Can we find real-life issues in the apocalyptic and historical-romance stories Christians read?
Once upon a time I thought about writing a novel. It would be a story of real people in complex relationships. Maybe a husband and wife, struggling with a boring marriage. The husband would have a crisis of faith after he lost his job. The story would portray fragile, yet fundamentally decent human beings grasping for shreds of grace. So why wouldn’t I write my novel? Because right now, what is selling is genre fiction, mainly the historical and spiritual-warfare genres. What are not selling are stories of contemporary people like you and me.
In recent years, fiction has become the 500-pound gorilla of the Christian publishing industry. The sales figures for authors like Janette Oke and Frank Peretti would make Stephen King consider writing a novel about demons aiming fiery darts at the roof of a soddy on the Saskatchewan prairie. Even personalities not normally associated with artistic endeavor, such as financial counselor Larry Burkett and Minirth-Meier Clinics cofounder Paul Meier, have written successful novels, mostly of the apocalyptic sort.
I do not mean to imply that these genre novels are uniformly bad. Some are shallow, no question. Some are gratifyingly well-crafted. Still, I think it is worth pursuing why even our talented storytellers are giving us these particular types of stories, moving us either forward in time or backward, or bringing the end of time to the present—but ignoring the world all of us know best.
Smiting the bad guys
After reading a number of novels dishing up the details on how the world will end or providing the blow-by-blow on heavenly battles, one thing struck me forcefully: in all supernatural thrillers, God acts. Visibly. Vividly. Unmistakably. You might say these stories—like Scripture—show the God who is there and who lets you know it.
Frank Peretti did two things in his apocalyptic megaseller This Present Darkness, which has been called “the first fundamentalist novel.” First, he made it acceptable for Christians to read a tale of the supernatural, a story “peopled” with demons and angels—acceptable because the battles culminate in a no-doubt-about-it divine triumph. But while Peretti was entertaining the reader by drawing back the curtain from the unseen world, he was also tapping a deep vein of anger and frustration. Anger: What has gone so wrong in society? Frustration: Why isn’t anybody listening?
Peretti’s success, as success has a way of doing, spawned a host of similar novels that show divine justice in action. Paul Meier’s recent bestseller, The Third Millennium (Nelson), is typical of the breed. The end times are upon the world: the visions of John’s Revelation have come true. Boils and sores afflict the followers of the power-hungry Antichrist who now rules the world. A blood-red coagulation covers the oceans, killing all sea creatures. God removes the ozone layer, and the average daytime temperature rises to 135 degrees. Billions of Chinese battle the forces of Antichrist in the Jezreel Valley, and “the carnage exceeds the worst ever seen by the human race.”
Finally, when all seems lost, this: “At the exact moment that the sun started to rise, the clouds over the Holy City [Jerusalem] broke, and a great shaft of light shot through the sky.… Suddenly the Source of the light broke through the clouds on a great white horse. Wearing a golden crown and holding a sharp sickle, the risen and exalted Yeshua once more rode into human history, this time as Lord of the Third Millennium.”
The basic theology behind these books is not flawed—though perhaps incomplete. God will act. Christ will come again. The danger, however, is the implication that the world is so irredeemably awful that there is nothing we can do except pray that the Lord does not tarry. The temptation is to give in and be guided by fear—to miss the fact that even now Christ is accomplishing his saving work in our world, and doing it in some decidedly undramatic settings.
Last summer our family vacationed on Cape Cod. Cape Cod has magnificent beaches, quaint shops, fascinating history—and little Christian presence. One Sunday my husband and I rolled out of bed early and drove to church, the only church of our evangelical denomination on the Cape. A smiling, elderly man in white shoes handed us a bulletin. We sat at the back of the small sanctuary, which, I was happy to see, was full. The service had a folksy, family flavor; many of the worshipers were older. At one point, the pastor took requests for favorite hymns. The message was relevant and biblical.
As I sat there, I looked out the open door to the sun-dappled woods beyond the parking lot. I thought, “This little congregation is so necessary. So significant. God is doing something important here.” Not, perhaps, through massive church growth or towering courage in the face of persecution, but through faithful, patient ministry in a sometimes-indifferent environment—just like thousands of other bodies of believers. Such signs of God may not make a spellbinding read. But our yearnings to see the Rider on his great, white apocalyptic horse should not blind us to what God is doing now.
The way we were?
Christians—mostly women—buy historical fiction by the bargeload. Frontier Lady, by Judith Pella, sold 52,000 copies in its first six months. Land of the Brave and the Free, by Michael Phillips, sold 48,000 in just four months. Many of these titles are in series by authors who have developed loyal followings—such as Bodie Thoene and her Zion Chronicles—and it behooves publishers to give readers what they expect.
And what they expect is wholesome but gripping stories with a dash of period detail. Where the spiritual-warfare tales point to divine intervention as a response to the present, historical fiction points to a past—sometimes a relatively recent past—undergirded by a sense of moral certitude. In these pages, we are offered a sanctuary from the gray moral storms of modern life.
One role historical novels often play is to preserve and reinforce the myths we live by. B. J. Hoff’s new novel, Sons of an Ancient Glory (Bethany House), which chronicles the plight of Irish immigrants to these shores around 1850, is an example of that mythos-making. Hoff, a gifted storyteller, does not gloss over the despair, the depravity, and the danger these refugees encountered. Quinn O’Shea, a young woman newly arrived in New York, finds herself alone on the streets of the Bowery, “where the starving and the ill huddled like rats just to stay alive.”
But Hoff does not leave Quinn—or us—on the mean streets. After some plot twists and turns, the lass finds a place as a maid. Her employer, Evan Whittaker, is an idealistic young businessman and Christian who works with poor boys in the slums. One day, walking in the city, he observes the teeming, polyglot masses: “It seemed a wonder and a glory to Evan that the God who had sustained [his wife] … and himself … through the shadowed valleys of their lives was also the God of all the thousands of immigrants who even now were building this new nation.… [And] as long as God was at the heart of America, could America be anything less than great?”
In a few sentences, Hoff has reaffirmed some of our most cherished myths about our nation—that America is a land of opportunity where hard work is rewarded, one melting pot under God. Couple that mythos with some likable characters and strong narrative, and it is no wonder these books enjoy such a vast readership.
After a hard day, when the kids are tucked in bed and you have a little time for yourself, it’s comforting to curl up with one of these fictional friends. But why are these historical stories so comforting? Could it be that our faith sounds plausible only in a narrative taking place in the past? Is there something about the world of fax machines and malls that makes Christianity seem out of sync with the times?
I do not want to leave the impression that I think Christians should not read apocalyptic or historical novels, or that it is unhealthy if we do. (Although I would not discourage anybody from reading contemporary, more realistic fiction, such as John Fischer’s fine new novel, Saint Ben, published by Bethany House.) What I am calling for is simply this: to pay attention to why we are drawn to these kinds of stories and not lose sight of the present while we speculate about either the future or the past, and to realize that while God may bring struggling couples through hardships on the prairie or even work through dramatic battles in heaven, he is doing so much more—now, here.
Paul Brand is a world-renowned hand surgeon and leprosy specialist. Now in semiretirement, he serves as clinical professor emeritus, Department of Orthopedics, at the University of Washington and consults for the World Health Organization. His years of pioneering work among leprosy patients earned him many awards and honors.
