(urth) Religious writers and audiences

[John Watkins]

Is that the friendliness we talked about earlier?

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 8:47 PM, <brunians at brunians.org> wrote:

> All atheists are insane.
>
> .
>
>
>
> > The comparison is a personally interesting one. Perhaps the difference is
> > largely one of timing. I too felt somewhat betrayed by Lewis; I
> > encountered Narnia not long after Middle-Earth, around second and third
> > grade.
> >
> > Wolfe I discovered much later, and while I'm still waiting for the Great
> > Atheist Novel, I don't feel betrayed at all. And Rand was clearly insane
> > from the beginning.
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 4
> > Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2010 16:53:02 -0400
> > From: John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com>
> > To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
> > Subject: Re: (urth) Religious writers and audiences
> > Message-ID:
> >       <AANLkTinjYKw22zcNqAXleQGE49YCYlD9jhZRTChMEgF5 at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> >
> > Personally I find the "betrayal" narrative bizarre whenever I hear it.
> > Secular writers and religious writers alike "color" their fiction to
> > reflect
> > their political, moral and/or metaphyiscal beliefs, yet one very rarely
> > encounters this "betrayal" storyline outside of discussion of certain
> > Christian genre writers.  I guess in the right-wing fringe media we hear
> > about evil homosexual/pagan agendas hidden in works, but no one takes
> that
> > stuff seriously.
> >
> > I might ascribe this to the generally liberal or progressive attitudes of
> > most literary critics, academics, and, plausibly, much of the educated
> > reading class in the United States.  But that doesn't really wash in my
> > experience.  I know countless people, many of liberal predispositions,
> who
> > have read and allegedly enjoyed The Fountainhead--and Rand is far
> > preachier
> > than Lewis, Wolfe, or even Card.  And Neil Gaiman has written about his
> > feelings of betrayal as to Lewis's religiousity, but never expressed
> > similar
> > feelings toward, for example, Kipling's imperialism.
> >
> > I think the problem (if there is a unique problem here and not just soft
> > bigotry against religion in general or a particular religion) must be the
> > perceived deception.  The idea that Lewis might be planting ideas and
> > images
> > surreptiously in one's head that would act to soften one's views towards
> > traditional Christianity can be conceived of nefariously.
> >
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