Hello Kingdom Pen!
With it being April, it time to officially announce our new writing theme for the month! Last month focused on Female Characters; this month, or focus will be the portrayal of Christianity in your story.
Just how should we go about depicting Christianity in our stories? What does writing for Christ actually mean? Is it okay to “preach”? Is it okay not to mention God at all in your story?
How to exactly portray Christianity, whether it be in books or movies, is something I believe Christians have struggled with. Braden Russell wrote a very good series on his blog discussing the problems with Christian films.
It seems too often story is sacrificed for a good message. While it may seem noble, we forget that great quality is just a part of God’s nature and truth as are moral statutes.
What are your thoughts? How should we got about portraying Christianity, or Christian morals, in a story? What should we include? What should we not include?
I think this is going to be an exciting month! As always, we still accept submissions on other topics during this month, and the themes are just meant to help our focus. This theme only applies to articles, and we still accept short story and poetry submissions on any topic, provided they fit with our guidelines.
We look forward to your submissions! Happy writing!
I don’t think that God has to be blatantly mentioned for the book to make a Christian impact. Looks at the Chronicles of Narnia. However, I do get annoyed when books and movies portray Christians as religious nuts who view stupidity or naivete as the same as faith. Christians are often painted as deluded nutjobs in secular media. But in my experience with Christian fiction, the main character often has perfect faith. They never doubt, never struggle with anything. It drives me crazy. It was for that reason that I haven’t read much Christian fiction. I’d like to see more books where the character has faith, but is still human.
I actually wrote a blog post about this topic a few months ago . . .
http://writerandproud.blogspot.com/2014/12/honoring-god-in-fiction-writing.html
-Annika Smith @ Writer and Proud
I agree with on both counts! It’s a pet peeve of mine when Christians count blind faith as righteousness. It misrepresents what true faith is.
Great thoughts! Thanks for the comment!
-Reagan
It’s hard to find educated people for this subject, however,
you seem like you know what you’re talking about! Thanks