Religious Fiction

9 Key excerpts on "Religious Fiction"

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  Faith and Fiction

  A Theological Critique of the Narrative Strategies of Hugh MacLennan and Morley Callaghan

  • Barbara Pell(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Wilfrid Laurier University Press

    (Publisher)

  6 Faith and Fiction artistically valid since it cannot be communicated or subjected to dramatic portrayal (265-66). Nevertheless, Glicksberg goes on to say that there are novels that are profoundly religious in content without ceasing to be novels, and he cites the universal appeal of the Catholic novelists Graham Greene and Fran9ois Mauriac. How have these writers overcome the paradoxes of a Christian aesthetic? In their works, religion is presented as experience, as spiritual conflict, as vision and aspiration, struggle and search and suffering, not as codified theology. What we get is a convincing and comprehensive picture of life in all its irreducible mysteriousness. (72) We have returned, therefore, to the analogy of revealed (codified theology) versus natural (experience) theology. Religious novelists, as novelists, must have as strong a commitment to their art as to their faith. As we have seen, the novel has been constructed as a realistic genre, a mimesis of secular life. This theoretical premise has caused some of the most prominent modern Christian writers (for example, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien 3 ) to abandon the novel in favour of theological fantasies. Religious novelists, however, who choose to incarnate the supernatural in the natural cannot deny or distort the latter. Their existential participation in the limit-situations of their readers means admitting evil, suffering, disbelief, and temptation — in other words sin — into their fictional worlds along with righteousness and belief. They must honestly portray the agonies of doubt along with the fervours of faith. Above all, they cannot impose a supernatural solution on the existential struggles of their characters deus ex machina, nor miraculously transpose their finite quests into an infinite realm.

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  Faith and Fiction

  Christian Literature in America Today

  • Anita Gandolfo(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  God is a living, tangible, and daily pres- ence.” 14 However, even someone as partisan as an editor for Books and Culture, an offshoot of the evangelical Christianity Today, refers to Christian fiction as an “alternative universe,” populated by “evangelical buffoons,” so steeped are these novels in simplistic spirituality. 15 Undeniably, this fiction serves a purpose. Its reductive presentation of the spiritual life is useful to support its Stage 2 or 3 readers, providing a way for them to participate in an apparently realistic version of their unique Christian culture. 116 FAITH AND FICTION There is no challenge to readers’ thinking in this essentially self-reflexive fiction because it is designed to mirror its own culture as an idealized reality. The sales figures indicate that this fiction, however aberrant it may seem from a literary or mainline theological perspective, meets the needs of a significant number of conservative Christians. This “literature of their own” must be understood as the product of a specific cultural moment and as a subgenre that fulfills the needs of a specific group of readers. The spiritual journey experienced by the heroine in Christy is more consonant with mainstream fiction which privileges the growth and development of the pro- tagonist. And the two types of literature should not be conflated, as in the obvious attempt to raise the status of Christian fiction by claiming association with main- stream authors, as in the use of a quotation from a highly praised mainstream writer like Ron Hansen on the Christy Awards web site. Ironically, since Hansen is a Roman Catholic, many evangelicals would not even consider him a Christian, so the use of his name appears to be quite a reach in seeking status for evangelical Christian fiction. Seeking Credibility In creating the Christy award, evangelical publishers were clearly not satisfied with booming sales.

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  Narrative and Belief

  The Religious Affordance of Supernatural Fiction

  • Markus Altena Davidsen(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  As I stated in my introduction the relationship between fictional and religious narratives is a truly knotty issue because there are so many aspects involved in it. Rather than pursuing the question what it is that differentiates fictional from religious narratives, I have focused on those elements in fictional literature which make it possible for interpretative communities to attribute them religious character. In terms of overall hermeneutics, I have placed emphasis on an approach that does not make a digital choice between text and interpretative community as decisive for the meaning ascribed to texts. On the contrary, I have advocated for a view that sees texts a semi-autonomous entities thereby acknowledging the importance of the interpretative communities for the meaning ascription to texts in their interpretation but also insisting on the relative autonomy of the semantic universe endorsed by any text as well as the course through which it seeks to impose its particular manifestation of this universe on its readers.

  I do not think that a clear-cut division can be made between fictional and religious narratives, or that such a distinction needs to be made. Religious narratives may be read as fiction, and fictional narratives, as we now know from fiction-based religions, may be understood as religious texts. Ultimately, whether a text is conceived of as a fictional or religious narrative depends on the epistemological stance of the reader towards the text. Tangentially related to the fiction-religion distinction is the differentiation between fabrication and fact, since readers ascribing religious importance to narratives often take them to be factual representations of reality. I have briefly accounted for why the fiction-religion divide should not be juxtaposed with the faction-fabrication distinction, since the latter by virtue of its origin in historicism and, thereby, overall commitment to a scientific epistemology have to consider elements fictitious which are not conceived of as such by religious users. The recounted worlds of religions do not amount to faction in contrast to fiction.

  With regard to the elements that enable a fictional narrative to be attributed religious significance I have pointed to three important traits. First, I have placed emphasis on the indexical component that may be assigned to some narrative works characterised by openness in terms of p-s-t-coordinates. Thereby, elements of the story-world may be projected onto an actual landscape. In this manner, the symbolic world of the narrative is undergirded by material expressions in the actual landscape which serve to enhance the verisimilitude of the story-world. Second, by virtue of their evolutionary background human beings are hyper-sensitive to signs and agency which make them particularly prone to engage in the interpretation of massive clusters of signs such as narratives. Narratives simply call for interpretation. Figures in possession of counterintuitive abilities call for special attention because they trigger interest. Agents with counterintuitive abilities understood to intervene benevolently or malignantly in the world of less counterintuitive figures may by virtue of the contrast distinguishing these characters in the story-world be transposed onto a comparable distinction between different worlds in the world of interpretative communities. Thereby, readers may associate or mirror themselves in those recounted figures which in the story-world are depicted as victims or beneficiaries of the actions of the super-human agents. However, it is crucial that the figures in question are in possession of salient counterintuitive abilities that may be used for the benefit of readers in order for readers to make the conflation between story-world and their own world. Third, religious adherents understand religious narratives to assert the identity of the recounted world and their own world. Religious narratives do not necessarily make an explicit claim to the identity of the story-world and the actual world of its readers. Yet, by virtue of embedded discourses and openness or indeterminacy with respect to p-s-t-coordinates some narratives afford themselves to be ascribed religious importance: ‘You have heard that it was said to those of old, but I say to you that everyone…’ The play with verisimilitude occurring in leaps from narration to narrate and vice-versa strongly contributes to creating this effect.

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  Literature and Understanding

  The Value of a Close Reading of Literary Texts

  • Jon Phelan(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Fiction is a species of language use (applied to names, sentences and discourses) and is neutral as to value. Literature, even in the narrowest sense applied to imaginative and creative writing, is a kind of discourse, essentially valued, which affords and invites a distinctive kind of appreciation.

  (Lamarque 2014: 69)

  Actually, ‘fiction’ is subject to evaluation on some occasions. Karl May was condemned when his novels set in the Wild West, and reputedly based on fact, were revealed as fiction. In this instance, the disappointment of many readers extended beyond disappointment at being hoodwinked to dissatisfaction at being left with ‘mere fiction’. In another type of case, fiction may be criticised for containing factual inaccuracy. A novel set in Cambridge which contains the line ‘I left Magdalene College and walked across the road to the Fitzwilliam Museum’ contains a factual accuracy and one that would disturb a reader familiar with the city. Let us also imagine that this detail served no purpose in the novel so could not be excused as ‘poetic license’. This type of case results in a kind of imaginative resistance, of a non-moral kind, which leads to a negative evaluation of the work. Here genre convention plays a role in evaluation. If the novel is realist fiction and if a particular detail is wrong about the subject depicted, then the novel may be criticised for containing an error. In this second example, the work is criticised for being ‘too fictional’ given the genre conventions of realist fiction.

  Nevertheless, it is true that describing a work as a work of ‘fiction’ is not usually evaluative but the kind of categorisation publishers use to help readers distinguish what is invented from what is fact; for instance, to differentiate ‘true crime’ from ‘detective fiction’. In contrast, calling a work ‘literature’ is predominantly evaluative and involves some form of aesthetic appreciation. This kind of literary appreciation seems separate from personal preference; I may recognise a late Henry James novel as literature without the work being to my taste. The upshot of this brief discussion is that I am loath to dismiss the evaluative aspect of literature as it corresponds with our ordinary usage of the term and captures something of the Gestalt of reading a text as a work of literature.

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  Law, Freedom and Story

  The Role of Narrative in Therapy, Society and Faith

  • John C. Hoffman(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Wilfrid Laurier University Press

    (Publisher)

  The other part of the interest details the actual telling of stories in a faith context, the kinds of tales told, the occasions upon which they are recounted, the various modes of their expression, including their acting out in individual and social cere-monies and their visual representation in art. Simply to cite a few examples, one finds such works as Frederick Buechner's Telling the Truth, John Dominic Crossan's The Dark Interval: Toward a Theol-ogy of Story, Mircea Eliade's Myth and Reality and many others, Sam Keen's To a Dancing God, Wesley Kort's Narrative Elements and Religious Meaning, William Lynch's Christ and Apollo: The Dimensions of Literary Imagination, James McClendon's Biography as Theology, Michael Novak's Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove, Peter Slater's The Dynamics of Religion, Sallie McFague's Speaking in Parables, James Wiggins's Religion as Story. In The Religious Experience of Mankind, Ninian Smart identifies six basic dimensions, as he calls them, of humanity's religiousness: the ritual, mythological, doctrinal, ethical, social, and experiential. As employed by Smart, the mythological dimension becomes essen-tially the narrative element of faith. He reminds us that in origin, the term 'myth' means 'story.' 1 In his analysis, central to the life of religion are both story and ritual enactment. Some debate exists among scholars as to whether myth or ritual is primary or whether one does not inevitably imply the other. Smart asserts, for example: The meaning of ritual cannot be understood without reference to the environment of belief in which it is performed. 2 Indeed one can argue that ritual is basically enacted story, dramatic presentations of elements of the mythos. Yet it seems clear that the acting out of faith occurred long before any written record of narrative existed.

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  Religious Fictionalism

  • Robin Le Poidevin(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Suppose, as Nietzsche said of Christianity, that a religion’ s view of human nature is demeaning, degrading, or even corrupting (Nietzsche (1895)). Then importing it into a fiction would simply mean that the fiction portrayed human nature in a demeaning, degrading or corrupting way. It might be salutary to immerse oneself in such a fiction for a time, but to make it one’ s preferred narrative is asking for trouble. The fictionalist naturally, then, will choose as their central religious narrative one with whose values they are in sympathy. Turning to the problems for religious realism outlined in Section 1, can we come to any provisional conclusions as to how successful fictionalism is in avoiding them? The problem of warrant, surely, will not arise in any straightfor- ward way for the fictionalist. As the religious narrative is not taken by the fictionalist to be objectively fact-stating, they cannot reasonably be asked to cite the evidence on which they suppose it true. Rather, the difficulty will be to work out what it is appropriate to imagine within the fiction, but there, at least, it will be reasonably clear what sources to rely on (a sacred book, for instance), and what those sources say is not so much evidence for fictional truth as constitutive of it. But what of one aspect of the problem of warrant – the problem of religious diversity? It might be thought that this too is avoided by the fictionalist, since no one religion is being proclaimed as uniquely true. All are in principle available as fictions, and which seem live options will be, in large part, determined by cultural factors. Indeed, one might think that fictionalism was the ideal basis for religious tolerance and pluralism. However, Victoria Harrison (2010) has questioned this. We have been developing the idea of fictionalism as a prescriptive rather than a descriptive theory.

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  Contemporary Fiction and Christianity

  • Andrew Tate(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  If fiction is, by definition, a human construct, it will always constitute a jumble of sacred longing and ordin-ary failure. However, Ingraffia's argument vividly illustrates the difficulty that postmodern culture, including literary fiction, is faced with in speaking of God. 'Theology has lost its object,' argues Philip Blond. Tt can no longer point to anything with ostensive certainty and say the word God '. Similarly, in an exploration of theology and film, Roy M. Anker has observed that the word 'God' is no longer either 'evocative' or 'precise', 'having long since become the great cosmic catchall for anything slightly strange, repressive, or, for that matter, unjust -either in politics or personal life'. 85 Rhidian Brook's The Testi-mony of Taliesin Jones (1996), a relatively rare novel of religious conversion rather than loss of faith that is discussed in more detail in Chapter 4, explores the difficulties of imagining the divine. The novel's eleven-year-old protagonist, Taliesin, is confused by the lack of clarity in descriptions of God: Introduction: Re -enchanted Fictions 19 For some, it seems, God is made up, He can't be located, no one seems to have seen Him, He hasn't featured in the news. For others He is as real as an apple; He can be found in everything, even inside of us. Is there a right or wrong answer, or does it just depend? Is there a completely utterly categorical yes, or an absolutely totally definite no?' 86 Brook's novel wrestles with the possibility that God might be encountered in the everyday and, in a quiet way, offers a bold narrative of emerging faith. In many other instances, however, when God is invoked in the contemporary novel, it is frequently to deride or refute the validity of the term. For example, in Salman Rushdie's millennial, pop culture-saturated rewriting of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999), the term 'God' becomes fraught with power struggles.

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  Postmodern Belief

  American Literature and Religion since 1960

  • Amy Hungerford(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  This is to acknowledge, in an open rather than a normative way, that belief remains at the heart of American popular discourse about religion; it is also to acknowledge that the content of belief does matter to many traditional believers, and that it matters in prominent examples of what we might call Religious Fiction. The following sec- tions suggest, however, that it matters in ways that do not track traditional under- standings of how belief—understood as mental concept—informs the literary, or, indeed, those traditional understandings of how belief informs everyday life. Amy Frykholm makes a plea for this kind of thinking at the end of her excellent field study of the readers of the Left Behind series. For all the scholarly skepticism about belief as a category—which she reviews in a quick tour through the work of Orsi, Catherine Bell, Donald Lopez, and Rodney Needham on the subject of be- lief—she declares, “As a researcher, I cannot shy away from the category to which readers would give the most emphasis.” She calls for an understanding of reli- gious belief “as dynamic, fluid, and flexible as it functions in people’s everyday 113 THE LITERARY PRACTICE OF BELIEF lives.” 10 My aim here is to advance such an understanding in the context of literary discourse and literary visions of everyday life. Marilynne Robinson and the Theology of Difference Marilynne Robinson would seem to embody the peaceful co- existence of contemporary scholarly thought about religion and commitment to religious life. In a review of Harold Bloom and Jesse Zuba’s anthology of religious poetry, Robinson takes the opportunity to reflect on the definition of religion as well as the relationships between religion and poetry in ways that are immediately rec- ognizable in the context of the debates in religious studies I have been discussing.

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  The Routledge Companion to Literature and Religion

  • Mark Knight(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe (“Writing Jews in Contemporary Britain,” 47.2, 2014; “Literature Written in Ladino,” 43.2, 2010; “Yiddish Literature, Poetry and Song” 42.2, 2009). The focus of this chapter is on three journals that specialize in literature (not the arts in general) and that have been dedicated wholly to the field of religion and literature.

  2 We are well aware that this question demands and presupposes some idea as to what we mean by “literature” and “religion.” Rather than confine ourselves to narrow or heavily contested definitions, however, we employ these terms as we find them being used by the authors of the articles in the three journals. Most of them refer to literature as textually based expressions of the imagination: poetry, fiction, and drama (as well as film). Unsurprisingly, religion is mostly used as a reference to the world religions, to their founding texts and to themes, ideas, practices, etc. connected with these religions.

  3 We would like to thank Charles Huttar and Paul Contino for providing us with a short history of the journal. They write:

  It began humbly, in 1950, when a teacher at a small Christian college began sending occasional mimeographed newsletters to friends doing similar work. After meeting informally at the Modern Language Association convention, the group, by 1956, had organized into a society which has now grown to over a thousand—an international membership representing a variety of academic institutions and religious traditions. Each year, CCL meets at MLA, hosts regional conferences throughout the U.S., and offers annual awards to encourage young scholars, and to recognize the creative and scholarly achievement of many, including, most recently, Marilynne Robinson, Rowan Williams, and Robert Alter. The hallmark of CCL is its award-winning journal, Christianity and Literature

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