Fiction's Faith: Lost Or Redefined?

In a New York Times article, writer and editor Paul Elie discusses the lack of Christian faith in modern fiction. He highlights the works of past authors such as Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and Anthony Burgess, who incorporated Christian convictions into their writing. However, Elie observes that contemporary literary fiction rarely engages with Christian beliefs, treating them as something between a dead language and a hangover. This absence is notable given the significant number of adherents in the United States and the faith's historical influence on society. The article sparks a discussion about the role of faith in literature and the potential reasons for its decline in modern fiction.

Christian Belief in Fiction

In an article for the New York Times, Paul Elie argues that Christian belief is figuring less and less into literary fiction. Hesection of our culture can be said to be post-Christian, it is literature.

Elie notes that writers such as Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Reynolds Price, and John Updike presented themselves as novelists with Christian convictions. However, their would-be successors are thin on the ground. Works of fiction about the quandaries of Christian belief are also scarce. When writers do draw on sacred texts and themes, their references often go unrecognized.

Elie finds this strange given the current upheavals in American Christianity, which he believes cry out for dramatic treatment. He also points to the success of novelists depicting the changing lives of American Jews and Muslims.

In response to Elie's article, Alex Bledsoe highlights examples of Christian faith depicted in recent fantasy novels, such as "The Hum and the Shiver" by Bledsoe himself and "Miserere: An Autumn Tale" by Teresa Frohock. Bledsoe argues that "emphatically Christian" characters are all around if one looks beyond literary fiction to genres like fantasy, science fiction, horror, and romance.

Elie's article generated a lot of discussion, with some commenters agreeing with his observations and others pushing back. Some suggested that Christian belief is still present in contemporary fiction but is more subtle or masked, while others pointed to the challenges of getting such works published by mainstream publishers.

Overall, the question of whether fiction has lost its faith, and specifically Christian belief, is a complex and nuanced one that invites a variety of perspectives and opinions.

The Novel of Belief

Christian belief is figuring less and less into literary fiction. If any segment of our culture can be said to be post-Christian, it is literature. In the past, literary fiction treated Christian belief as something between a dead language and a hangover.

Christian writers with what O'Connor called "Christian convictions" are thin on the ground. Works of fiction about the quandaries of Christian belief are also scarce. Writers who draw on sacred texts and themes see the references go unrecognized. A faith with about 170 million adherents in the United States, which for centuries seeped into every nook and cranny of American society, now plays a marginal role in literary fiction.

This is strange because the current upheavals in American Christianity—involving sex, politics, money, and diversity—cry out for dramatic treatment. It is also strange because upheavals in Christianity across the Atlantic gave rise to great fiction, from "The Brothers Karamazov" to "Brideshead Revisited."

So, where has the novel of belief gone? The obvious answer is that it has gone where belief itself has gone. In America today, Christianity is highly visible in public life but marginal or of no consequence in many individual lives. For the first time in American history, it is possible to speak of Christianity matter-of-factly as one religion among many; for the first time, it is possible to leave it out of the conversation altogether. This development places the believer on a frontier again, at the beginning of a new adventure. It means that the Christian who was born here is a stranger in a strange land, no less than the Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Soviet Jews, and Spanish-speaking Catholics who have arrived from elsewhere.

However, few people see it that way. People of faith see decline and fall. Their detractors see a people threatening rear-guard political action or a people left behind.

Christian belief has become like whiteness, the one 'race' that is invisible and has no history and no defining characteristics. It has become a social fact rather than an individual one. When we talk about belief, we talk about what is permissible—about the sex abuse scandal, school prayer, or whether the church should open its basement to 12‑step everything.

The most emphatically Christian character in contemporary American fiction is the Rev. John Ames, who, in Marilynne Robinson’s novel "Gilead," writes in old age to his young son as he prepares for death in 1957. More epistle than epic, the novel is historical fiction in mufti, with a strand of the story going back to the Civil War. And yet it arrived in 2004 as a tract for the times. It presented liberal Protestantism as America’s classical heritage and set Ames’s wise, tender reverence against the bellicose cymbal-clanging of George W. Bush’s White House.

With "Gilead," Robinson took O’Connor’s insight about "do-it-yourself religion" back to church, creating a minister whose belief is believable because it is so plainly the fruit of a personal search. But the novel’s originality conceals the fact that, as a novel of belief, it is highly representative: set in the past, concerned with a clergyman, presenting belief as a family matter, and animated by a social crisis.

These are the ways that belief figures in contemporary American fiction. Even today, there are as many novels of religious childhood as there are parochial schools and Bible camps. There are the complex domestic novels of Alice McDermott and Louise Erdrich, in which belief is a language of the tribe. There is the perduring local religion in the post-Faulkner worlds of William Kennedy and Toni Morrison: like the convent in Morrison’s "Paradise," which is transformed from a mansion to a Catholic nunnery to a redoubt for wayward women, belief is a fixture on the landscape even as its significance changes.

In some fiction, belief is part of the matrix, a rumor writ large. So it is in the work of Don DeLillo and Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy’s early novel "Suttree" (1979) has an effortlessly biblical flavor, but by "No Country for Old Men" (2005), religion is reduced to a reminder of last things. DeLillo’s novels of plots and terror are shot through with a mystical sense that “everything is connected in the end.” He framed the frankest justification for religion, from a nun in "White Noise": “Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us. They are sure that they are right not to believe but they know belief must not fade completely. Hell is when no one believes.”

Christian belief is figuring less and less into literary fiction, and this is a strange development given the prominent role that Christianity has played in American society and the current upheavals it is undergoing. The novel of belief has gone where belief itself has gone—it is highly visible in public life but marginal or absent in many individual lives. However, there are still some contemporary novels that engage with Christian belief in thoughtful and nuanced ways, such as Robinson's "Gilead" and the works of McDermott, Erdrich, Kennedy, and Morrison.

Post-Christian Literature

Christian belief is figuring less and less into literary fiction. If any segment of our culture can be said to be post-Christian, it is literature.

Christian belief is figuring into literary fiction as something between a dead language and a hangover. In the past, authors such as Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Reynolds Price, and John Updike presented themselves as novelists with Christian convictions. Their would-be successors are thin on the ground. Works of fiction about the quandaries of Christian belief are also scarce. Writers who draw on sacred texts and themes see the references go unrecognized.

Christianity, a faith with something like 170 million adherents in the United States, a faith that for centuries seeped into every nook and cranny of American society, now plays a marginal role in literature. This is strange given the current upheavals in American Christianity—involving sex, politics, money, and diversity—which cry out for dramatic treatment. It is also strange because upheavals in Christianity across the Atlantic gave rise to great fiction, from "The Brothers Karamazov" to "Brideshead Revisited."

So, where has the novel of belief gone? The obvious answer is that it has gone where belief itself has gone. In America today, Christianity is highly visible in public life but marginal or of no consequence in a great many individual lives. For the first time in American history, it is possible to speak of Christianity matter-of-factly as one religion among many; for the first time, it is possible to leave it out of the conversation altogether. This development places the believer on a frontier again, at the beginning of a new adventure. It means that the Christian who was born here is a stranger in a strange land, no less than the Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Soviet Jews, and Spanish-speaking Catholics who have arrived from elsewhere.

However, few people see it that way. People of faith see decline and fall. Their detractors see a people threatening rear-guard political action or a people left behind.

In response to the question, "Has fiction lost its faith?", one might argue that fiction has not lost its faith but that the faith in fiction has changed. It has become more diverse, reflecting the multitude of faiths and beliefs present in society. This is evident in the successful depiction of the changing lives of American Jews and Muslims in literature.

Furthermore, while Christian convictions may be less explicit in contemporary literary fiction, they are not entirely absent. Authors such as Marilynne Robinson and Ron Hansen are writing successfully from the perspective of believers or faithful people. Additionally, Christian themes and beliefs can be found in genres such as fantasy, science fiction, horror, and romance, which are often looked down upon.

In conclusion, while Christian belief may be less prominent in literary fiction today than it was in the past, it has not completely disappeared. It has evolved and diversified, reflecting the changing religious landscape of society.

Dramatic Treatment of Religion

Christian belief is figuring less and less into literary fiction. If any segment of our culture can be said to be post-Christian, it is literature. Christian belief is figuring into literary fiction in our place and time: as something between a dead language and a hangover.

Christian writers are not writing about the world where they actually live and move and have their being. They are writing about other eras and other genres. It is hard to find literary fiction that depicts Christian people wrestling around with what it means to be a Christian person in the twenty-first century.

However, there are some exceptions. Paul Elie cites Marilynne Robinson's Gilead as an example of a novel of belief. Gilead is historical fiction, with a strand of the story going back to the Civil War. Gilead arrived in 2004 as a tract for the times. It presented liberal Protestantism as America’s classical heritage; it set Ames’s wise, tender reverence against the bellicose cymbal-clanging of George W. Bush’s White House.

Elie also mentions the complex domestic novels of Alice McDermott and Louise Erdrich, in which belief is a language of the tribe. There is the perduring local religion in the post-Faulkner worlds of William Kennedy and Toni Morrison: like the convent in Morrison’s Paradise, which is transformed from mansion to Catholic nunnery to a redoubt for wayward women, belief is a fixture on the landscape even as its significance changes.

In some fiction, belief is part of the matrix, a rumour writ large. So it is in the work of Don DeLillo and Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy’s early novel Suttree (1979) has an effortlessly biblical flavour, but by No Country for Old Men (2005), religion is reduced to a reminder of last things. At one point, the “redneck” Sheriff Bell surmises that Satan created the narcotics trade to “bring the human race to its knees.”.

DeLillo’s novels of plots and terror are shot through with a mystical sense that “everything is connected in the end.”. He framed the frankest justification for religion, from a nun in White Noise: “Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us. They are sure that they are right not to believe but they know belief must not fade completely. Hell is when no one believes.”.

Elie also mentions the work of Ron Hansen, Linda McCullough Moore, and Brett Lott, as well as Susan Howatch in some of her books.

Outside of literary fiction, Christian belief is figuring more prominently. Alex Bledsoe, responding to Elie's article, points out that Christian faith is often depicted in fantasy, science fiction, horror and romance. Bledsoe cites his own novel The Hum and the Shiver, in which a young Methodist minister is faced with the task of reaching out to a group of people who don't believe in the same things he does. Bledsoe also mentions Teresa Frohock's Miserere: An Autumn Tale, in which she creates a cosmology that incorporates all the world's religions, and shows them working together. Prayer functions as a real power that gets real results, and the strength of a prayer is measurable and crucial. Hell is a real place, and so is Heaven; and free will, the ultimate gift from God, has consequences.

Religion in Non-Fiction

One example of religion in non-fiction can be found in the works of Paul Elie, who wrote the book "The Life You Save May Be Your Own". In this book, Elie presents a biography of four twentieth-century American Catholic writers: Flannery O'Connor, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and Walker Percy. Elie's work explores the role of Christian convictions in the lives and writings of these influential authors.

Another example is found in the works of Eliza Griswold, a journalist who wrote about the encounters between Christians and Muslims in "The Tenth Parallel". Her work highlights the geopolitical soul-to-soul interactions that take place between people of different faith traditions.

Mark Richard's memoir, "House of Prayer No. 2", is another illustration of religion in non-fiction. Richard recounts his life experiences and interprets them as signs from God, offering a unique perspective on faith and spirituality.

Chris Adrian's fable, "The Children's Hospital", presents a world that is deeply rooted in religion. The story explores how belief systems shape individuals' experiences and interactions in a religious context.

James Wood's essays on unbelief also provide valuable insights into the role of religion in non-fiction. By examining unbelief as the shadow and echo of belief, Wood offers a nuanced perspective on the complexities of faith and its impact on human existence.

These examples demonstrate that while Christian belief may be less prominent in modern literary fiction, religion remains a significant theme in non-fiction works. These authors explore faith, spirituality, and the impact of belief systems on individuals and societies through memoirs, essays, and fables, contributing to a rich body of non-fiction literature that engages with religious themes.

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