E. Stephen Burnett says:

Hey Fred — if we’re thinking about the same article, if, I wonder if perhaps you may have missed the writer’s point? That would be easy to do, though, given his lack of clarity and especially some well-meaning but worse comments that followed!

Here’s a portion of the one I’m thinking about, from Russell Moore. I don’t mind linking to it, because I thought overall the piece was good. Many of the comments, though, were absolutely woeful — particularly the “all fiction is untruth, and Christians shouldn’t read untruth” cliche (yes, apparently it is still around).

Thankfully, we do not yet have a market for “Christian” pornography (but just wait, someone will find a way). But we do have a market for “Christian” romance novels. Now some of those classified as such aren’t really “romance novels” at all. They’re complicated looks at the human condition, especially male/female relationships, from a Christian vantage point. (emphasis added)

So in other words, he’s left an “out” for better-written novels, classified as “romance” right along with the other stuff, that are better-done stories.

A lot of this genre, though, is simply a Christianization of a form not intended to enhance intimacy but to escape to an artificial illusion of it. Granted, there’s no graphic sexuality here. The hero and heroine don’t sleep together; they pray together. But that’s just the point.

I think we can agree those kinds of books are certainly out there. And if you haven’t seen the problems they exacerbate — I could share a few stories! (Of course, people and not Things are still responsible for their own sins, but sometimes Things don’t help.)

So, what this guy was objecting to were not good cookbooks, but (in theory) not-so-good ones — the kind that teach you only how to make fatty foods and desserts and chocolate and cheesecake and consume them without any kind of low-fat or low-calorie balance from vegetables and such.

Yes, I know. I’d be tempted to live according to a cookbook like that. Ha ha!

But isn’t that Moore’s point about “romance”-only novels that offer cheap imitations of real love, apart from the context of real life and realistically portrayed people that actually lead to better and more-Biblical stories?

Then again, you may not have been referring to Moore’s column in the first place.

Regardless, he could have worded things better, and at least anticipated some of the silly “all fiction is a lie and sinful” objection from his Baptist audience (Moore, and many guys at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, are themselves less vulnerable to those false “doctrine” tropes). I like, for example, Tim George‘s reminder:

The truth is I don’t really hate romance. After all, I’ve been married to my best friend for 36 years and have never once forgotten our anniversary. What I hate is romance for romance’s sake. Why? Because romance for romance’s sake is the worst kind of fiction. In short – it’s fictional. True romance only means something when set against the backdrop of everything else that makes us human.

And for the Christian, romance only means something not only when it’s set against the backdrop of real life, but when it points to the love Christ has for His Church and the Gospel — the “mystery” to which love and marriage were always pointing, as shown in Ephesians 5 and echoed in Revelation 21.

E. Stephen Burnett says:

Lots of replies to Fred here — I’ll go point-by-point, mostly for clarity.

Stephen, Yes, Mr. Moore’s article was the primary, but not sole, inspiration for this piece. It wasn’t intended as a direct satire, which is why I didn’t link to him, and he’s less strident than most on this topic.

Called it, then! And I also called the non-Apocalypse-kickoff of May 21. Yes, I am really batting a thousand this week in the prediction playoffs. Send me some money.

My disclaimer: I do believe Moore could have been clearer. And it would have been much better to offer specific examples rather than shooting wild and thus seeming to implicate nearly everyone, as you said. Also, try some positive examples. If not this, for these reasons, then this instead. Moore is a good scholar and very smart about many topics, and is more open to fiction than other “Young Restless Reformed” leader folks (more on that later). But one couldn’t know that from this column; nor, as I said earlier, did he anticipate anti-all-fiction and anti-Biblical wild replies to his basic point.

It’s more about an attitude or subtext that keeps popping up. “People really like A. I don’t understand it. A must be somehow evil. Aha! A is pornography!”

This is where he needed to cite some anecdotal evidence. I could have helped him; others also could have. I know of cases like this, and have also worked in a Christian bookstore and, sadly, met folks who clearly lived like this. Surely they’re the minority, and Moore should have said so, but still they exist and we ought to address this risk too.

1. Person isn’t happy in her marriage, likely due to no single person’s blame, either hers or his, but more likely shared guilt for both partners failing to imitate Christ and/or His Church (Ephesians 5) and enjoy the challenges and romantic delights of marriage as “Christian hedonists” thanks to their Savior (Song of Solomon).

2. Instead of staying grounded in reality, person turns to pop-Christian romance novels to fill the void — the female WASP equivalent of the stereotypical male basement nerd.

3. Husband looks worse and worse by comparison to hunky heroes in romance novels — hunky heroes who may not get on the front covers or with their shirts off, but are within shown as strong, idealized, stereotypical men who may (also stereotypically) just need to be Tamed or Comforted by a love-interest/maternal female character. Thus the same potential risk of sin — romantic discontent — is “translated” into a “safe” equivalent.

Pick an item of interest, and you can bet somebody in search of an audience has tacked the suffix ‘porn’ onto it.

4. True, yet in this an obsession with pop-Christian romance novels is not perceived as sin, not nearly as much as a husband who’s hooked on porn and starts to compare his wife to plastic-surgeried camera-and-promiscuity junkies. (That’s the right porn comparison: not the same disgusting level of sin, but with very similar results.)

5. Secret sin of discontent goes unaddressed by the Church and by gracious discerning friends. It is not sourced by pop-romance novels, but not helped by them either. (Too many Christians, including myself by default, don’t blame the real source of sin — the human heart — and thus see supposedly “bad” Things in perspective as Christ said in Mark 7.)

6. While Christian readers, writers, and publishers are — rightfully! — on their guard against legalistic attitudes toward fiction, they still don’t keep standards up for realism and “romance” that takes place in contexts of more-developed and realistic human relationships. A reader may be at fault for wanting the pop-level, shallow-romance stuff that feeds sinful discontent, but shouldn’t I as a Christian — even a Christian businessperson who wants a profit, and not wrongfully — be aware of that?

Here’s the bit from Mr. Moore that bothered me:

While I don’t share all the presuppositions of these scholars, I think they’re on to something about the allure of the commercialized romance story. Pornography and romance novels aren’t (or at least aren’t always) morally equivalent, but they “work” the same way.

So, romance novels aren’t pornography…except when they are.

Maybe we ought to check with some Christian women who could help us understand the similarities that we guys may miss! Because yes, for some women — even strong Christian women — the effects of obsession with unrealistic, discontent-feeding romance novels are very similar to the effects of porn on men.

But again, that’s different from the issue of fiction altogether (which too many commentators after Moore’s column overshot and wrongly equivocated).

And the exception he makes, without providing an example, strikes me as ‘damning with faint praise.’

Agreed with that. Too much “anti,” not enough “instead, try this.” Darkness condemned, but no candle lit. Instead he should have suggest alternatives, even in a sequel column. And he left at least one person asking “how can I tell the difference? Is there a Resource out there somewhere?” (Yes there is, ma’am: yourself, in Christ, discerning Things.)

Is there a legitimate danger of people becoming unbalanced and obsessed in this area? Certainly, but he’s painting the genre with a very broad brush.

Yes, and some research would have helped — or else check with someone who knows his stuff better, who is perhaps himself a fiction reader and writer, who shares his concerns but can articulate them better and with more balance. I know many of our contributors who could have done that. Perhaps one of our female writers would like to contact Moore, on a more-official basis, and offer a substantive critique and encouragement?

If not, I’d volunteer for the task. I’m a Moore fan overall, and even have a potential avenue (know Southern students) of sharing concerns with him more directly.

[Quoting Moore again] Both are based on an illusion. Pornography is based on the illusion of a perfectly willing, always aroused partner without the “work” of relational intimacy. Often romance novels or their film equivalents do the same thing for the emotional needs of women that pornography offers for the erotic urges of men.

It’s not hard to extend this position with regard to human relationships as “illusion = pornography,” at which point, we’re all in trouble, because we’ve landed in the “fiction=illusion=sin” bucket that several of his commentators were all too eager to take up.

And Moore did not correct for that in advance — perhaps assuming (as I did) that the fiction = untruth = Ninth Commandment Violation = evil sin equation was a relic from the cultural-fundamentalist past. Turns out it’s not.

When the film Avatar (the CGI blue-people one) was popular, Southern Seminary had a panel about it, in which all participants, including Moore, spoke highly of the film’s artistry and even positively of fantasy/science-fiction genres. So I know he’s not opposed to fiction. Again, he just should have said more here about that.

I think most Christian romance writers aspire to write about loving relationships that mirror the Christ/Church relationship, which is why so many of them who commented were justifiably angry about being spattered by Moore’s voluminous paintbrush.

Yet a lot of “pop” stuff is out there too, showing romance in contexts apart from realism and apart from truly Gospel-honoring ideals. My wife had to read some of them, after getting a set for her birthday some years back. Alas.

Sure, many of those relationships are idealized, but I think it’s naive to complain about events and relationships in any fictional venue being idealized. Fiction isn’t reality. If it was, it would be non-fiction. And if we can’t portray an ideal in fiction, where can we?

Seems we’re back to the Edginess™ debate again — where I remain convinced that the best storytelling is both realistic and idealistic. We need to show human nature both as it is and how it should be, delighting not in self but in God, optimally shown in high-contrast — which of course involves even greater odds and conflict, which results in better storytelling anyway, and even better romances.