Religious Elements in Fiction

Religious Elements in Fiction

There are people who believe that fiction writers should avoid religious elements at all costs. Some agents, literary journals and publishers even designate on their submission guidelines prohibitions against anything “religious”. I believe I know why this is. There are those writers, especially “Christian writers,” who write fiction that is basically a theological treatise, cloaked in story form. Frequently these are polemics against those who think otherwise. Such fiction takes people who seek spiritual understanding from different perspectives, and siphons them off into warring camps. And book dealers call this kind of writing “inspirational fiction.” Some inspiration! That’s why in his song, Imagine John Lennon envisions a dream world where there is “no religion” to come between us. (He later described himself as a “Zen Christian”).

Many religious perspectives contribute to each other.

Here it is important to say that I am a writer who includes religious elements in my writing. I do so because I believe life in this chaotic world requires looking beyond what is seen to a spiritual realm, a realm where love reigns and God is more than just a swear word. Receiving deep insight into that realm is greatly aided by opening ourselves to other traditions than our own. I am myself a Christian who believes that Jesus Christ revealed the character of God as love, and that love is indeed “the Way, the Truth and the Life.” But I have received spiritually insightful guidance from Jewish writers like Abraham Heschel and Martin Buber. I have enjoyed the insights of fiction writers like the Afghani Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner), Sufi-influenced Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet), as well as writers from my own TellTale authors group, like Joyce Yarrow (Zahara and the Lost Books of Light), and Jim Metzner who writes of Native-American spirituality in his novel, Sacred Mounds. In Joyce Yarrow’s book we find a story of an historical effort to ban sacred books written from a different religious tradition than was accepted at the time. Such perverse efforts continue to this day. In Jim Metzner’s book we find the spirituality of the Natchez people stubbornly challenging the dominant culture’s rationalistic perspectives. The world needs these various religious viewpoints.

As an example, in my novel, Searching for Eden, a lapsed Christian, a cynical scientist, a Jew and several Muslims go on a quest for a p

lace described in various traditions as a paradise where life was good and harmonious, and evil did not rule, The Garden of Eden. So, the journey brings together Christians and Jews, Muslims and skeptics, all looking to recover a sense of goodness at the heart of life and human relationship. But will humanity today ever be able to join together in such a common quest? That is a vital question for our time.