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Disembowelments, drug addictions, and villains blown apart by rockets: Christian fiction isn't what it used to be.

Bookstores and reviewers haven't yet noticed the change. The mainstream press—confused, perhaps, by the number of Tim LaHaye/Jerry Jenkins novels in circulation—is still proclaiming that Christian readers want old-fashioned stories: Christian fiction, announces Time, has "no explicit sex (and almost none implicit), no bad words, virtually no violence." Christian readers want "renewal of faith" and "action without all the sex and profanity," pronounces the Chicago Tribune.

And those responsible for putting Christian fiction on bookstore shelves still agree: Christians, says a Spring Arbor executive, are looking for something that they will feel "safe in reading." "Readers feel comfortable with [Christian fiction]," says a Moody Press representative. "They know they will be entertained and at the same time not have to worry."

But in 1999, some consciously Christian fiction (from evangelical houses) and some genre fiction (mostly from Catholic houses) shunned Bible lessons, talked about sex, occasionally swore, and quite often failed to convert anyone.

Ironically, the most didactic religious novel of the year was published by a secular house. Joseph Girzone's Joshua: The Homecoming (Doubleday) features Jesus, thinly disguised as a man named Joshua, paying a visit to late twentieth-century Earth. Worried about the doomsday movements popping up as 2000 approaches, Joshua spends most of the book explaining to Americans that God does not work through apocalypse. San Francisco then falls into the ocean, but Joshua clarifies for us: God isn't judging California. "When we gave free will to people," he explains, "my father tied his hands behind his back."

This message trumps all else in Joshua: The Homecoming, which features awkward theological exposition inserted into the storyline in the grand tradition of evangelical fiction—though this book is written by a Catholic priest. "Dear Minnie," Joshua begins, "God does not play games. Why would God bring the world to a sudden end? The world ends for each one when he or she dies. That is the only end that people should be concerned about."

This year's novels from evangelical Christian publishers, by contrast, are much more stylish. Vinita Hampton Wright's literary novel Grace at Bender Springs (Broadman & Holman) lovingly chronicles the lives of Bender Springs' citizens as they fumble their way toward God. Pastoral couple Sarah and Jacob Morgan are failing miserably at their first pastorate; Tony Gardino is tempted every day to kill himself, and every day puts suicide off just until morning; Dave Seaton lives, uneasily, with a deeply troubled and much younger girl.

"Rona," Sarah Morgan asks her friend, "do you think it matters at all to God—how hard I've tried?"

Rona answers, "Yes. I think he hates to see us trying so hard."

"I wish he'd help out a little more, then," Sarah objects. "It would take the pressure off."

Rona, like most of us, has no answer.

Literary fiction is a relatively recent phenomenon in the Christian market, and the newness shows: Grace at Bender Springs, one of the better books of the year, still has awkward spots. It should be 100 pages shorter, and Wright's metaphors induce the occasional giggle ("Annie's face reached out to take hold of him"). And in the first 100 pages, the characters have no visible connections with each other and nothing particular at stake.

Romey's Place by James Calvin Schaap (Baker) also suffers from technical difficulties. This coming-of-age tale is perceptive and realistic, and the troubled relationship between narrator Lowell Prins and his perfect father is beautifully disturbing. But the novel is choked by Schaap's narrative technique, which continually overlays the voice of adolescent Lowell with the intrusive editorializing of the grown Prins.

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April 24 2000, Vol. 44, No. 5