Mindy Withrow

To be a Christian protagonist, or not to be…

This is the second installment of my occasional feature where I respond to letters from fellow readers and writers. Since you ask such good questions which I try to answer thoughtfully, I am posting some of the exchanges here for the wider benefit of our lit blogging community. Readers, please weigh in with your comments, too!

Dear Mindy,

I wanted to let you know that I read your Modern Reformation article [“Finding Grace in Fiction”] and really, really loved it. Thank you so much. I think that literature can be such a powerful influence on our worldview, often unconsciously, so its great to see how that can be used to encourage Christian thinking. Even by unbelieving authors! Your comment about Hosseini feeling that he needed to use Christian themes because his own religion was inadequate was extraordinary.

So here’s my question. I’m starting to think about maybe writing an original story. I have a central idea and some characters and I can see how Christian themes could be played out in my scenario. Do you think that, as a Christian writer, one should or shouldn’t have Christian characters in the central roles?

I’ve recently been reading Miniatures and Morals in which Peter Leithart analyses Jane Austen’s novels as Christian novels. Her characters are making choices to live according to the gospel, or not, in their everyday lives. They live in Austen’s world where Anglican Christianity and a generally orthodox doctrine might be assumed unless there is explicit evidence to the contrary. Writing in a modern setting, certainly in the UK, where there really isn’t a Christian culture at all any more would be very different. The assumption would be that the characters are not believers, unless you explicitly show that they are.

I do think that one can explore Christian themes and ideas without Christian characters—as in the examples in your article. But I wonder what you feel as a Christian writer about having explicitly Christian characters, who then may have a much more conscious understanding of their actions?

“Not Rose” from Britain

Dear “Not Rose”:

Thanks for your kind comments about the article. Your question is a great one, and timely, as I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately in light of my current reading and writing projects.

For example, it’s been years since I read “Christian fiction.” A good portion of my reading diet in my early years was Christian fiction, but once I started reading the classics and then worked as a buyer at a Christian bookstore, I developed a disdain for nearly any fiction put out by a Christian publisher. I hate that I’m judgmental of an entire genre, so I recently decided to give it another chance and picked up a new novel I’ll not identify here. Unfortunately, this book reminded me anew of all the reasons I became judgmental of the genre: the non-Christian protagonist with more than her share of problems meets a gushingly happy Christian ex-missionary; in the end, the protagonist converts and all of her problems are solved. Like many other representatives of this genre, it is guilty of depicting the non-Christian as the one with hurts and the Christian as the one with bandaids—rather than the reality in which we all hurt most of the time and need a friend to walk with us rather than a caricature to lead us.

Personally, I have decided that I’m not going to write fiction for a Christian publisher but for mainstream ones; I don’t want to preach to the choir but to those outside passing the building. That is forcing me to think hard about my current novel [for reasons I’ll not go into here because it would require a “spoiler alert” and the plot is still too loose to be spoilable!]. But keeping me grounded in this attempt is my favorite quote from Eudora Welty, taken from her collected essays On Writing: “What can a character come to know, of himself and others, by working through a given situation? And can he know it in time?…Spiritual or moral survival lies not so much in being rescued as in having learned what constitutes one’s own danger, and one’s own salvation.” I think that if I keep that understanding in focus, the ethos of my current project will come out right.

You’re right that the worldview in which Austen operated is gone forever. Maybe instead of turning to Austen or one of her contemporaries as a model, you could look at someone like P.D. James. In her Adam Dalgliesh books, Commander Dalgliesh is not a believer, but he is a thinking person who wrestles with existential questions. His father was an Anglican priest, so he is conversant with Christianity and has some degree of respect for it, though so far he has chosen to reject it on a personal level. But one of his lieutenants is a believer, which occasionally serves as a foil for Dalgliesh’s agnosticism. So James can present her storylines in a context where religious dialogue is not out of place and yet without making the reader feel preached at by the protagonist’s particular thoughts or choices. What I like about this is that I, as a Christian, get to see the world through the eyes of a non-Christian, and yet I know that unbelievers who are reading with me are also being exposed to important questions that could generate what you might call “conversational theology” in a book club discussion, for example.

As to whether your central roles should belong to Christians or non-Christians, I think that all comes down to who you are as a writer and the particular story you are telling. What themes are being addressed? In light of those themes, is this story more effective if told by someone who embodies the Christian worldview, or if the character is juxtaposed against a Christian worldview? Which produces a more believable plot and character development? Ultimately, the writer’s goal is to tell the story with such literary excellence that it compels the reader toward the truth; whatever construct best does that for your particular story is the answer.

I’m looking forward to seeing how you work it all out—be sure I get an advance copy!

Happy writing,

Mindy

20. September 2007 by Mindy
Categories: Dear Mindy | 6 comments