1. […] How that may be done, then, remains for a later article, likely next Thursday: Stories for Christians: the new ‘watchful dragons.’ […]

  2. Thank you for this. These are all issues I grapple with as I think on the questions I may be asked when my trilogy debuts next year. It’s YA, first of all, which hasn’t yet made a huge mark among CBA houses, and it’s a “supernatural romance” which I fear will have the dragons spitting fire. 

    But, there’s truth there. Lots of it. It’s not written as a moral tale and I’ve wondered if that will distract CBA audiences from seeing the truth of the story. But, we’re prayerful, right? And we let God help us be creative. And we, like Lewis, hope to find an audience for the stories birthed in our brains and in our gut.

    I so appreciate your efforts here. I want to wave this site like a banner, encouraging Christians everywhere to think, think, think about what they believe and cling to.

    God bless, Stephen. 

  3. Kessie says:

    I’ve chewed on this all morning. All I can think of are other people in ages past who were trying to impact their culture with fiction. Charles Dickens, Jonathan Swift, and so on.
     
    Why not with satire and humor? When the anti-God people want to sell us an agenda, they don’t hit us in the face. They couch in in humor, in comedies and sitcoms. They make it funny. As soon as you’ve laughed at depravity, you’ve lowered your guard against it. I think we can learn a lesson from that.
     
    Why don’t we write satire and poke fun at the watchful dragons? What’s wrong with laughing at the mega churches and the harassed families who forget to pick up one of the kids from Sunday School because they were in such a hurry to make it to small groups? There’s lots of humor inherent there. We just don’t touch it because that’s a Sacred Cow, and Someone Might Be Offended.
     
    But if we can get people to laugh, we might get a toe in the door for a wider agenda. It works for depravity. Why not good things, too?

  4. Galadriel says:

    And I would also add Ted Dekker as a sucessful author who snuck past Churchian dragons

  5. SoniCido says:

    THERE IS humor there, Kessie, my whole life is an offense in the eyes of many– from Churchian mice to a fire-breathing dragons…and I intend to write about it. haha 🙂

    I am late commenting on this because I was in court yesterday in Bisbee with a real-life dragon!– I took the article with me.

    Thank you Stephen, for pointing out that discerning  [the authors who] successfully sneaking past the watchful eyes.. (or, perhaps, boldly stepping past) the dragons is one way of dealing with them. (sorry about the mechanics on that–I better make some coffee)

    First of all,  I think that we should be bold and confident in every thing in our lives, (no matter where we are in life) and writing should not be the place where we hold back.

    Second, if there is a story churning in us, and we have a relationship with our Creator, then is should be told, no matter who might want to read it.

    Thank you for reaffirming that!

    Soni 

  6. Why not with satire and humor? When the anti-God people want to sell us an agenda, they don’t hit us in the face. They couch in in humor, in comedies and sitcoms. They make it funny. As soon as you’ve laughed at depravity, you’ve lowered your guard against it. I think we can learn a lesson from that.

    Kessie: oddly enough, some of the most successful cheesy and Family-Friendly Christian comedians can get away with gentle parody of Churchianity. Speaking both from personal experience and from seeing other people, I think the cheesy comedians get past the Churchian Dragons mainly because they are perceived, and very likely are in actuality, as One of Us. Therefore he is allowed. He is trusted.

    If a Christian comedian pokes gentle fun at silly churchiness, it’s okay. If a liberal, atheist, or someone else does it — not okay. I’m not saying it’s right; but it certainly is more understandable, isn’t it? People will allow more from those they already trust.

    However, I’m still trying to figure out how come Tim Hawkins, arguably the reigning king of Christian comedy, can get away not only with spoofing silly Churchianity, but also stunts like bathroom humor and fart jokes and even acting effeminate onstage. They’ll even let him turn churchy songs into secular songs. How does he do it?

    Why don’t we write satire and poke fun at the watchful dragons? What’s wrong with laughing at the mega churches and the harassed families who forget to pick up one of the kids from Sunday School because they were in such a hurry to make it to small groups? There’s lots of humor inherent there. We just don’t touch it because that’s a Sacred Cow, and Someone Might Be Offended.

    Could be. Or it could be because we’ve seen the “bad guys” do it — the aforementioned liberals or atheists — and we frankly don’t want to be seen as joining them. That’s also understandable, I think. As mentioned last week, especially in the comments, we already have plenty of people blasting the Church without showing equal love for her.

    I think that’s the key — joined also with the apparent truths that “edgier” Christian artists can “get away with more” if they have won and been maintaining trust with Christians. The dragons recognize one who is one of their own, who shares their concerns. They see that such Christian artists aren’t trying to score cheap points with non-Christians by blasting the Church. Rather, he’s doing affectionate parody or criticism.

    More thoughts on that came in my interview with Ted Kluck. By the way, he had already won my “trust” with his contributions to two more-serious nonfiction books: Why We’re Not Emergent and Why We Love the Church, with Kevin DeYoung (Kluck’s views are quite clear from the titles!). Kluck went on to write two works of parody with another author (recently featured on Spec-Faith — Zachary Bartels). Their first was Kinda Christianity, a spoof of emergent silliness and even anti-Biblical beliefs; and their second was Younger, Restlesser, Reformeder, a spoof of guys like themselves (next-generation “Calvinists”). That book, I found, was even more hilarious due to their inside knowledge. I didn’t mind their “good-natured roast,” and it helped me laugh at not only the general “our” antics, but my own. And that, of course, can help with humility!

    Still, given the bad or hostile parodies out there, I can understand (perhaps even better) how this can lead to concern. That’s why I wrote a followup column, which I hope explored the issue and especially the concept of affectionate parody in further.

    Yet again, perhaps talking about and analyzing and discussing the philosophy of loving, affectionate parody can only go so far. One must also show how this may be done …

    Any thoughts on that, or perhaps firsthand examples? I have a few to show myself. 🙂

    • Kessie says:

      Thanks for all the article links! I’ve been reading them in bits all evening. (Along with a bit of cross-checking to look up what in the heck this whole Reformed movement is about. I don’t get out much these days.)
       
      I agree with you pretty much on everything you said about spoofs and humor. It slips under the radar if you’re “one of us” and if it’s not mean-spirited. And there will always be people who don’t get it.
       
      But I was thinking of spoofs more in the realm of speculative fiction. Like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: it was this parody-spoof humor thing set in space.  Then there’s the whole Discworld saga by Pratchett, which is a huge slice of fantasy as a vehicle to spoof pretty much everything. (I recently read Guards! Guards! and laughed my head off the whole time.)
       
      After reading a bunch of these articles (and Randy Alcorn’s article today), I think just a good story can get past defenses, too. But it’d better be well-written and have great characters. I can’t help but think of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire books (exploring the question of what the Napoleonic Wars would have been like had both sides had an air force of dragons). They’re written like stuff from the late 1800s and you need to be reading at more than a 3rd grade level to follow them. But they have a massive following. Which goes to show that people have a higher reading level than the publishers are willing to admit.
       
      Rabbit trails aside, that’s why I was chuckling at the idea of writing my werewolf character in church, having to hear about why magic is evil. I’m afraid I can’t write satire. I’m much better at playing a silly situation completely straight, like in the Henry Reed books, when they do crazy things like start a gold rush or babysit a girl older than them, but it’s played straight. So halfway through you realize this is funny and start giggling.
       
      I’d be very interested in any examples you have, Stephen. Right now I’m in the middle of a story about catgirls, assassins, sentient power suits, and inter-world travel. And the bounty hunter and the assassin he’s hunting falling for each other.
       
      At least nobody sparkles.

  7. Marion says:

    Good article, Stephen.
    How do we get past the Churchian Dragons?  Hmmmm….
    I’m glad these questions are finally being asked.  Like I’ve written in previous posts, Christian Art is trying to mature and there will be some bumps on the head and even falling down on our butts.  But we must keep moving forward.
    I believe the power of story with good characters and something the reader can relate to…will ultimately get a writer past the Churchian Dragons.
    However, there will always be people skeptical of fiction.  Which I truly don’t get because these same people will watch a “reality tv” show….and that’s nothing but fiction. LOL!
    I believe we must push for writers and readers of Christian Fiction to ask (and even demand) for better stories and promote those who are doing just that.
    We will never know who will be the next author that can get past Churchian Dragons and out of the Genre Ghetto…but I believe those things are decided by things beyond our control.
    My concern is we keep looking for that visionary author to show our secular counterparts that Christian Fiction is just like you and we have arrived.
    Sometimes growth and maturity takes time.  Even though, we don’t live in a patient society, life still moves one day at a time whether we like or not.
     
    Marion

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