A New 'Age' of Literature

I think one of the things that has prevented Christian writers from connecting with readers is the hovering presence (in the crap-we-peddle-with-the-christian-moniker-attached world) of the Be Nice Gestapo.

It's a sticky theological wicket, because we have a higher calling. It isn't a good example of Christ if we're muck-chuckers all the time. On the other hand, as artists, our art could (and rightly so) be vilified as mediocre and inconsequential if we disregard the Real World.

I think it's interesting that what we're seeing right now within the Christian writing community is the transition from one Age to another. From post-modernism into something else that will be named later, when it's better understood to where we are moving. I'm excited to see that we're throwing off the conventions that we have been saddled with, which were a reaction to the nihilism and atheism of secular post-modernists. The deafening alarmism of the '80s and '90s is being replaced with a biting criticism of both secular and Christian conventions.

In some ways, this transition resembles that of the early 20th century, when the Modernists emerged from the ashes of the Realists. While we want more realism in Christian fiction, I don't hear many people advocating true Realism, as it was expressed in that time. We're really very much like the Modernists in that we do believe in true good and true evil, in honor and duty and the transcendence of sacrifice and that redemption and salvation (little ‘r', little ‘s') can be achieved in this life. Also like the Modernists, we're twisting the established conventions into a new form. We're testing the limits in the creation of art and we're taking it to new areas that emerge (graphic novels, games, etc…) as a result of technological advancements. In a sense, it's a rebirth of Modernism in the Christian world and that puts us only about eight decades behind the rest of the literate world now. We're making progress.

This world is not for the faint of heart. There are things happening that don't just desensitize but sear the heart. As the Baby Boomers start to finally die off, we actually have a chance to point out just how laughably naive, foolish, and harmful their social experimentation was. We can point out that in their zeal to rebel against "authoritarianism" they have become more violently authoritarian than those they rebelled against. Their infatuation with atheist philosophers like Marx, Freud, and Jung have resulted in several generations of morally ambivalent and intellectually stagnant zombies. One side believes everything they're told from the secular propagandists, and the other believes everything they're told from the religious (little ‘r') establishment.

As if fighting the encroachment of atheism wasn't enough, many in the Christian world have so insulated themselves that it's now chic to war against other Christians. I guess we've learned from the Irish in that respect. Protestant against Catholic, Reformed against whatever-you-call-the-rest-of-us, Church Growth versus Anti, Saddleback versus traditionalists, Rick "If He's not the Anti-Christ he's Damned Close" Warren against retired Alarmists who got bored and now have a new whipping boy.

For some writers, we've just followed our own inner convictions and ended up on the outside. We didn't follow the crowd, nor the wind, nor the latest fad bible study that promises health, wealth, happiness, a better Warm Fuzziness, or whatever it is the next great mega-church pastor is peddling these days. And now we turn around and guess what? We're cut off from the herd. We're theological chum.

Yikes. Too snarky. There I go again, getting on my soapbox and preaching up a storm.

I'll stop now.