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The standards by which Christian fiction is judged differ significantly from mainstream literary standards. Christian books are valued not (or not only) because of their style, aesthetics, or form, but because of their effects on readers. Candy Gunther Brown argues that nineteenth-century evangelicals had a 'functionalist' approach to language that deemed whatever words induced readers to promote their own and others' progress in holiness sacred. Frykholm describes the 'life-application method' of reading characteristic of contemporary evangelicals.

As with reading scripture, readers look for a take-home message in Christian fiction to immediately apply to their own lives. Questions of aesthetics or historical context are irrelevant, if a book brings individuals closer to Jesus, inspires them to moral action on behalf of others, or moves the community of Christian pilgrims closer to sanctification.

In part because Christian fiction is imagined not as literature, but as religious outreach, mainstream media outlets largely ignore it. Secular newspapers and periodicals do not review Christian fiction, and many of the best-loved Christian novels in history were uniformly panned by literary critics. For example, a 1946 Publishers Weekly article about the history of best sellers in America characterized Harold Bell Wright-a publishing legend for the immensely popular wholesome, Christian novels he wrote in the early twentieth century-by arguing, 'No critic has ever damned Wright with even the faintest of praise.' Millions of ordinary readers read and loved Wright's books anyway. His flowery language, sentimental appeals, and happy endings that critics scorned made it easier for Christian readers to see the designing hand of God at work in the world.

Although 'Christian fiction' has become almost synonymous in our own day with evangelical Christian fiction (published by members of the ECPA and sold in CB A stores), it is important to remember that there are other kinds of Christian fiction. For example, Catholic fiction has a long history in America, and its canon might include writers such as G. K Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Flannery O'Connor, and Andrew Greeley. Mormon fiction sells well in Utah.

There are Quaker and Mennonite fictions. Some evangelicals write Christian fiction that does not receive the ECPA stamp of approval, because it represents explicit sex or cursing, or because its theology is not orthodox. There are also immensely popular Christian fictions that might be dismissed as heretical for their representations of sacred figures, church history, or doctrine. For example, Nikos Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ (1960) angered many, because it included a scene in which Jesus has erotic fantasies. Dan Brown's best-selling The Da Vinci Code (2003) is a mystery/thriller centered on the ancient heresy that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, who bore a child and continued his bloodline into the present day. This modern-day grail quest is also a critique of the suppression of women's sacredness and power by the Catholic Church. Like many popular Christian books from the past, texts like these arouse controversy among believers, offending some, but providing others with stories and frameworks for building and maintaining a personal and a collective faith.

References:

Hall, David D. Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.

Kurlantzick, Joshua. 'The New Bodice-Rippers Have More God and Less Sex.' New York Times, September 21, 2004, B l - 2 .

McDannell, Colleen. Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995.

Mort, John. Christian Fiction: A Guide to the Genre. Greenwood Village, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 2002.

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