Ship of Fools: Classic Christian Fiction

Thread: Classic Christian Fiction - suggestions Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

To visit this thread, use this URL:
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=70;t=029290

Posted by Josiah Crawley (# 18481) on :

I visited St Paul the Apostle, W 60th NY, recently and noticed they have a "Classic Catholic Fiction Book Club" Next week they're discussing Morris West's 'The Shoes of the Fisherman'

I was wondering what would be "Classic Christian Fiction" (Not counting Pilgrim's Progress, perhasps - maybe of the last 200 years or so...

Suggestions? [Smile]

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

You could hardly miss with the works of the big three: Tolkien, Lewis, Williams.

Posted by Josiah Crawley (# 18481) on :

Good one, Brenda Clough.

Seems to me Morris West's book is quite easy reading.

Which book specifically would we nominated for a book club in the genre 'Classic Christian Fiction' maybe would have been a better starter from me!

Now let me think.... [Smile]

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

George MacDonald? The Curates Awakening series are good reads.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

It would depend on your group. If they are comfortable with fantasy or science fiction, you could hardly do better than Lord of the Rings or Lewis's space trilogy. If triple-deckers are intimidating, and they can handle historical fiction, Lewis's Till We Have Faces is unbeatable. George MacDonald is a classic but rather Victorian in style and tone; if this is tolerable then do Phantastes or Lilith. If a work set in a more or less modern time is wiser, then get Charles Williams' best novel, All Hallow's Eve, which is appropriate for this time of year.

Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on :

Or if you are looking for something from another era altogether, then how about John Halifax, Gentleman by D M Mulock (Mrs Craik)

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

Graham Greene absolutely has to be on the list. I have made it through The Heart of the Matter and The Power and the Glory, which both deserve multiple reads.

Then I would add two from the American South who might not get their due in other parts of the world.

Walker Percy was a New Orleans-based Catholic existentialist. He had an eye for hilarious and profound paradoxes. Most of his books are really about a man finding himself lost in the modern age, but there would be quite a bit for a reading group to uncover.

Flannery O'Connor's short stories deal with morality, ethics, and grace, from her perspective as a Catholic.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

When does fiction become classic?

I think Fitzgerald's Gate of Angels, for example, will be a classic. But it came out only ('only') twenty five years ago. Is that enough time?

Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor have been mentioned already. I'd also mention Muriel Spark (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie obviously).

I don't think Lord of the Flies is Christian. But Golding's The Spire is.

Thornton Wilder's Bridge of St Luis Rey is I believe Christian fiction. Willa Cather's novels are also Christian fiction (most explicitly The Death of the Archbishop).

That's just English language. Then there's Dostoyevsky. And Tolstoy arguably. And Gogol and Pasternak and Bulgakov. Though most of their novels are too big for a reading group.

Posted by Stercus Tauri (# 16668) on :

I would include G K Chesterton's Father Brown books, Graham Greene's Monsignor Quixote, and one of my all time favourites, Giovanni Guareschi's Don Camillo; all practical priests and hands-on Christians. When they finally lock me up, I'm taking the Don Camillo books with me.

Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :

Ellis Peters' Br. Cadfael series is delightful for lighter reading in a historical vein. And a read-once-every-five-years book for me is Charles Williams' Descent into Hell. Williams was a member of the Inklings along with such authors as Lewis and Tolkien. While they developed, imaginary worlds, Williams set his fantasies in the twentieth century world.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
When does fiction become classic?

I think Fitzgerald's Gate of Angels, for example, will be a classic. But it came out only ('only') twenty five years ago. Is that enough time?

Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor have been mentioned already. I'd also mention Muriel Spark (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie obviously).

I don't think Lord of the Flies is Christian. But Golding's The Spire is.

Thornton Wilder's Bridge of St Luis Rey is I believe Christian fiction. Willa Cather's novels are also Christian fiction (most explicitly The Death of the Archbishop).

That's just English language. Then there's Dostoyevsky. And Tolstoy arguably. And Gogol and Pasternak and Bulgakov. Though most of their novels are too big for a reading group.

Yes, the Spire. When I was giving the Church another opportunity to say they didn't want me to be a priest a few years ago, my DDO gave me a reading list which included quite a bit of fiction and that was on it (though I can't remember what else was).
You might usefully ask your local vocations people, in whatever is your church, whether they have anything similar.

Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :

I suggest the work of Madeleine L'Engle.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

Stephen Lawheads Pendragon series is a novel retelling of the Atlantis myth and Arthurian legends set against the backdrop of the end of Roman influence and the introduction of Christianity to Britain. Even if he does routinely have his pre-Columbus British characters eating potato stew!

Are we allowed to mention those that we would exclude from the list of classic fiction?

No. Probably not. I won't mention Frank Peretti then.

Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :

Andrew Greeley writes popular Christian fiction which is life- enhancing and quite fun.

Posted by agingjb (# 16555) on :

Are Jane Austen's novels classic Christian fiction? I would certainly argue the case for Mansfield Park at least.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Austen is a great example of a writer who uses Christianity as culture, not as belief. Survey the mass of her novels. Nearly all of the characters are Christian, but simply because everyone in Britain at the period (except for the odd Jew and an ambassador or two from foreign parts) was. Very rarely do you find someone taking a stand to act on faith, rather than what is proper or how it is done or my God what will the neighbors think. Possibly Fanny Price (in Mansfield) may be the only one you could make the case for, and she is arguable.

Here's a great example: March, by Geraldine Brooks. It won the Pulitzer Prize for novels, and is about the Civil War in the US. Mr. March, the hero, is better known to us as the pater familias in Little Women. An energetically Christian man, his conscience crucifies him when he tries to cope with a slave society. And, if you have read Little Women you possibly remember Marmee, the mother of the daughters and wife of Mr. March. In the Alcott novel she was preachy and negligible. Brooks makes her stupendous: lusty, intelligent, and a ton smarter than her dreamily devout husband. You get a fine view of three or four quite different kinds of Christianity, and none of the proponents can really understand each other.

Posted by Josiah Crawley (# 18481) on :

I guess 'classic' depends on the person choosing Dafyd.

The choice of Morris West I thought was good as its a good story and not too difficult to read. Sometimes I think the choice for such gatherings is a little too much for some everyday folk.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

The Brothers Karamazov.

Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation and Christ Recrucified are, um, interesting. Could be described as Christian, could be Kazantzakis thrusting Christianity into his own angst about Life Is Struggle.

Or for even weirder uses of Christianity try some of Philip K Dick's later work. Time stopped after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, whereat the Logos took refuge in the Nag Hammadi Library. A piece of spurious time was then interpolated until 1971, at which point the Logos resurfaced and real time started up again. There are some three eyed aliens from the time of Amenhotep as well but I lost track at that point.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
It would depend on your group. If they are comfortable with fantasy or science fiction, you could hardly do better than Lord of the Rings or Lewis's space trilogy. If triple-deckers are intimidating, and they can handle historical fiction, Lewis's Till We Have Faces is unbeatable. George MacDonald is a classic but rather Victorian in style and tone; if this is tolerable then do Phantastes or Lilith. If a work set in a more or less modern time is wiser, then get Charles Williams' best novel, All Hallow's Eve, which is appropriate for this time of year.

"Lord of the Rings" is classic Christian fiction? I'd be interested to know what you're basing that statement on.

Also, I can't honestly say that "All Hallows' Eve" or "Phantastes" ever struck me as exactly Christian fiction either.

Posted by agingjb (# 16555) on :

I suppose War in Heaven is the most explicitly Christian of Charles Williams' novels. The others have a variety of themes.

Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :

I think the claim for "The Lord of the Rings" is that many of the themes are recognizably Christian themes. Several of the characters are plausibly Christ-like figures (Frodo, Sam, Aragorn). "The Silmarillion" makes this clearer.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Austen is a great example of a writer who uses Christianity as culture, not as belief.

There's an essay by C.S.Lewis where he points out that in the four novels with fallible protagonists or semi-protagonists (Marianne), the crucial interior monologues use the word 'serious', which he points out, had far more religious connotations then than it does now.
I think the absence of explicit Christian belief from Austen is a matter of decorum. Austen doesn't follow her heroines into their prayers just as she never follows them into their beds or has them talking to the servants. But they all exist.
(I think it's a mistake to read Austen as a high realist novelist like George Eliot, who follows her characters almost everywhere and therefore shows us everything relevant that happens.)

Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on :

We may need a clearer definition of Christian fiction...

In the meantime, Michael Arditti and Patrick Gale have both taken Christianity seriously in their novels. As has John Updike.

In science fiction Mary Doria Russell's The sparrow, and Molly Gloss's The dazzle of day.

In juvenile fiction, Madeleine L'Engle would be an obvious candidate. Also worth considering Robert Siegel's Alpha Centauri, Margaret Craven's I heard the owl call my name, Aidan Chambers' Now I know, or Jerry Spinelli's The mighty crashman.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
Several of the characters are plausibly Christ-like figures (Frodo, Sam, Aragorn).

I don't know about Christ-like figures. I think it's more that Frodo and Sam exhibit particularly Christian virtues, such as patience and resisting temptation, rather than winning by being stronger or having a bigger gun than the evil guy.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Austen is a great example of a writer who uses Christianity as culture, not as belief. ...

To what extent did she, or most people at the time, see those are distinct? Even the great preachers of the era saw a large part of their job as calling people to take seriously (the word Dafyd mentions) the faith that was binding on everyone.

Specifically and overtly Christian stories at the time were largely written for children, and appeared as small booklets. They had titles like 'The tragic and noble death of Henry Ponsonby who protected his fellow children from the savage lion'.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

I guess I feel that if a novel is to be described as Christian then it has to be more than just partaking of the Christian culture pervading the world at that time. Surely everything written before, I dunno, Dickens, cannot be counted as a classic Christian novel. (Dickens was insistently non-Christian in his work, even in things like A Christmas Carol, which hardly mentions Jesus at all.

LOTR is cool in that it is very Christian, and more specifically quite Catholic, even though neither Christ nor even God are mentioned at all. He was completely under the table with it, the quickness of the authorial hand deceiving the eye.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
Several of the characters are plausibly Christ-like figures (Frodo, Sam, Aragorn).
I don't know about Christ-like figures. I think it's more that Frodo and Sam exhibit particularly Christian virtues, such as patience and resisting temptation, rather than winning by being stronger or having a bigger gun than the evil guy.

Christ-like figures is too broad and loose a definition IMO, if you mean overcoming the odds, resoluteness in the face of disaster, etc.

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
LOTR is cool in that it is very Christian, and more specifically quite Catholic, even though neither Christ nor even God are mentioned at all.

I can't see it at all. Can you point to some examples to substantiate this?

Posted by agingjb (# 16555) on :

In LOTR Gandalf is the character who comes back from the dead, although what death entails for a Maia isn't clear.

In Jane Austen three of her heroines marry clergy, and another two reject proposals from clergy.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

I read Northanger Abbey straight after Barchester Towers. The hero seemed to be exactly the kind of parasitic and semi-absentee cleric that Trollope was satirising, which rather put me off Jane Austen. Doubtless I am being unfair.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

A specifically Catholic example in LOTR is how often the characters call upon, or praise, the Queen of Heaven, Varda. Why her, rather than any of the other 11 Valar? Because she is standing in for the BVM in the theology of Middle Earth.

Another fruitful area for analysis is the various magical foods and drinks on offer. Lembas, you recall, is dry and cracker-like. Nevertheless it strengthens both body and spirit.

Posted by Jante (# 9163) on :

not sure if it counts as classic but I heard the Owl Call my Name by Margaret Craven is a must for me.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
A specifically Catholic example in LOTR is how often the characters call upon, or praise, the Queen of Heaven, Varda. Why her, rather than any of the other 11 Valar? Because she is standing in for the BVM in the theology of Middle Earth.

I've been reading that book since I was a teenager and I'm honestly completely surprised by this. I couldn't point you to a single instance of the characters frequently invoking her anywhere in any of the three volumes. Possibly it's in one or two of the poems, which I've usually skipped.

But even so the idea of a goddess is hardly new - female deities were around long before Christianity and the popularity of the BVM in some places was a straight transferral of old loyalties to, as it might be, Isis or Brigid, etc, to a new name with similar attributes.

quote:
Another fruitful area for analysis is the various magical foods and drinks on offer. Lembas, you recall, is dry and cracker-like. Nevertheless it strengthens both body and spirit.

I don't agree with you but I'll grant you that: though one example of an energy food is hardly enough to say the books are full of disguised Catholic principles.

Posted by georgiaboy (# 11294) on :

quote:
Originally posted by agingjb:
I suppose War in Heaven is the most explicitly Christian of Charles Williams' novels. The others have a variety of themes.

And IMO 'War in Heaven' is by far the easiest entry into the Williams' novels.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

I am fond of All Hallow's Eve, which begins, marvelously, with the death of the heroine. She gets better.

Posted by Niminypiminy (# 15489) on :

So much classic Christian fiction has been written by women.

Charlotte M Yonge, The Heir of Redclyffe
Margaret Oliphant The Perpetual Curate
Elizabeth Gaskell North and South

probably my top Christian novelist of all time, though is Elizabeth Goudge. The Eliots of Damerosehay trilogy are probably my favourites but The Dean's Watch is also fabulous.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I guess I feel that if a novel is to be described as Christian then it has to be more than just partaking of the Christian culture pervading the world at that time. Surely everything written before, I dunno, Dickens, cannot be counted as a classic Christian novel. (Dickens was insistently non-Christian in his work, even in things like A Christmas Carol, which hardly mentions Jesus at all.

LOTR is cool in that it is very Christian, and more specifically quite Catholic, even though neither Christ nor even God are mentioned at all. He was completely under the table with it, the quickness of the authorial hand deceiving the eye.

Dickens was AIUI sort of a Unitarian, although he often does wrap up his morality and his message about redemption and charity (in its best sense) in e.g., yes, A Christmas Carol, actually, in Christian garb. But then I think quite a lot of Victorian Unitarians were quite adamant that they were Christians.

Posted by Niminypiminy (# 15489) on :

Dickens was not a Unitarian! Nor was he non-Christian. He wrote a life of Jesus for his children (The Life of Our Lord). His last novel, Our Mutual Friend has really explicitly Christian themes - baptism, judgement, redemption, resurrection. I think the idea of Dickens's lack of belief is a misconception generated by critics seeing Dickens in the light of their own lack of faith.

Posted by agingjb (# 16555) on :

I could wonder if Middlemarch, obviously not a Christian novel as such, deals with Christian themes, with much else, from its different point of view, as effectively as most.

Posted by Niminypiminy (# 15489) on :

I'm not sure I agree about Middlemarch - I'm not sure there are specifically Christian themes in there. You might point to Adam Bede as Eliot's more 'Christian' novel - she was finishing the translation of Strauss's The Life of Jesus when she was working on it. There's the fantastic scene of Dinah preaching (based on GE's aunt, who had been a Methodist preacher), and some scenes that are simply transposed from Strauss's discussion of the Gospels as mythology, for instance the supper in the upper room of the inn the night before Adam's trial.

I don't know whether these really count as Christian novels even though they have some explicitly Christian content. You could ask the same of The Perpetual Curate which must be one of the few novels ever to have an Easter sermon on the empty tomb as the fulcrum of the plot.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

I have The Dean's Watch right here on my TBR pile.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Why her, rather than any of the other 11 Valar? Because she is standing in for the BVM in the theology of Middle Earth.
I've been reading that book since I was a teenager and I'm honestly completely surprised by this. I couldn't point you to a single instance of the characters frequently invoking her anywhere in any of the three volumes.

Off the top of my head, Frodo calls upon her when he's attacked by the Nazgul under Weathertop.
Aragorn says something about the name hurting them more than his dagger did IIRC.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
I don't agree with you but I'll grant you that: though one example of an energy food is hardly enough to say the books are full of disguised Catholic principles.

Are you seeing this as whether Tolkien was sneaking bits of Popery into his work? It's more that these are so much a part of his sitzinleben that they have ingested themselves into his creative imagination.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
though one example of an energy food is hardly enough to say the books are full of disguised Catholic principles.

The Fellowship leaves Rivendell on December 25th.

The Ring is destroyed on March 25th, which was historically believed to be the date of Good Friday - according to The Catholic Encyclopedia:

quote:
All Christian antiquity (against all astronomical possibility) recognized the 25th of March as the actual day of Our Lord's death. The opinion that the Incarnation also took place on that date is found in the pseudo-Cyprianic work "De Pascha Computus", c. 240. It argues that the coming of Our Lord and His death must have coincided with the creation and fall of Adam. And since the world was created in spring, the Saviour was also conceived and died shortly after the equinox of spring. Similar fanciful calculations are found in the early and later Middle Ages, and to them, no doubt, the dates of the feast of the Annunciation and of Christmas owe their origin. Consequently the ancient martyrologies assign to the 25th of March the creation of Adam and the crucifixion of Our Lord; also, the fall of Lucifer, the passing of Israel through the Red Sea and the immolation of Isaac.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Off the top of my head, Frodo calls upon her when he's attacked by the Nazgul under Weathertop.
Aragorn says something about the name hurting them more than his dagger did IIRC.

I totally failed to spot that. And will have to have a look at that.

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Are you seeing this as whether Tolkien was sneaking bits of Popery into his work? It's more that these are so much a part of his sitzinleben that they have ingested themselves into his creative imagination.

Still depressing. I used to enjoy the book as just a good read, now that the possibility has arisen that it's actually full of religious allusions, I feel less inclined to want to re-read it than before.

Posted by Evangeline (# 7002) on :

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is deeply spiritual Christian novel.

Posted by Sarasa (# 12271) on :

Niminipiminy wrote

quote:
probably my top Christian novelist of all time, though is Elizabeth Goudge. The Eliots of Damerosehay trilogy are probably my favourites but The Dean's Watch is also fabulous.

I like her children's books. I saw Three Ships being a favourite Christmas read, so I've just downloaded the first of the Eliots of Damerosehay trilogy to my kindle. It'll make a change after the rather bloody detective story I'm reading at present.

Posted by Roselyn (# 17859) on :

I always admired the lady in an Elizabeth Goudge novel who changed her jewelry to match the church colours. It is the only reason I ever aspired to be rich, to wear emeralds during ordinary times and rubies for martyrs etc. It was an insufficient spur and I can only celebrate penitential seasons this way.

Posted by Niminypiminy (# 15489) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Roselyn:
I always admired the lady in an Elizabeth Goudge novel who changed her jewelry to match the church colours. It is the only reason I ever aspired to be rich, to wear emeralds during ordinary times and rubies for martyrs etc. It was an insufficient spur and I can only celebrate penitential seasons this way.

That is Mrs Jameson in Henrietta's House, another of the children's books. She also, I seem to remember, dressed entirely in silk of liturgical colours.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Niminypiminy:
Dickens was not a Unitarian!

OK, I'll take your word for it, though I didn't mean to suggest that Dickens had no belief or that he would not himself have described his belief as Christian. Perhaps better described as a rather non-dogmatic and non-churchy Christian? But undoubtedly a lot of his work is suffused with a (pretty good) version of Christian morality that emphasises love and redemption and forgiveness. And there is quite a lot of explicitly Christian stuff there e.g. the tearjerker scene in Bleak House where Tom the crossing sweeper is being taught the Lord's Prayer as he dies.

[ 25. October 2015, 13:42: Message edited by: Albertus ]

Posted by Hedgehog (# 14125) on :

Would James Hilton's Lost Horizon fit as classic Christian fiction? Although Shangri-La is set in or around Tibet and has a lamasery with a High Lama, it turns out that the guiding mind behind Shangri-La is a Catholic monk, Father Perrault. Thus, while there are a lot of Buddhist overtones to the novel, it also has a thread of Christianity in it.

Posted by Dormouse (# 5954) on :

The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare. Wonderful YA Christian book. I must re read it soon.

Posted by opaWim (# 11137) on :

Classic Christian fiction?

My candidates are:

A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving.

The Starbridge Series and The St. Benet's Trilogy, by Susan Howatch.

And, depending on your definitions of great/fiction/non-fiction/truth/Truth, a smaller or greater part of the collection of books commonly known as The Bible.

Posted by Huia (# 3473) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dormouse:
The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare. Wonderful YA Christian book. I must re read it soon.

I also liked The Witch of Blackbird Pond which was another one of her books. It was set the early days in America and the "witch" was a Quaker who was being persecuted by Puritans.

UBB.classic^TM 6.5.0