Writing Religion

[Paul Whybrow]

There are various hot potatoes that could cause trouble for a writer. One of the hottest is religion.

In recent years, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy have brought criticism.

It doesn’t matter what age your readers are, if you take a stance on worship, then someone’s going to object. I’m not trying to start a heated debate on the Colony, but it’s undeniable that church attendance has plunged in First World countries.

Church attendance - Wikipedia

I live in Cornwall, which was once a notably religious county, thanks to the 18th-century Methodist leader John Wesley who did a lot of preaching here:

John Wesley and Methodism

He took advantage of the landscape, including Gwennap Pit.

Many Methodist chapels were built. Nowadays, they and other religions’ churches are being sold off. With falling and ageing congregations, they’re too expensive to maintain. Turned into dwellings, they find a new use:

Lowertown, Helston 2 bed character property for sale - £330,000

The protagonist of my Cornish Detective series is more spiritual than religious. He sees religion as a form of love, set up to unify the population and to control them. He’s Green in his thinking and politics. His deceased wife was raised in the Catholic faith by her autocratic father, who’d joined the ‘one true faith’ for the social influence it gave him.

The serial killer in the first book was Serbian, a survivor of the dreadful Bosnian war, who’d become desensitised to killing. Ethno-religious nationalism fuelled the conflict with Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs, and Muslim Bosniaks seeking power. Atrocities were committed by each faction. The serial killer murders a Catholic priest, partly in revenge for the deaths of his family.

That’s about it, for religious content of my crime series. A lesbian detective got married, but in a secular same-sex ceremony at Bedruthan Steps, with my main character as best man...the only man present.

How do you handle religion in your stories?

 

[Lex Black]

I happen to be an amateur theologian and student of humanities, which gives me some modest amount of insight into how faith systems begin and develop. My failed series, for example, had a setting wherein three different major religion groups played a minor part: that of the remaining indigenous peoples of the setting, a major one imported by the descendants of colonists/conquerors of the setting, and one brought with a character who immigrated from a rival background. These were mostly minor character details, having little to do with the story...until artifacts of the indigenous faith system turned up, and surprise! They weren't any more pleasant than a lot of the things in that poor monster-infested country.

A fun example that got some positive feedback from beta readers before I abandoned the story was an idol discovered in a series of catacombs, dedicated to a goddess of (spoiler!) and murder. The protagonists are told that this is one of the most dangerous objects imaginable, as relates to that spoiler. It doesn't melt people, or summon eldritch horrors, or change the air to ice, but no matter the speaker's intent, no matter what is said, if you ask it a question, it tells you the truth. In the philosophy of the people who made the idol, it represented the goddess of truth and murder, because one will always follow the other.

I was proud of that when I wrote it.

 

[Andy D]

I began discovering my faith through writing. Partly because I realised when I began writing, then a comic book, that I was in a very real being sense God myself, from creating a world and a universe to its people, situations, even the path of a leaf through a branch - and it then felt kinda churlish and even hypocritical to believe that the actual God couldn’t exist. Partly because I found the act of writing itself a truly spiritual experience, and I still do. Sometimes the words, characters, plots are just ‘there’.

I’ve discovered, however, that writing about religion in a positive sense, at least in dramatic fiction, is really difficult. Specifically as a Christian because, as the preacher says with a knowing smile, Jesus is always the answer. It’s knowing because that doesn’t necessarily make life any easier at all! But to have your protagonist deal with the relentless traumas and trials you’re throwing him / her by praying doesn’t exactly make for an exciting action set-piece. Nor does abdicating the control of a situation to a loving creator offer a huge amount of agency! Thirdly, it also smacks of evangelism, which takes your story somewhere else entirely. Lastly because Jesus is such a big character - real or not - once you introduce him everything else is in shadow. So, I guess like a lot of authors, I look for other (possibly less honest) ways to introduce faith. And at least the concept of it, which I think is the more acceptable and traditional route in a lot of commercial fiction.

Only as an observation, and I may be wrong, but I could imagine how the opposite approach is far easier. And that’s not to say I haven’t really enjoyed Pullman and Rushdie hugely, because I have (Brown left me cold). But having God / the church / clergy, for example, as the antagonists is much more dramatically exciting. Partly because it’s ‘the bad that shouldn’t be the bad’ and that’s not just controversial, we sadly see that played out in real life over and over. Secondly because God can always be reduced to a stand in for authority. But it’s also compelling because it takes us back to the original Bible story of Adam and Eve - and for me the true nature of the human condition - our desire to turn from God so we can be in control ourselves. Which, again to me, is something we all do all the time, religious or not.

 

[Eva Ulian]

One of our Parish Priests who had also been a maths teacher told me, it was easier to teach maths than religion, in fact, he ventured; religion was the most difficult subject to teach especially nowadays and to teenagers. I agree with him, because religion being taught in the conventional way, has no resonance with ordinary human beings: only with “bigoted” people does it go down well. And I am convinced this applies, more than ever, to publishing too.

Yet, I love writing about religion! I have four unpublished novels with the same underlying theme: a religious vocation and a mysterious death.

However, I like to hope my writing does not resemble what appears to be the kind of writing appealing to bigoted people, namely, dogmatic and sanctimonious. In fact, I use words and themes that have nothing to do with religion seen from a dogmatic point of view. I use everyday situations and language familiar and practiced by normal people, and may well be snubbed by those of the cloth.

Nor do I make it a point to seek out the most evil, wayward, horrendous deeds to attract attention to a religious theme. Some of my characters are good, God-fearing and loving people, some are downright disgusting- does that sound familiar? Yes, of course, just like real life.

This is where writing about religion may be a pit-fall for authors, because they either try to separate religion from real life and put it on a pedestal or seek out the most violent and evil aspects as if those were the only elements religion can offer, but are really used as a ploy to be sensational.

 

[Andy D]

Just thought I’d resurrect (I thank you) this thread to post an interesting article on the BBC’s Dracula by Litopia’s favourite Rev:

Why Dracula is the most Christian show on TV

Baptist minister and Horror fan Rev Peter Laws urges Christians not to dismiss the BBC's critically-acclaimed mini-series

www.premierchristianity.com

 

[Dan Payne]

Religion (and faith) can be a fascinating element of any story. Religions deal with the big questions of behaviour, motivation, purpose, the nature of existence and the possibility of a reality beyond our own. These are all stock-in-trade for authors and priests alike. Giving your characters a faith is no more controversial than letting them smoke or to have an opinion on politics or ethics. All characters should feel lived-in, and that includes the possibility that they believe in the divine (or in ghosts, or in disembodied spirits).

We can't allow ourselves to be constrained by fear of offence, or of only writing characters who are, and think, and behave, exactly like us. Within the bounds of a story, it's important to keep in mind that the character's beliefs are not (necessarily) the author's beliefs. I like to write damaged characters, misogynists, obsessives and people prone to solving problems with violence, and I would hope that anybody reading my stories doesn't externalise those attributes to me. I would hate to censor my plots, or to build my character's arc, around the necessity to deliver a nice palatable message for the reader. For that reason I'm just as happy to write a character who challenges a priest after a funeral - Where was your God when this child died horribly? as I am to have a character seduce another man's wife. In doing so I always run the risk that my readers think I, the author, am challenging Christianity/Islam/Buddhism/whatever, rather than the character doing so. That I actually think women / people of other nationalities / poor people are less worthy. Or that I, personally, believe that society is failing and needs to be brought down with explosives (a la Fight Club). We must be willing to give our characters unpopular or challenging opinions, because only then can we challenge them.

I’ve discovered, however, that writing about religion in a positive sense, at least in dramatic fiction, is really difficult. Specifically as a Christian because, as the preacher says with a knowing smile, Jesus is always the answer.

But this is exactly what fiction is for! Maybe "Jesus is the answer", but how does that play out in the lives of your characters? Faith is never as simple as that and neither should the resolution of your characters' problems be. Prayer might make a character feel better, but it (almost certainly) won't solve her problems. If you want faith at the centre of your story, you need to look further before you can find God in the middle of the crisis. Or perhaps prayer will give the character the peace at heart that allows her to go forwards and take concrete steps towards resolution.

 

[Andy D]

Religion (and faith) can be a fascinating element of any story. Religions deal with the big questions of behaviour, motivation, purpose, the nature of existence and the possibility of a reality beyond our own. These are all stock-in-trade for authors and priests alike. Giving your characters a faith is no more controversial than letting them smoke or to have an opinion on politics or ethics. All characters should feel lived-in, and that includes the possibility that they believe in the divine (or in ghosts, or in disembodied spirits).

We can't allow ourselves to be constrained by fear of offence, or of only writing characters who are, and think, and behave, exactly like us. Within the bounds of a story, it's important to keep in mind that the character's beliefs are not (necessarily) the author's beliefs. I like to write damaged characters, misogynists, obsessives and people prone to solving problems with violence, and I would hope that anybody reading my stories doesn't externalise those attributes to me. I would hate to censor my plots, or to build my character's arc, around the necessity to deliver a nice palatable message for the reader. For that reason I'm just as happy to write a character who challenges a priest after a funeral - Where was your God when this child died horribly? as I am to have a character seduce another man's wife. In doing so I always run the risk that my readers think I, the author, am challenging Christianity/Islam/Buddhism/whatever, rather than the character doing so. That I actually think women / people of other nationalities / poor people are less worthy. Or that I, personally, believe that society is failing and needs to be brought down with explosives (a la Fight Club). We must be willing to give our characters unpopular or challenging opinions, because only then can we challenge them.



But this is exactly what fiction is for! Maybe "Jesus is the answer", but how does that play out in the lives of your characters? Faith is never as simple as that and neither should the resolution of your characters' problems be. Prayer might make a character feel better, but it (almost certainly) won't solve her problems. If you want faith at the centre of your story, you need to look further before you can find God in the middle of the crisis. Or perhaps prayer will give the character the peace at heart that allows her to go forwards and take concrete steps towards resolution.

All good points Dan!