Christianity in a Fantasy World?

I have a question related to this forum. My first story, which I'm going to be revising just for my peace of mind, set Hansel and Gretel in the Thirties, in southern California. It's got a fair amount of religion in it, but it's all character driven. My interpretation of the fairy tale has child abuse at its core, and they found solace in faith. I don't make a big deal of it, but they say prayers together, learn about their faith, and have a priest who is very helpful. They do a lot of other stuff, too, but I'd always assumed I couldn't sell it because of the Catholicism. I haven't done any kind of exhaustive search, but most of the Christian stuff I've seen is more themed, focusing around an issue, such as chastity, and the characters seem to revolve around that. And my book has a more polar opposite approach. The faith comes out of who they are.

It's one of the reasons I was attracted to fairy tales, I think. So many of them had their roots in Christian themes. C.S. Lewis stated that the theme of Cinderella was the same as that of the Annunciation.

Does anyone know of any publishers or agents that take on work anything like this?

It's a film, but Ladyhawke?

CrastersBabies, I looooved Ladyhawk. One of my favorites.

Cathleen,

I can't speak for what agents/publishers want, but your book sounds really interesting to me. I would read it.

robjvargas said:

Y'know, it occurs to me that Milton's "Paradise Lost" epic poems could qualify as fantasy.

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I think it really depends on the circle you're talking about as to whether this can be considered a fantasy work.

Regardless, Paradise Lost is one of my all-time favourite texts. I'm lucky enough to be teaching this to university 2nd years this fall. I'm thinking of describing it as Biblical fanfiction.

CathleenT said:

CrastersBabies, I looooved Ladyhawk. One of my favorites.

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Me too. Had such a huge impact on me as a youngster. And I found the religious elements to be interesting.

There shouldn't really be a question anymore about what we can or cannot put. Any book sells nowadays, really. I have Christianity in my historic fantasy novel, and it works really well.

Mr. Mask said:

Aside from Narnia, I don't think I've heard of anyone adding Christianity to a fictional world. Even with Narnia's case, Christ is a lion called Aslan, and allusions to God or Christianity are similarly disguised (admittedly, it wasn't intended as an allegory, at first).

This is something I've been curious about. Is it necessary to veil, rename, alter, and be generally subtle about Christian elements? If The Lord of the Rings had direct references to a Christian religion, would it have ruined the book?

The main concerns which come to mind, is the fear of being sacrilegious (that's pretty scary), the fear of offending a lot of people (less scary, but pretty bad), and financial failure (zOMG!).


Regardless, I think it would be an interesting thing to discuss. Whether it's sacrilegious, whether outcry against it would be grand, and whether it would bomb or not be picked up by any notably publisher. What are your thoughts?

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I did. I used the idea of a multiverse and had an alternate Earth populated by people from our world. Witches from our world. Got to imagine what shape witchcraft (Wizardry in my book) would take as an ecclesiastic structure and all kinds of things. Christianity, in the form of an ancient Bible brought over, doesn't even appear until at least two-thirds of the way through, but then, yes, it becomes a game-changer. It gets pretty religiously explicit, LOL. And yes, it was wildly difficult to place with a publisher. I mean, do you think all those witches and wizards were behaving like sanctified Christians all that time? Last editor that rejected it told me she spent the whole weekend reading it but it didn't meet their acceptable content guidelines. She read the whole thing anyway, I note. To my great amazement, somebody finally did accept it. I figured I would have to make my reputation with other books and then self-publish, because I certainly wasn't prepared to gut it.

Christian SFF, as a religious niche market, has never impressed me. Most of it comes across a tractate in religious drag...a kind of weak tea exercise in "self affirmation" and me too-ist validation seeking. It's the literary equivalent of the anti-boogeyman blanket in the kid's bedroom. It's safe for tender psyches. That said, writers who set out to tell compelling stories, whose works are informed by the Christian faith...there are many masterpieces of literature from that bright quadrant of the universe.

With regard to both SF and F when writing from a more or less traditional Christian perspective there are a couple of assumptions that inform everything else. 1. The fall had cosmic implication. Nowhere is unaffected to some degree. 2. If you are dealing with human beings there is no need to invent er staz/ad hoc versions of Christianity to work as a stand in. If a whirlwind can deliver St. Phillip to the side of seeking court eunuch in a chariot in the desert, that same whirlwind could drop bishops and the devout into OZ or another world and start the same church there as exists where they came from. Just look at the Malankara Church of India and it's long separation from the Christianity of North Africa and Europe. It is the same in many respects, but also an expression of it's own particular history...and so a bit different, even exotic from a non-Indian Christian perception.

Consider some potential source stories from the Eastern Orthodox Church. When the Muslim Turks overran Constantinople, a liturgy was being served in the Hagia Sophia, as the battle neared the cathedral, it is said that all the clergy and servers existed through a door in the back of the altar with the Holy Gifts, and were never seen again. The legend states that when the Hagia Sophia is once again in Orthodox hands, the clergy will return and complete the Divine Liturgy that was interrupted. So...maybe, these bishops and priests and alter servers and choir step out into another world to bring the Faith to it, until the appointed time to return to our world. Maybe it happened this way in a few other places as well.

If you are dealing with alien/non human/non earth creatures then you need a religious analog or at least a complementary...anticipatory religion to fill that role. Look at the religion of the last Incas. You may find a retelling of that historical development. The Incas and the nobles in the century prior to Pizzaro had reasoned their way to monotheism but kept it to themselves and continued the old rituals for various gods and belief system for the lower classes because the nobles feared an uprising if the peasants learn they had built all these great temples, and gathered all that treasure for gods who were not gods, but a the very best were servants of the one God or just superstition at the worst. If you read some of the Inca's theological reasonings it would put to shame much of what passed for theology in Medieval Europe in many places. There is a book, Eternity In Their Hearts, that explore a number of these anticipatory beliefs in numerous cultures across the world and throughout history. From it's works cited you can locate the original documents from which it's research was gathered.

Also if you are dealing with no human's you are going to need to think about the peculiarities of their species that will have an impact on their social structures and core psychology. To use earthly examples...a society derived from the sentient descendants of mole rats will think and conduct themselves very differently from a society derived from sentient parrots or cephalopods. How would God loving, God fearing sentient squid deal with the very land based items that are consecrated as the Holy Gifts in the Eucharist. Squids aren't generally equipped to grow grapes, or wheat, or make wine or bake bread....though they might incorporate something that involves little fishes for dinner. Would sentient meerkats have to give up their harems, or baboons? What about the socio-gender inversions of a hyennid society, where the females are physically and emotionally more dominant than the males. Would sentient canine alphas have a society in which they prohibited their lower classes from reproducing and if they did, then stole their puppies to raise themselves (or kill them). The point is you are going to have to figure out what species specific biological and psychological imperatives shape an alien specie's sense of foundational society norms from village level to megapolis. They won't be human ones, but they will be true and right for them...and any analog faith or anticipatory faith will have to make room for that...maybe tone down some parts of it, sanctify other parts in other contexts...there is a lot to think about.

Did Jesus come and die for the noble Centaur race on the Tarian world? No. He came for the human race on Earth. In some fantasy worlds a sacrifice might be needed, in others it might not. It completely depends on the fantasy world.

Unless your fantasy world is basically not a fantasy world (meaning it is really our world) then Christianity will not work. Jesus came to die for us and us alone. In fantasy novels, Aslan died for the Narnians. Sazeed was transformed into the god of his world.

Fantasy is such a fantastic genre because the only rule is that it must be consistent within its own world. Having a different world's Saviour show up to save your world is jarring at best and world-imploding at worst.

Still, whether on a distant planet in our cosmos, or in another world that is other than our continuum, the assumption is these worlds are touched by the fall...or at least a fall that is a wound in creation that must ultimately be healed. Theologically I think there is problem with positing multiple Christ avatars in these other worlds.

If He is sacrificed at Calvary, but also in Narnia upon the stone altar, and in some other way in some other place, and in yet another elsewhere, though one may postulate a kind of unity between the events...a communion of redemptive suffering, yet, Christ is still only truly Himself in one place, and all these others are masks of one degree of another. Tolkien himself pointed out to Lewis the implicit theological traps in the Christ figure of Aslan. Personally I think one is better served by treating earth as a kind of holy land on the cosmic scale. In other worlds...one is just going have to contrive some theological gymnastics to make it seem plausible.

I've often conjectured about actual alien races. Though Scripture is silent about them, I'm convinced they exist--we simply haven't found 'em yet.

I've thought it possible that Jesus Christ came all across the cosmos, at the same single point in time, to every sentient race. Of course they would call Him something else, and treat Him differently (or would they?). Naturally each society would postulate that they are special, unique in God's eyes in that they need a savior, and that He came to them alone.

That means that each race to whom He came would develop its own story about why He lived with them, what sort of foretellings He fulfilled, what His true message was, why He died and how culpable they were, and what sorts of things happened afterward with His followers. They'd develop a canon different from ours.

Not meant to be theological, only speculative.

I can't believe no one mentioned Supernatural. I mean, it mixes a lot of stuff, then stirs liberally, but definitely a christian base.

And what about Dragonslayer? Not a very good movie, frankly, but definite references to christianity. Enjoyable portrayal of a dragon, though. I wound up rooting for the dragon.

Deb Kinnard said:

I've thought it possible that Jesus Christ came all across the cosmos, at the same single point in time, to every sentient race. Of course they would call Him something else, and treat Him differently (or would they?). Naturally each society would postulate that they are special, unique in God's eyes in that they need a savior, and that He came to them alone.

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I read a SciFi story many years ago--I want to say a Heinlein story, but it may just have been part of an anthology like "Years Best SF"--about a ship captain that was searching for Jesus as he came to different alien races. He decided that Christ appeared to all races at some point, and this captain had just missed him

I also remember a Star Trek: TOS episode--"Bread and Circuses" where the rebel group on the planet were "Son" worshipers, assumed to be "sun" until they find, as Uhura put it at the end of the episode, "It's not the sun up in the sky. It's the son of God."

Myrealana said:

I read a SciFi story many years ago--I want to say a Heinlein story, but it may just have been part of an anthology like "Years Best SF"--about a ship captain that was searching for Jesus as he came to different alien races. He decided that Christ appeared to all races at some point, and this captain had just missed him

I also remember a Star Trek: TOS episode--"Bread and Circuses" where the rebel group on the planet were "Son" worshipers, assumed to be "sun" until they find, as Uhura put it at the end of the episode, "It's not the sun up in the sky. It's the son of God."

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I have read that story as well and remember the original airing of that ST episode. I don't think the ST ending would pass muster today. The resolution depends on word play with homonyms that only makes sense in English. It shouldn't have worked then.

Deb Kinnard said:

I've often conjectured about actual alien races. Though Scripture is silent about them, I'm convinced they exist--we simply haven't found 'em yet.

I've thought it possible that Jesus Christ came all across the cosmos, at the same single point in time, to every sentient race. Of course they would call Him something else, and treat Him differently (or would they?). Naturally each society would postulate that they are special, unique in God's eyes in that they need a savior, and that He came to them alone.

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Hmm, I'd be pursing my lips a bit skeptically at this, since Jesus Christ didn't even come to all the cultures on Earth at the same point in time (and if he could duplicate himself to appear to on all the different planets simultaneously, why wouldn't he appear to each different culture on each one simultaneously too? At the very least, this would need to be explained. Why just one Jesus per planet?

For me, Christianity in a fantasy culture that is obviously an alternative Europe or a different version of Europe, or in a portal world that's connected to our own universe (like with Narnia) makes some sense. I tend to lose belief, though, if the culture's clearly a secondary world with no connection to ours. At the very least, I'd expect many of the particulars of the religion to be quite different.

It probably depends a great deal on the intended demographic for the book too, however, and what the underlying premise was.

Roxxsmom said:

Hmm, I'd be pursing my lips a bit skeptically at this, since Jesus Christ didn't even come to all the cultures on Earth at the same point in time (and if he could duplicate himself to appear to on all the different planets simultaneously, why wouldn't he appear to each different culture on each one simultaneously too? At the very least, this would need to be explained. Why just one Jesus per planet?

For me, Christianity in a fantasy culture that is obviously an alternative Europe or a different version of Europe, or in a portal world that's connected to our own universe (like with Narnia) makes some sense. I tend to lose belief, though, if the culture's clearly a secondary world with no connection to ours. At the very least, I'd expect many of the particulars of the religion to be quite different.

It probably depends a great deal on the intended demographic for the book too, however, and what the underlying premise was.

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I would not be so quick to limit fantasy expressions of Christian culture to Western Europe. Until the rise of Islam all of North Africa, the Middle East, much of Persia, were (an to a more limited extent still are) Christian cultures, as were the large Christian communities that sprung up along the Silk Road from Damascus to China and even into Japan and possibly the Korean Peninsula. There remains the apostolically founded Mar Thoma/Malakara churches of India. Moreover the Christianity that spread into Eastern Europe in the 9th century had and has much more theologically and liturgically in common with the remaining ancient Christian communities of the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia than it does Western Christianity, especially in it's Protestant varieties. And even in Europe the Christianity that took root in Ireland was more seeded and influenced by Eastern/African Christian norms and practices than it was those of associated with Rome until at least the synod of Whitby, and likely until the Norman invasion of England that displaced most Anglo/Irish bishops wherever the Normans held power.

So there is a huge cultural treasure house to explore to inform the development of er satz Christian cultures in a fantasy setting beyond that associated with medieval Western Europe.

Little late to add- but I thought of a few series that were well-done. The straight-up allegories I thought of were the Circle Series by Ted Dekker (really wish it would have remained a trilogy) and The Kingdom Tales Trilogy by David and Karen Mains. The first connects our world with another through dreams. The other world is untainted until the man from our world enters (very C.S. Lewis Space Trilogy, which I suppose is another one). The second is more of a kids series but I still love it decades later because of the rich imagery and unique urban twist. Back when it was published it was pretty uncommon to see magic mixed with a modern urban atmosphere. I really connected with this series as a child and the exiled King who of course represented Jesus.

If we're talking about series with some Christian elements though, you really have to look no farther than Stephen Lawhead who writes 'secular' books with many echoes of Christianity (like in the Song of Albion).

I couldn't help but think of the several main stream science fiction writers who write from a Judeo-Christian worldview: David Weber is a Methodist Lay Minister and has some fascinating fiction dealing with the subject of the Christian faith and the nature of God. I just finished my first book (non-fiction) and actually included a couple of chapters based upon something he had written that made me curious and led to me doing some research on the idea of the Tester and the Test. His current series (Safehold) is dealing with the idea of false and true religion in a far distant fictional world... I am looking forward to seeing his conclusions.
Orson Scott Card is Mormon (lots of Mormons have followed him into science fiction including Brandon Sanderson). His books are focused on family and morality. He places his protagonists is the crux of deep moral dilemmas--Ender's Game and the sequels are extraordinary.
These authors are not writing "Christian Science Fiction" but they introduce theism and morality and it is part of their world.
I enjoyed CS Lewis and Calvin Miller's Singer, Song and Finale allegories but honestly don't read Christian Science Fiction.
My first fiction project will likely not have anything overtly Christian about it but the ideas reflected will actually be based upon some deeply speculative theology. It will be a warm up for a far deeper series that will also be speculative theology.
Anyways... thanks for letting me ramble (and reading it this far).

One person mentioned Canticle for Leibowitz sort of dismissively, but I highly recommend it as an example and a fascinating read. It is about a Catholic monastery after nuclear war, so it is overly Christian but in no way trying to convert readers, which I think can give that impression of heavy-handedness in other books. It's not technically a fantasy world, I suppose, because it happens in our world, but it is an example of Christianity in genre fiction.
The book contains one fantastical element, an immortal man who is meant to be the Wandering Jew.
Dismal book to read, if we're honest, but I enjoy it, so I guess your mileage may vary.

I may be in error here about the nature of the book, but Rachel Smith's MY NAME IS A'YEN may satisfy. Disclaimer: I know Rachel and her earlier non-fantasy writing is brilliant and masterful in execution, so I'm assuming her fantasy writing is the same.

I've been off this forum for over 5 years. My new series is more of a 'what if?'than fantasy but I wonder about some of the same issues. I finally let my hero (protagonist) become a believer in book 2 but he doesn't become Billy Graham. He struggles, feels guilty, and sometimes just goes against what 'the Lord' is telling him.

Sempine, that's exactly the sort of stories I want to write -- because those are the sort of stories I want to read. Recently I self-published a series of three romances, in which some of the characters did not self-identify as Christian, but did identify as searching. I would never have been able to sell these in the C-fic market because the story doesn't always end with the non-believing character on his knees at the altar. But I do want to portray people with open minds who are willing to explore and learn, and who aren't willing to exclude the idea of a sinful nature and a Savior who died for us.

As i have studied a bit of theology (Eastern Orthodox mostly) I shall write a couple of opinions.

At first glance, not an easy task to write a Christian theme in a Fantasy world. But much more easy than, for example, writing an Islamic or Atheist fantasy, because the first adheres to strict monotheism, the other to strict materialism (although Atheism goes well for science-fiction, but this is a different discussion).


I first thought to myself, what is in fact the narrative essence of Christianity ? In my opinion a large part of fantasy literature is in fact filled with Christian themes. I shall stop at five that are most common:


1) That there is an age long cosmic struggle of Good vs Evil, and on the side of the good you have an all loving God and on the other side its adversary (Satan), and eventually good will triumph over evil.
2) That both God and Satan have various supernatural helpers, angels, respectively demons, but in other worlds these could be classed as lesser Gods; there would be absolutely nothing wrong with that as real-world Christians do worship and pray to angels and saints (and they have consecrated states, images, etc) just like polytheists worship lesser Gods.
3) That mankind has committed sin, the world and the Universe itself is tainted with it and thus mankind needs to struggle to release itself from the sin. Sin is the cause of death, suffering, all evil that happens in this world.
4) That there is an afterlife and a punishment / reward is given according to the deeds that one has committed in its life. That the basic commands are to love one another as God loves the world.
5) Strong morals. Enhance on issues such as family life, love, friendship, honor, forgiveness.


I did not put on this list the sacrifice of Christ and I shall explain why.

As far as i know, from a theological point of view, the sacrifice of Christ was specifically made for mankind, for ”this” Earth. The issue, surprisingly, was discussed to some extant by Church Fathers. It was not uncommon - back in those days, people believed there where other people on the Moon and on the Sun. Despite varying opinions among the Fathers, we cannot possibly know how the divine pronoia manifested itself in other created worlds.


Some writers had adopted an Earth-centric view, assuming that the divine pronoia did not manifest in other worlds at all. In this category are the stories in which a person from Earth comes to visit and convert an Alien species, or in which an Alien species is converted to Christianity from whatever (false) belief or non-belief they initially had.


Other writers had adopted an Earth-like view, in which they assumed Christ has made a sacrifice there but under another name. Here is the story of Aslan from Narnia.

Some authors went for the idea that there might be some worlds in the Universe that did not experience the Fall. I found it highly problematic from a theological point of view. We can presume correctly, that if the Universe as it is, is filled with plenty of imperfections and natural evil (meteors, dying stars, black holes, etc), than all material living beings inside it are subjected to the same issues as Man (death, sin, etc). Because the Fall of Man meant that Man lived no longer in the presence of God, but in this Universe, made to be neither good or bad, so that each individual will experience death, could see good and evil and eventually choose its own path. If there where created beings who did not Fall into Sin, they cannot - and could not- live within the boundaries of this particular Universe but somewhere else.




Personally, in my novel I went for a complete non-Earth like approach, going straight for the 5 points i mentioned above. I found highly unlikely from a theological point of view the idea of divine pronoia not acting on other worlds as i find also highly difficult the issue of Christ sacrificing itself for another world.


English is not my first language, but i hope readers will get the ideas of this rant