Last week I stated the case that reading changes us, even when we read “just for fun.” The same might be said about watching TV or seeing a movie. It’s fiction, it’s stories that not only introduce ideas we can think about but characters and action that can engage us.

Stories serve as illustrations and as examples, but they also reinforce or, conversely, confront deeply held values or traditions. They introduce their audience to new ways of doing things, even if the “new way” is actually an old way.

Some Christian writers, I suspect, hold the belief that stories should primarily serve as examples, which in turn reinforce the truth of Scripture. I like those stories and I think they can be an encouragement to believers. Take, for example, the true story, made into a movie, about Bart Millard, lead singer for the band MercyMe, and what brought him to write the popular song “I Could Only Imagine.” I find his story inspiring, encouraging. It strengthens my faith.

But what about the stories that challenge and confront? Are Christians not supposed to write that kind? Or read them?

Actually, I think those are exactly the kind that Christians should write for the questioning world—not treatises defending our faith, but stories about people who living in this world that is filled with ideas and ways of doing things that call into question the things Christians believe, that the Bible teaches.

I’ll name just a few things that are more and more prevalent in our culture and which stand against a Christian worldview, things which stories can, and should, challenge and confront:

1. Truth is relative, not absolute.

A shocking number of people believe this idea of truth in western culture. Consequently the idea has grown up that something might be “true for you” but “not true for me.” Of course the application of that idea depends on context, but when it comes to God and what He reveals in Scripture, there is no equivocating, even when we can’t fully comprehend. For instance, God is love, even when I, like Job, am not experiencing loving circumstances. My limited perspective and temporal circumstances don’t cancel out the truth about God.

2. “Family” means whatever you want it to mean.

Some seven years ago the New York Times ran an article asking “How do you define ‘family’?” The salient question in the article was “Do you think a new definition of family is starting to emerge in our society?”

Last year a website called CyberParent ran an article that concluded,

Now more than ever before, it is important for people to understand that when it comes to what is a family, there is no such thing as normal. Every person, every child, every parent, every couple has a unique situation, and to try and define everyone in one black and white term would make no sense.

Family is not defined by biology, or marriage, or even a home. Family is the people you love and who love you back, the people you feel safe around, and the people you can count on to be there when you need them.

Yes, times change, but when it comes to understanding God as our Father, the Church as the bride of Christ, the role of husbands described as like Christ who gave His life, and so on, I have to wonder if our society isn’t losing a lot that “prepares the heart” for the gospel, when we redefine a basic unit of society such as “family.”

3. The Bible is a book of fairytales.

The corollaries, of course, are that God does not exist, the supernatural is simply a part of your imagination, there is no impending judgment, heaven and hell are not real places, and there is no afterlife.

Not everyone believes all of those ideas, but I suspect that may change. After all, if we remove the foundation, why shouldn’t the whole building collapse?

4. Sin is a myth and people are actually good and deserve only good things.

Never mind that universally people still agree nobody is perfect, the growing perception is that whatever a person does that makes him “not perfect” is still not sin. It’s actually a way our society is divorcing a person from responsibility for his action. He might have had a bad childhood, which caused him to develop antisocial behavior. He might have been the victim of a crime or government misconduct or religious abuse, or any number of things, all of which certainly do make up an individual’s experience, but none of which remove his responsibility for his own actions.

5. Government should fix things.

Perhaps some parts of the country or western society have a different take on this one, but over all the trend seems to be to turn to government to protect us from ourselves. Not common sense. Not family (even the redefined one), not the neighborhood or the community, not the church. School maybe, if it’s a public institution. Then it can make sure kids have a good breakfast, the proper instruction about gender issues, one view on the origin of the universe, safe zones and trigger alerts, and many other issues that the government thinks is important.

These ideas and many more contribute to a worldview that infiltrates our books and movies. And where are the stories challenging or questioning them?

Christians have a great opportunity to serve as prophetic voices, as voices of warning, that these trends don’t end well, that Truth does exist and so does sin, that the Bible is not a fairytale, and so one.

In many ways, Christian writers couldn’t be living in a better time, because people need somebody to challenge the prevailing worldview, because people love stories, and because digital publishing has changed the writing industry. Now we writers need to step up to the task.

In the “Tomorrowland” quadrant of Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, there is a curious attraction called “The Carousel of Progress.” The ride is a circular moving theater that takes audiences to five different stages where animatronic people sit in living rooms at various decades of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It’s very entertaining and humorous, and the robots’ movements are quite uncanny. There is also a catchy song that you probably started singing after you read the title if you’ve been on the ride.

Image copyright Walt Disney World Resorts

Lighthearted family fun aside, the ride highlights a disparity between the future in our entertainment and the future in real life. In the show, the animatronic father frequently announces that things are looking really modern and futuristic and that this is probably the highest technology will go. But does anyone say that in the real world? In my experience, the answer is quite the opposite. People are amazed at this invention or that innovation but I don’t know of anyone who would say we’re living “in the future.” I certainly don’t feel like we’re living in the future. I mean, yeah, my phone can video chat with anyone around the world for free and scientists can perform face transplants, but we still cook food on the stove instead of “Hydrate Level 4”, we have to rake our leaves every fall, people still get colds and fevers, and we’re only just now seriously talking about Mars exploration. We have some pretty spiffy gadgets and gizmos but a lot of life remains the same.

Personally, I don’t find that a bad thing. The older I get, the less impressed I am with high-tech wizardry and the less enamored I am with neon-illuminated mega-cities. Of course, I am grateful for the technological marvels that surround us and especially for the advances in science and medicine, but it’s also easy to romanticize the “good ol’ days” when life was simple and everyone lived in Mayberry.

Image copyright Warner Bros.

The whole purpose of new inventions and innovation is to make our lives better. Has technology lived up to its promise? Ready Player One, the new movie based on Ernest Cline’s bestseller, comes out next week, and it depicts a world where people have essentially given up on real life to spend as much time as possible in the OASIS, a virtual world where anything is possible. As our society has progressed past the Age of Machines and we are now in the Digital Age, the next technological era seems to be the melding of mind and machine and virtually fulfilling our impractical fantasies (realistic VR is an exploding frontier).

It’s a silly conundrum when you think about it. Stuff hasn’t made the human race happy, so the obvious answer must be better stuff. And when we reach the limit on what better stuff we can physically make, we’ll make virtual stuff! Surely the answer is just over the next hill of innovation. Ever notice how quickly the “I got the latest gadget!” euphoria fades? It’s all empty calories but don’t worry – your next high-tech snack is just one expo away.

It’s easy to quote back-to-nature philosophers like Thoreau or the Unabomber but that isn’t the answer, either. The human race wasn’t put on this planet to chase gold and jewels, nor iPhones and Instagram likes. Technology has made our lives better in many ways, but unlike animals, creature comforts are not enough to sustain us, because we a soul that yearns for communion with the Creator, and that’s something no VR experience could ever replicate.

This spring, we’ll release the first issue of Lorehaven magazine.

In this groundbreaking digital publication, we’ll review and help you find only the best Christian-made fantastical novels. We will also find truth in these fantastic stories, with cover stories, articles, Roundtable discussions about hot topics, and beyond.

Email subscribers keep rolling in. At first, they’ll get to read the magazine exclusively. You can join this fine quest party, and show your support for this new ministry.

Here at SpecFaith, I’ve been announcing the crew behind this launch. To date, we have:

• Stephen Burnett, editor in chief;
• Elijah David, editor.

It’s an “exquisite superhero theodicy.”

Next comes a name familiar to SpecFaith readers. He’s written some of the most in-depth and popular reviews we’ve featured, including his reviews of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the controversial film Noah, and author Kerry Nietz’s Darktrench Saga.

Name, role, and crew

Austin Gunderson is review chief of Lorehaven magazine.

Austin was born and raised in western Washington state, where the shining summers were for playing mock-war in the woods and the somber winters were for reading. He met Kay, his future wife, at a college swing dance. They married in 2013, and in 2017 welcomed a daughter, Marit.

Personal log

For Austin, storytelling is both passion and occupation. By day he works as a video editor for a Seattle-area ad agency; by night he writes high fantasy. He believes stories are vital to human life: it’s through them that we interpret the world, and by them that we become conscious of things greater than ourselves.

When he’s not crafting or ingesting a story, Austin enjoys board games, the wilderness, and the shooting sports.

Mission

Raised in a Christian home, Austin prayed the sinner’s prayer at age five. He has since been working out the implications of that simple declaration of trust. He believes the gospel is the ur-story, the ultimate hero’s journey, and the Champion who wrote it in his own blood is also a king who demands fealty.

Austin has alternately attended Presbyterian, Assemblies of God, and Baptist churches, and part of his experience in the Body of Christ has been the discovery of its potential for corruption. But by God’s grace he’s gotten back on the horse, so to speak. Both he and Kay were involved in Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship in college, and are now members of a local CMA church.

New worlds

Epic fantasy is Austin’s first fiction love. He cut his teeth on Brian Jacques’ Redwall series, then encountered The Lord of the Rings at age twelve. As soon as he turned the last page, he began it again, in awe of a secondary world so vast and deep that it overspilled his memory.

Since then he’s devoured the works of Frank Peretti, Tad Williams, Patrick Rothfuss, Brandon Sanderson, C.S. Lewis, Orson Scott Card, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Bernard Cornwell. He particularly loves fantasy that doesn’t attempt to out-Tolkien Tolkien (the old master can’t be beat). And his labor of love over the past decade has been his own as-of-yet-unpublished high fantasy series.

Home base

Austin wrote dozens of book and film reviews as well as many articles at Speculative Faith.

However, aside from these and the scattered vestiges of a few derelict blogs, Austin’s presence online is practically undetectable. (This bio will self-destruct in thirty seconds.)

Next week—enter the book club coordinator, Steve Rzasa.

Is reading to escape OK? Is it all right to look for a reading experience that “won’t change you” but is enjoyable—in other words, to read just for fun? So asked a commenter on another post recently. In that particular article, our guest blogger said, “Reading books is a waste of time if you don’t let them change you.”

I don’t think we need to couch this discussion in a bunch of spiritual gobbledygook. Beyond the realm of Christendom, as we discussed here at Spec Faith some years ago, psychologists have done brain-imaging studies and have written books and articles to demonstrate that the emotive experience of reading may actually effect readers AS IF THEY THEMSELVES HAVE PARTICIPATED in the story and endured the events their protagonist did.

The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated. Keith Oatley, an emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto (and a published novelist), has proposed that reading produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that “runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers.” Fiction — with its redolent details, imaginative metaphors and attentive descriptions of people and their actions — offers an especially rich replica. (Anne Murphy Paul as reported in Psychology Today, “The Imagined And The Real.”

The point is simple: whether we intend to merely read to have fun, and we have no interest in letting the story change us, it still does exactly that.

Reading affects us. It can change us.

We “know” about things which the characters in the books we read, know. We “do” things the characters in the books we read, do. And above all, we feel things that the characters in the books we read, feel.

Of course, some books intend to prompt thought or reflection. Some introduce a controversy and guide readers by the choices the characters make and the decisions they come to, so that readers begin to see the controversy in a specific way. Still others preach. They are clear and directive and offer a choice for the reader to make, as an appeal from the author.

I don’t care, someone might say. I ignore all that and just read fun books, the ones that are “fluff,” that don’t deal with serious topics.

Sorry, but even those books affect us. There’s the way the story impacts our brains, as those psychological studies show, but there’s also the way that those books reinforce our choice to spend time reading them. If we think it’s OK to put our brain on hold and to engage in “harmless entertainment,” that in itself is a value, and the more we read and enjoy frivolous books, the more we are strengthening and giving nurture to that value.

We’re essentially finding a reward for the value we hold. That may not seem like a change, but it is an effect.

Then, too, there is the worldview of the author or the character who shows by his work, by his use of time, by his choice of entertainment, by his friends, by his lifestyle, what is important to him and what rules he’s living his life by.

Of course reading stories, does not mean we automatically accept for ourselves the worldview of the main character. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that we become like those we hang with. So the characters we respect, admire, cheer for, do have an influence on us, if for no other reason than that we are spending so much time with them.

We can counter the effect by thinking about their choices and by intentionally choosing to do what we think is right, not whatever the character might have chosen. But we are fooling ourselves, I think, if we say that reading for fun and entertainment has no affect on us.

As I see it, the person most affected by reading is the person who doesn’t think reading affects him. Clearly he doesn’t have to consciously evaluate the book to be effected.

And for the record: I do think reading should be fun. It should be an entertaining experience, one we look forward to, one we want to introduce others to. But we should also have our eyes wide open. Reading, and reading fiction in particular, influences us, whether we’re consciously aware of it or not.

“The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.”

– C. S. Lewis

This quote, from one of the literary greats of the twentieth century, is one I’ve heard often in Christian circles. It’s a quote I generally agree with. Christian fiction has historically had quality problems and we need to emphasize the production of good literature rather than just literature with the Christian brand slapped on it.

However, some Christians take this quote in another direction. Not only should we de-emphasize the Christian fiction genre, but according to some, we shouldn’t even have a genre for Christian fiction in the first place. In the minds of some, “Christian fiction” is a retreat from the world where we insulate ourselves in closed communities with sub-par fiction.

Which leads to a question: should we really be avidly reading works of Christian fiction if the genre insulates us from the rest of the world?

Or, to put it another way: what is the purpose of reading Christian fiction? And how can we defend the genre to those who believe it’s automatically sub-par?

Tolkien vs. Lewis: two approaches to fiction

Since Lewis’s quote often comes into play in these debates, it may be helpful to compare the books he wrote to the books his fellow Inkling Tolkien wrote. Lewis, in The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy, very much fell into the genre of Christian fiction as the books clearly displayed a rather explicit Christian worldview. Tolkien, on the other hand, in Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, shies away from an explicitly Christian worldview and doesn’t really fall into the Christian fiction genre.

While some readers may prefer one approach over another, neither is wrong—and it goes without saying how much these two works have shaped the speculative Christian genre. Indeed, few naysayers of Christian fiction that I know fault Lewis for his genre decisions. But why is that the case? What kept Lewis’ work from becoming escapist literature?

Let’s look at what Lewis did more closely. The Chronicles of Narnia don’t target Christians because Lewis wants Christians to become comfortable or insular in their subculture. He targets Christians because he wants to challenge and equip them to go out in the world and act like faithful Christians. In Prince Caspian, Lucy learns to follow Aslan and live out a life of faith even when no one else believes her. In The Horse and His Boy, Avery learns to stop worrying about what everyone else is doing and simply do the right thing herself. In The Silver Chair, Jill and Eustace learn to follow the right path and not be turned away from it.

In contrast to stories like God’s Not Dead which pat Christians on the back and vilify the other side, Lewis is far more concerned with challenging Christians for the flaws they fall into in his stories. As a result, far from isolating Christians from the world, Lewis equips Christians to engage the world.

One way to look at Christian genres

I frequently hear other Christian writers asking how explicitly they should tie their faith into the stories they write. The way I frame it for writers deciding between Christian and secular genres is to look at it between a choice between two options:

1. General fiction (secular fiction) should explore what it means to live as a human in general.
2. Christian fiction should explore what it means to live as a Christian in particular.

This principle has helped me understand the purpose of these genres as a reader. While a biblical perspective should influence everything that we do, God has revealed himself through general revelation and so general fiction can lean on that to showcase true aspects of the world we live in. But we need fiction that explores more than simply what general revelation reveals. We need stories that explore life as a Christian. These are stories that may not interest secular readers. And that’s fine.

We don’t need to feel guilty that secular readers may not enjoy works of Christian fiction. We shouldn’t fear that this means Christian fiction isn’t objectively good. Sometimes certain themes are much more applicable to one audience than another. Here’s what that can look like:

The Promise of Jesse Woods by Chris Fabry looks at a man who returns to his hometown to try and steer a woman away from a potentially-disastrous marriage. In doing so, the book questions our ability to save others, specifically in the context of the Christian life. The moral quandaries the protagonist struggles with may not be quite as relevant to unbelievers, but they are exceptionally relevant for believers.

To give an example from the Christian speculative fiction genre, Echoes from the Edge by Bryan Davis explores the struggle of a young man to forgive and move past his girlfriend’s sexual past before conversion. An unbeliever may not care for or sympathize with this struggle. But Christians will—and Christians need this kind of story.

Finally, while this last one is a film, Believe Me by Riot Studios is one of my favorite Christian films because of its critique of American evangelicalism. Because half the film satirizes various elements of evangelical culture, many secular critics don’t understand its references or point. But for Christians, it’s a thought-provoking and engaging story.

None of these stories have much to appeal to secular readers. But they’re not supposed to because they’re aiming at issues particular to Christians. As long as they’re good stories which aim to challenge Christians, we shouldn’t feel guilty about enjoying such stories. Far from isolating us from the world, they equip us to better engage as Christians with the outside world.

The purpose of Christian fiction

It’s certainly possible for works of Christian fiction to unhelpfully pander to readers rather than challenging them. God’s Not Dead would be one instance of this in the film realm. But bad apples shouldn’t cause us to write off the genre as a whole or bemoan the fact that there is a commercial genre targeting Christian readers. There are good reasons for enjoying and seeking out Christian fiction. We just need to make sure we’re finding works that actually challenge and equip us.

If you’ve largely written off the Christian fiction genre because in the past you’ve seen it as sub-par pandering, perhaps the problem is that you haven’t been reading the right works in the genre. There are many works of Christian fiction out there that are legitimately good stories and that challenge Christians in appropriate ways.

You don’t need to view Christian fiction as a sub-par genre. Some writers may treat it that way. But we can demand better as readers and seek out works that truly challenge and equip Christians to live more faithful lives for Christ.

The world may not need more Christian literature—but Christians do need Christian literature.

Read great Christian stories and even if the world may not care for them, that hardly makes a difference.

On the 14th of March, 2018, which ironically happens to have been Albert Einstein’s birthday (and Pi day), Stephen Hawking died.

As a theoretical physicist, most of his scientific contributions revolved around black holes (no irony intended), probably most significantly in that he noticed that quantum mechanics requires that over time a black hole would lose mass, something relativity would not have predicted (in something called Hawking Radiation). He also contributed to discussions of the origin of the universe, speculating that the entire universe may be essentially a singularity in reverse (something rather like a black hole vomiting up its guts)–though this idea is one some other physicists do not agree is viable based on observational data (notably Hawking’s past collaborator Roger Penrose).

Hawking was more than just a physicist who made some significant contributions to the understanding of the universe. He was the most famous physicist of my lifetime (though not anywhere close to being as important as Einstein was, to be honest) and a significant figure in popular culture. His long-term degenerative illness, Lou Gehrig’s Disease (or ALS), which restricted him to a wheelchair and a robotic voice, are well-known world-wide–or perhaps a better word would be “infamous.”

Stephen Hawking on Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1993 (with “Einstein,” Data, and “Newton”)

He was himself a science fiction fan, who appeared on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which I’ve seen, playing poker with Data, Einstein, and Newton. He also appeared The Big Bang Theory, Futurama, and The Simpsons (in episodes I haven’t seen).

He has been referenced in popular culture outside the shows he voluntarily cooperated with, including (believe it or not), Epic Rap Battles of History.

I imagine if you asked people prior to his death, “Who is the most intelligent person living today?” many would have put Hawking on their short list, perhaps in first place. His personal opinion concerning what if would mean for humanity to meet aliens made headlines worldwide. And he offered opinions on numerous other matters, such as Scottish independence (which he opposed).

I’ve read two of Hawking’s books in which he attempted to explain his ideas on the universe to a general audience. Not that I believe my opinions are hugely important (hey, I’m not a theoretical physicist), but I thought A Brief History of Time, first published in 1988,was interesting and informative. In contrast, I found The Grand Design, published in 2010, which went out of its way to say the idea of God is not needed to explain the universe, while at the same time saying that a unified theory linking quantum mechanics to relativity may not be possible, to be a massive cop-out. (My thinking: “You are both saying that maybe science may never understand a key and very basic feature of the universe and at the same time saying even though you don’t understand the universe you are sure God had nothing to do with it. Poor reasoning!”)

A Brief History of Time actually mentioned God on numerous occasions, though usually in the context of explaining how the universe does not work–that is, God could have made things work one way, but science things that isn’t correct, because etc. Hawking also stated at one point that he wanted “to know the mind of God” in his physics, which is something Einstein had said earlier, a statement he would later repudiate as a mere figure of speech.

While he made several prior statements questioning the idea of life after death and the existence of a personal God, it was not until 2014 that Hawking plainly stated he was an atheist and that he thought belief in God makes no sense. So it seems to me, as an outside and non-professional observer, that Hawking became increasingly hostile to the idea of God during his lifetime–while simultaneously adopting increasingly poorly-reasoned positions on the nature of the universe (in my opinion, of course). To me, the connection between the increased hostility towards God and deteriorated thinking seems obvious.

Perhaps there is also a connection to Dr. Hawking’s protracted suffering with ALS and his hostile attitude towards God. Though I don’t think so. In my observation, people who suffer usually find themselves feeling closer to God than those who do not.

I really cannot know what was in Dr. Hawking’s mind. I can hope that his increased support of atheism over time was merely a response to the atheism of his peers. Perhaps he actually might have wondered it God is real–perhaps he may have even secretly found personal faith. Perhaps he even was a “closeted” Christian. Though there’s no particular reason to believe that to be the case.

I hope Stephen Hawking finds a place in the eternity he publicly denied exists. Or perhaps, if God has allowed it, a Stephen Hawking from an alternate universe will find his place in eternity, in the presence of God.

I hope so.

If it’s bad art, it’s bad religion, no matter how pious the subject.

The release of A Wrinkle In Time has brought this quotation to the surface. It sounds profound and is, I think, deeply wrong, but I don’t want to attack a lone, disconnected sentence. It would be better to return the sentence to its proper context, attempt to understand it, and then attack it.

The statement is taken from Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. After some meandering, L’Engle expands the idea:

Basically there can be no categories as “religious” art and “secular” art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore “religious”.

To understand what she means by incarnational, we must backtrack to an earlier passage, a sort of extended analogy that compares artists to the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation (it sounds less silly when L’Engle says it, but never doubt: It is really, in absolute and incontrovertible truth, just as silly):

[The] artist must be obedient to the work … I believe that each work of art … comes to the artist and says, “Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.” And the artist either says, “My soul doth magnify the Lord,” and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessarily a conscious one.

The pithiest summation of all this is that art is religion. A more difficult, and perhaps truer, summation is that art is inherently religious because to create it is, consciously or unconsciously, a religious act – an act of obedience to the divine or, at least, to the transcendent. And this brings us back again to the original statement that to be guilty of bad art is to be guilty of bad religion.

Make no mistake: The guilt is real. L’Engle lightly comments in Walking on Water that the writer of a “shoddy novel” has “reject[ed] the obedience, tak[en] the easy way out.” So to write a shoddy novel is a moral failing. Your bad prose flows from your moral weakness and the holes in your plot darkly reflect the hole in your character.

The equation between bad religion and bad art, and between moral failure and artistic failure, is false. It is flat nonsense to believe that a bad story must come from disobedience to “the work” and never consider that it probably comes from the eternal gremlins of artistic endeavors, lack of time and lack of skill. I put great emphasis on skill, more than on any nebulously-rendered obedience; it’s real and practical and necessary. In art, as in sports, no emotion, belief, or effort is enough in itself. You must have the skill, too.

Art is not an obedient response to “the work” that, L’Engle imagines, somehow already exists and wants to be incarnated; it’s not a religious act. Art is work, in the same way that cooking a meal or building a bridge is work, and like all work, it can be done badly or it can be done well. Certainly the religion of the art can influence its quality. But to make the quality of a work’s religion synonymous with the quality of its art is as wrongheaded as judging love by its poetry. (And if we did judge love by its poetry, we would know from the greetings cards we have all given and received that the world is a cold, dark, loveless place.)

There is excellent art that is bad religion. There is bad art that is excellent religion. Religion and art are not so closely bound as to make one bad or good as the other is bad or good. To think they are is bad religion.

Lorehaven magazine releases in a matter of weeks.

We review the best Christian-made fantastical novels—and help you find truth in fantastic stories, with cover stories, articles, Roundtable discussions, and beyond.

This free magazine will release first to email subscribers. Sign up and read it early.

Meanwhile, we’re announcing the crew behind this particular launch, starting with:

• E. Stephen Burnett, editor in chief.

Next up is a longtime friend and fantastical ally of mine. He goes back to the NarniaWeb online forum, where I first knew him as “Shastastwin.” Now I’m blessed to have his faith-fantasy-and-editing skills in service to the upcoming Lorehaven launch.

Elijah David

Name, role, and crew

Elijah David is editor of Lorehaven magazine.

Elijah and his wife, Jeana, have been married for almost 7 years. They have one active toddler who loves his cat, and a calico cat who tolerates her toddler.

Personal log

Elijah loves listening to new music, exploring stories in almost any medium, and creating (whether it be written, visual, dramatic, or needlework art). As an ambivert (sitting quite literally on the border between introvert and extrovert), he craves solitude and fellowship in fairly equal measure, and there’s nothing that satisfies his fellowship craving more than having people over to his house for dinner and games.

Mission

Elijah came to Christ at a very young age. He was raised in a church that, while Southern Baptist, had a formerly Pentecostal pastor. (They often joked that they were “Southern Bapticostal.”) In college, he met Jeana through their local church and the Baptist Campus Ministry. Nowadays, they worship and serve at White Oak Baptist Church a short way from home.

New worlds

Elijah loves just about anything fantastic in nature, along with a good mystery. He doesn’t mind horror as long as it’s hopeful rather than bleak. He is a fan of more franchises than he can count, but some of the big ones are Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel and DC comics (mostly the animated and film versions), the Dresden Files, Once Upon a Time, and anything Arthurian legend-related.

He writes a broad mix of fantasy subgenres, but his published stories are Albion Academy (the first of four books in a modern Arthurian-related series with plenty of other myths thrown in) and the John Valley short stories (magical realism/low fantasy stories set in the South). He draws and paints whatever comes to mind and is currently working on a drawing series of 100 mythical figures.

Home base

Elijah blogs at ElijahDavidAuthor.blogspot.com about the books he’s reading and writing, the visual art he creates, and anything else that begs to be blogged. He can be found on Facebook, at Goodreads, and on Pinterest.

Next week—enter the review chief, Austin Gunderson.