New!
Author resources • Lorehaven Guild
Podcast sponsors • Subscribe for free
Crew manifest Faith statement FAQs
All author resources Lorehaven Guild Subscribe for free

Into the Darkness
Reviews, Feb 3, 2023

The Chosen Succeeds Where ‘Woke’ Stories Fail
Jenneth Dyck in Articles, Feb 2, 2023

Rose Petals and Snowflakes
Book Quests, Feb 1, 2023

Library

Find fantastical Christian novels

fantasy · sci-fi · and beyond
middle grade · young adult · grown-ups
All novels Search Add a novel
Silver Bounty, Victoria McCombs
A Sword for the Immerland King, F. W. Faller
Calor, J. J. Fisher
Once Upon A Ren Faire, A. C. Castillo
The Genesis 6 Project, Michael Ferguson
Exile, Loren G. Warnemuende
Aberration, Cathy McCrumb
The Truth Beyond the Lies, Kathleen Bird
Frost, Winter's Lonely Guardian, E. E. Rawls
Dream of Kings, Sharon Hinck
The Change, Bradley Caffee
Quest of Fire: Desperation, Brett Armstrong
Wishtress, Nadine Brandes
Flight, Kristen Young
Podcast

Get the Fantastical Truth podcast

Podcast sponsors | Subscribe links
Archives Feedback

147. Why Can Christians Celebrate Stories about Merlin and King Arthur? | with Robert Treskillard
Fantastical Truth, Jan 31, 2023

146. How Did Animators Adapt The Wingfeather Saga For Streaming TV? | with Keith Lango
Fantastical Truth, Jan 24, 2023

145. How Did Edmund Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queene’ Shape Christian Fantasy? | with Rebecca K. Reynolds
Fantastical Truth, Jan 17, 2023

144. Which Top Six Fantasy Franchises Gave Fans Grief in 2022?
Fantastical Truth, Jan 10, 2023

143. Which Top Ten Lorehaven Stories Proved Most Popular in 2022?
Fantastical Truth, Jan 6, 2023

142. What Christmas Gift ‘Tools, Not Toys’ Helped You Grow As a Person?
Fantastical Truth, Dec 20, 2022

Quests

Join our monthly digital book quests.

Lorehaven Guild Faith statement FAQs

Rose Petals and Snowflakes
Book Quests, February 2023

Prince Caspian
Book Quests, January 2023

Dream of Kings
Book Quests, December 2022

On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness
Book Quests, November 2022

Reviews

Find fantastical Christian reviews

All reviews Request review

Into the Darkness
“Charles Hack’s Into the Darkness summons a close-range science fiction story, focusing on the personal challenges of space warfare among alien cultures with a steady pace and serious tone.”
—Lorehaven on Feb 3, 2023

A Crown of Chains
“A Crown of Chains creatively retells a biblical tale to explore themes of providence, racism, faith, and fidelity.”
—Lorehaven on Jan 27, 2023

Lander’s Legacy
“Lander’s Legacy stacks modern thrills and complex characters on a foundation of biblical what-ifs.”
—Lorehaven on Jan 20, 2023

Prince Caspian
“Pacing starts slow but creature lore grows in C. S. Lewis’s sequel, introducing practical tyrants and talking-beast politics into a Narnian resistance.”
—Lorehaven on Jan 13, 2023

Gifts

Find new gifts for Christian fans

Archives

The original SpecFaith: est. 2006

Speculative Faith | archives

Lorehaven issues (2018–2020)

Order back issues online!
New
Library
Podcast
Quests
Reviews
Gifts
Archives
Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
Subscribe free to Lorehaven
/ SpecFaith /

No Rice At The Lord’s Wedding? — Part 2

For years I’ve been keeping up with religious trends, wrong ideas and excesses among people who call themselves Christians. That’s my job, as a pastor. I show people truths they have not considered, open new worlds to them through preaching. […]
E. Stephen Burnett on Aug 12, 2010
No comments

For years I’ve been keeping up with religious trends, wrong ideas and excesses among people who call themselves Christians. That’s my job, as a pastor. I show people truths they have not considered, open new worlds to them through preaching. So many people get stuck in their own ways of thinking, and maybe they need to be shown new ways of looking at the world through sermons and religious activities. That’s what God has called me to do.

Yes … no? Sort of, but sounds a little arrogant … very true, in many ways, but wouldn’t a dose of humility help? Do only church pastors know how to handle other Christians? Despite their high callings, oughtn’t they listen to other Christians, who may have different gifts and talents?

What happens if I replace the boldface words with other terms: artist, musician, or writer?

For years I’ve been keeping up with religious trends, wrong ideas and excesses among people who call themselves Christians. That’s my job, as a writer. I show people truths they have not considered, open new worlds to them through storytelling. So many people get stuck in their own ways of thinking, and maybe they need to be shown new ways of looking at the world through fictitious journeys in novels. That’s what God has called me to do.

For those gifted with writing or other artistic talents, who hope to use them to glorify God and improve the church: before God, are you immune to such notions?

Are you sure?

If you are, I’d like to know your secret, because I’m certainly not.

Following up from last week’s column, I also must wonder if novelist Anne Rice is immune.

A priesthood of artists?

Recap: last month Anne Rice posted on her Facebook wall that, in summary, she’s sick of being a “Christian,” and wants to leave the church and follow Jesus only, with none of that piled-on religious stuff.

Relevant links, and mostly nonfiction-level questions and rebuttals, are back here. (For more on the nonfiction, doctrine-based side, see also great columns by Rebecca Miller and Mike Duran.)

To be sure, Rice’s rant (which many professing Christians, including real ones, must have felt at some time in their life) can easily be shown to contain at least equal totals of un-Biblical beliefs as, say, treating a particular, extra-Biblical system of church authority as if it’s Biblical, or worse, requiring overseers not to marry at all (cf. 1 Timothy 3).

Yet are the same sorts of ideas prevalent even among more-Biblical artists?

Here I cite myself as an example only because I know for sure that I’m guilty of this. As a nonfiction writer, someone who gets paid to gather information, organize it and write about it for a newspaper, elitism can be so tempting. I know what’s going on in this town; others just live their lives in a bubble. The problem could be even worse when I’m writing about overt spiritual topics and truths. I’ve been around. My experiences are worth hearing about. I think I’m the only one who sees these unique perspectives. Other Christians just follow blindly.

Rarely do such thoughts echo directly in my head. But they are there, subtly hidden, just ready to spring out and claim more loudly, in the name of Helping Others, that I am so very cool.

Pride. As Lewis wrote, that’s the most insidious of sins. It’s how the Devil became the Devil.

And pride is how Christian artists and writers — I am not necessarily including here Anne Rice — can think of themselves more highly than they ought. We may criticize other Christians, including church leaders and pastors, and irksome church people who live in their bubbles and don’t know the dirt in the real world, and even (cringe) those people who can’t see that staying hooked on their tiny-world “inspirational” fiction is subtler escapism than sci-fi ever will be …

In so doing, we could do just what people fault the clique-ist Christians, the mean pastors and the hypocritical church attenders for doing: we set up a nice little Priesthood for ourselves — a Priesthood of Artists. And from our great exalted position of knowing how things really ought to be, we not only slam other Christians for the same sins we commit, but deny Christ’s love.

I can’t fault Anne Rice for this, without making sure I’m not also falling into that trap.

One Body: pastors, writers and all

It occurs to me also not to commit one of Rice’s mistakes: throwing up hands and giving up on the Church (or at least the, um, single version of it she’s seen) without suggesting alternatives.

Perhaps the Apostle Paul has already helped us with that.

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.

[…] For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

1 Corinthians 12: 4-6, 12-26

If I might venture to paraphrase some of this wonderful, perfect wisdom: if the writer should say, “Because I am not a pastor, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were all about writing, where would the sense of preaching be? And if the whole body were about being artsy, who would pay the bills?

Stop for a second and imagine the abject horror of a church full of artsy, fiction-minded, writing Christians. Yes, aside from the lack of paid bills, getting something published would be even less possible than it is now. But worse than that, we’d have no preaching. No nonfiction.

Without that, we’d have nothing to write about anyway. Worse, we’d stray from the truth.

My church is comprised mostly of non-artsy Christians. By that I don’t mean they have no tastes in music, books or other media; it’s just that most of those in my church are nonfiction types.

I joke with one of my pastors that were it not for Jesus dying to save us both, we would have little in common. He likes golf, basketball and other jock-etry, and has only seen Iron Man (if that). I don’t see the point of sports, and I’m still dwelling on the finer points of Inception. He references Puritans and John Piper. So do I, sometimes, but at my baptism I quoted from Prince Caspian about Aslan appearing bigger as we grow older, and got teased almost as much as if I’d recited the Apostles’ Creed in Elvish.

We all need each other. They need me for — whatever it is. I need them to keep my feet on the ground, and to prevent me from sinking into any created-worlds of the Way Christianity Should Be. Fiction people need the nonfiction people. Maybe even speculative readers need the Amish-romance-clone readers. (And they need us; how can we better show them why?)

In all our right desires to exercise our gifts, let’s not forget others’ gifts — His one Body, with many members.

E. Stephen Burnett
E. Stephen Burnett creates sci-fi and fantasy novels as well as nonfiction, exploring fantastical stories for God’s glory as publisher of Lorehaven.com and cohost of the Fantastical Truth podcast. As the oldest of six, he enjoys connecting with his homeschool roots by speaking at conferences for Christian families and creators. Stephen is coauthor of The Pop Culture Parent: Helping Kids Engage Their World for Christ from New Growth Press (2020, with Ted Turnau and Dr. Jared Moore). Stephen and his wife, Lacy, live in the Austin area, where they help with foster parenting and serve as members of Southern Hills Baptist Church.
Website · Facebook · Instagram · Twitter
  1. Esther says:
    August 12, 2010 at 5:37 pm

    Awesome post.

    Reply
  2. Royce says:
    August 12, 2010 at 8:29 pm

    I find it strange that anyone considering themselves a “follower of Jesus” could reject the Church Universal, for the sins of members of the church particular. For such a particular follower must have such high regard for his own righteousness that he will present himself alone before Christ as the only member of the Church Universal.

    Reply
  3. Speculative Faith: Artist ‘priests,’ God-centered definitions and more says:
    December 30, 2010 at 8:01 am

    […] God’s Gospel and His Glories. This also involves considering one’s self part of an elitist priesthood of artists who can just, you know, think more and see things others cannot: Part of the luxury of being an […]

    Reply

What do you think? Cancel reply

  • What Gives You Nightmares?What Gives You Nightmares?
  • No Rice At The Lord’s Wedding? — Part 1No Rice At The Lord’s Wedding? — Part 1
  • Exploring Darkness Or Exploring LightExploring Darkness Or Exploring Light
Lorehaven magazine, spring 2020

Wear the wonder:
Get exclusive shirts and beyond

Listen to Lorehaven’s podcast

Authors and publishers:
Reach new fans with Lorehaven

Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
Website · Facebook · Instagram · Twitter