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There is now an entire industry of writers who leverage their insider experiences of evangelicalism/Catholicism/Mormonism, etc to confirm the biases of secularist, anti-religious elites.
This is my least favorite religious writers market & Iu2019m trying to figure out why.
This is my least favorite religious writers market & Iu2019m trying to figure out why.
Iu2019m not talking about the ex- genre of memoirs that parade their subsequent enlightenment. (Yawn.) Instead...
Iu2019m thinking of writers who, if you ask, are still religious, maybe even still embedded in these communities, but their essays & op-eds are all written for non-religious readers who disdain the same people they do. u201cYouu2019re so right,u201d these writers purr, u201cand let me tell you why!u201d
Do such religious communities deserve critique? Absolutely. But these criticisms are like cheap u201cOpen Letters to X,u201d addressed to everyone *but* X, really.
Thereu2019s nothing u201cpropheticu201d about such critiques. The prophets spoke to their own people.
Thereu2019s nothing u201cpropheticu201d about such critiques. The prophets spoke to their own people.
The genre yields writing that is usually flat and predictable, u201cexplainersu201d whose only value stems from getting an insider to say it.
Such writing often exhibits how provincial the writeru2019s experience of religion has been.
Such writing often exhibits how provincial the writeru2019s experience of religion has been.
But perhaps what most worries me is this: In a hungry, hurting age of rage and heartbreak, should a religious writer be giving people just more reasons *not* to believe?
The alternative, of course, is not pollyannish hagiographies. Iu2019m talking about a genre of writing *from* and *about* religion & religious communities with clear-eyed realism that also might stop someone short rather than just confirm their biases.
This is writing where the mystery of mercy, grace, and resurrection is held out to enduring, submerged human longings, and a reader finds herself, perhaps unwillingly, alongside Herod Agrippa: u201cAlmost thou persuadest me.u201d
