“If it’s bad art, it’s bad religion, no matter how pious the subject.” -Madeleine L’Engle
A few months ago I read an interview with an agent working within the CBA industry. For those not in the know — and I was one of those until very recently — CBA is the “Christian” Booksellers Association*, the official gatekeepers (I think) for things all literary sold in the achingly stifled environment of Your Local Christian Bookstore. The thing that stuck out to me was that, when directly asked if the books she accepts contain swearing, the agent flat out said that those kinds of books were not accepted. While this in itself isn’t necessarily that odd, it was a little strange when I looked at what the agent considered to be the bellwether publication. Amazon had some sample pages, and the writing was not good. It was passable in the sense that it was error-free and I’m almost sure there was a decent story in there, but the author’s grasp of the nuances of language was shaky: inaccurate metaphors, weird sentence construction, obvious cliches, high school-level dialogue (the characters speaking were educated adults). I couldn’t see any lit-head taking that aspect of the book very seriously, and some of the reviews reflected that. It made me ask internally whether God would find more offensive swearing — done by a Christian character or not — or bad writing. I chose the former.
Here’s the thing: bad writing is in the willful control of the author (really the editor, who should be picking these things out), but I can’t see the act of an author narrating a cursing out of, say, an abusive boss as condemnable — unless it was badly written. Except for some subjects of prurient interest, there’s no reason for a Christian author not to describe the offensive things in life, but what well-adjusted adults seem to be unable to parse is the idea that description does not equal prescription; they conflate explanation with approval. This is bolstered by the fact that it can be difficult to distill what an author’s true affections are through fictional narrative. It is hidden underneath a created universe, and sometimes religious folk want someone’s doctrine spelled out before the venture into consuming your art.
I’ll give my amateurish opinion in the form of a rhetorical question here. Christians show no compunctions about placing in their story characters holding an absence of true belief, which is really the only sin that gets us in the end. Indeed, without formal data on hand, this is probably one of the defining characteristics of Christian(ized) fiction. Why, then, is the presence of unbelief acceptable in this instance but something microscopically significant as swearing isn’t?
*I used the scare quotes because objects can’t be Christian, only people can. Jesus didn’t die for entertainment mediums, unless you’re talking about any kind of audio recording with an accordion. Them things are from the pits of hell.