocating novels about a church: a church as the main setting or focus of the story. I’m talking about allowing church life to feature in the narrative in a natural way.

Of course, anyone trying to give a realistic picture of a church faces problems. Portraying goodness—such as the selfless caring and acts of kindness that occur constantly in every church—without sentimentality; conveying the intimacy of worship in a way that doesn’t profane what is sacred; making Bible teaching come to life in a fictional context: all are interesting challenges for the novelist.

Realism will also require us to tackle at least some of the more awkward scenarios: the fringe member who encounters prejudice and judgement from well-meaning but overzealous church members; the young Christian subjected to abusive counselling or intimate advances from a leader; the LGBTQ believer told that ‘God hates gays’; the elderly, or mentally ill, or disabled person treated like a second-class Christian; the female convert who discovers that, in contrast to her professional and social milieu, her church thinks she should accept a subordinate position to men.

It’s not my present purpose to pass judgement on these issues. You might choose to paint a positive picture of a church that takes an unpopular stance on some of them. You might want your portrait to show warts and all. Either way, you are going to have a job on your hands. But difficult though it may be, some Christian writers ought to attempt to portray church life in fiction. We should be willing to undergo scrutiny like any other social group. We owe it to the world.

Edmund and Clare Weiner