Night Is Here, But the Barbarians Have Not Come

Posted by J. Mark Bertrand
on Wednesday, March 01, 2006
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There's an interesting discussion over at The Master's Artist sparked by Mary DeMuth's post "Does our prose honor an intelligent Jesus?" Writing briefly from her hotel in Lisbon, Mary points out that Christ was no dummy. Meekness of spirit and dullness of wit aren't synonymous, which raises a question:

So why do some Christian books behave as if Christianity was for dolts? If we are writing for the glory of God and yet our writing is sloppy, theologically sketchy, simplistic to a fault, and serves only the least common denominator, how does that reflect a brilliant God?

This drew comments from Brandilyn Collins, who worried that the suggestion was inaccurate and judgmental:

Bottom line, the folks I know write to the best of their craft. So I tend to find the kind of argument you've put forth as judgmental. Because the argument--at least as I'm perceiving it--seems targeted at the writer's HEART rather than the writer's CRAFT. As if that writer purposely performs under par just to be published.

And Brad Whittington, who pointed out that if most everything is mediocre then we should expect a lot of mediocrity in Christian writing, too:

. . . people have complained about this forever, not just about CBA but publishing in general. And not just publishing. In the 80s I used to complain about television until I read a TV reviewer who said, "Of course 90% of what's on television is crap. 90% of everything is crap. It's not just TV." And I thought, yep, he's right. I see the same problem when I go to the bookstore and on the radio and everywhere else I look, so why am I singling out TV? So I quit complaining and went on doing my thing without worrying about all the crap around me. To paraphrase, the poorly written will always be among us.

Now this is the sort of discussion I love to see at The Master's Artist, CBA novelists having a frank talk about the pros and cons of the industry (perceived and real), keeping things cordial and avoiding the roles of critic and apologist. I've already weighed into this debate at length, so I have nothing to add on the substantive question. But I've recently come to look at the whole "CBA fiction question" from a fresh perspective which I'd like to share.

A few weeks ago, I gave a lecture on "Faith in Today's Fiction," and as part of the talk I started thinking about the ways that evangelicals had used culture in the recent past. At the risk of oversimplifying, I pointed out two tendencies: cultural criticism (using art to "diagnose" culture) and cultural relevance (using art to "reach" the culture). Both habits have produced good fruit, but they've also given birth to extremes. Through the culture wars, we trained ourselves to fit cultural artifacts into a larger story of decline and decadence, and now that critical habit has turned inward. We talk about the evangelical church as if it were the Roman Empire circa AD 400, teetering on the brink, about to be overrun by the Liberals, the Calvinists, the Emergents, the Charismatics or whoever the barbarians du jour happen to be. How else do you explain the fact that intelligent Christians can dismiss a whole body of literature without having read a single example of it? (And the most virulent critics want to make it clear that they haven't, so there is no suspicion of taint.) Now I've read some ridiculously bad CBA fiction -- some of it bestselling -- but I agree with Brandilyn Collins that the authors weren't trying to write badly and with Brad Whittington that there's plenty of ridiculously bad fiction outside the industry, too (and much more of it, per capita). But I also agree with Mary DeMuth that all the effort that goes into this thing called Christian fiction ought to produce a few literary cathedrals to balance against the plethora of storefronts.

Now think about the roles I mentioned earlier: critics and apologists. It seems to me that people in this debate tend to gravitate toward one or the other without reference to particular facts. On the one hand, there are folks with no firsthand knowledge of the fiction in question assuring us that it's all crap, utterly mediocre, and the rationale seems to be that a bad tree can't produce good fruit. Evangelicalism is corrupt and CBA fiction is its offspring, therefore . . . you get the idea. At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are the blindly optimistic cheerleaders, the folks who write all the glowing consumer reviews, who proclaim that CBA fiction is the best thing out there but don't seem to be aware of what actually is out there. Their mantra is the antithesis of the critic's: a good tree can't produce bad fruit. How can a book written by a Christian indwelled by the Holy Spirit that "touches" other Christians be anything less than great? Again, you get the idea. And of course, the truth lies somewhere in between.

The biggest obstacle to good discussions about this topic is a lack of particulars. Dave Long has pointed this out before. Christian publishing is still a relatively small business, and everyone seems to feel the need to be uncritical in public -- or at least, not to be critical of any book in particular. Even vague, generalized statements about the need to improve craft are met with hostility, as if there were something fundamentally un-Christian about making aesthetic judgments or refusing to concede that "it's all relative." As a result, if you're looking for an open "warts and all" discussion of the state of the industry and the work of particular authors, you either have to seek it outside the community or corner people one on one, off the record, which can be frustrating for artists trying to get a feel for the possibilities.

It seems to me that the most important thing, if you're interested in what's really happening today, is to scrupulously avoid both the generalized critical stance and the generalized apologist's stance, and focus as much as possible on particulars. Seek out the best CBA books and form a considered opinion based on how they compare with comparable books in the mainstream. Be prepared both for surprises and disappointments, and above all, cultivate an appreciation for what could (and should) be without doing an injustice to what is. I've entered this debate over the past year or two for one reason: so that the friction and correspondences between my vision and what I see around me can help spur my own aesthetic. I imagine most writers in the fray -- particularly those without ego invested in the industry itself -- have a similar motivation. The trick is to learn how to ask the question "Where do I see myself?" without denying other artists the chance to find themselves standing somewhere else. Art is about expression and reaction, not consensus. Ultimately, the only person I need to convince is myself.