Religious Fiction: Preaching and Preaching

Recently, I finished reading "The Masterful Monk" by Owen Francis Dudley. You might say that it belongs to rare genre of "religious fiction."

In truth, the writer of religious fiction is in quite a tight spot. No matter what he does, he will be accused of preaching. Few people read fiction for edification, and even among these, few expect the message to be blatant. Peter Kreeft even goes so far as to suggest that the moral theme of a work always be hidden, so that it can better pass the watchful dragons of our suspicious conscious mind.

But those who would use this as a criticism of religious fiction, which would include (in addition to The Masterful Monk) such diverse works as "Come Rack! Come Rope!" by Robert Hugh Benson and "Father Elijah" by...I can't remember :(, are missing a significant element of the genre. Aside from the psychological debate about whether obvious moralizing in a book is good, the main thing that sets religious fiction apart from other genres of fiction is that, unlike works with a hidden moral, in religious fiction, the subject of the moralizing is equivalent to the plot material and the source of drama. In the Masterful Monk, the storyline centers around a wavering Catholic attracted by a Margaret-Sanger style eugenicist and her lover, a man attracted to the Catholic Church who converts to Catholicism in the middle of the story. Take out the obvious religious element, and the story goes with it.

Contrast this with a genuinely preachy story, such as my ill-fated "An Old-Fashioned Guy." In such a work, the moralizing is obvious in a way out of proportion to the role it plays in the plot. Remove all the references to Hegel in the story, and the characters still get thrown in jail and tell stupid (but funny) jokes.

Once a reader can make the distinction between preachy and obviously religious in a literarily necessary manner, they can read religious fiction without being repulsed by its imagined preachieness.