Your Character’s Faith (or Lack Thereof)
By David Corbett | December 8, 2023 |
Religion remains a vital if not crucial aspect of most Americans’ lives. And yet a great many writers in this country disregard faith in developing their characters. Is this a sign of a significant cultural shift, deliberate disregard, or a missed opportunity?
I want to distinguish right off the bat between one’s faith and one’s religious denomination.
At this time of rising violence against Jews and Muslims, and the elevation in this country of a brand of Christianity that sanctions violence in the service of establishing a theocratic nation state, it may seem evasive or even cowardly not to address with specificity a character’s avowed creed. Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of religious group hatred have little to do with the specifics of any particular creed; they are simply one more iteration of otherizing as a way to scapegoat the targeted group.
And although writing about these kinds of religious clashes has obvious merit, and sadly seems never to diminish in relevance, it’s not what I’m hoping to address here.
Rather, focusing specifically on characterization in fiction, the issue is not so much the particular creed a character follows but the underlying questions that their faith seeks to address, and the answers it provides.
I think the status of religion as a third rail in fiction is largely premised on the possibility it will not be handled well—specifically, that writers will do a disservice to one group of readers or another by identifying a character’s sect.
Worse, it’s feared that the writer, consciously or unconsciously, will show favor to one denomination over another.
That’s not just a failure of technique. It’s a failure of imagination and empathy.
For all the adamance of his atheism, few writers depict the religious convictions of their characters as insightfully as did James Joyce. Notice how, in his short story, “Grace,” from Dubliners, he describes his main character, Tom Kernan:
[He] came of Protestant stock and, though he had been converted to the Catholic faith at the time of his marriage, he had not been in the pale of the Church for twenty years. He was fond, moreover, of giving side-thrusts at Catholicism.
The story concerns Mr Kernan’s drinking problem—he recently fell down a flight of stairs and bit off a piece of his tongue—for which his wife has solicited the aid of Mr Cunningham and several other of her husband’s friends, who have agreed to stage what would today be called an intervention. Here, it takes the form of an invitation to join them on religious retreat. Mrs Kernan, though skeptical, agrees to the plan:
After a quarter of a century of married life, she had very few illusions left. Religion for her was a habit and she suspected that a man of her husband’s age would not change greatly before death … However, Mr Cunningham was a capable man; and religion was religion. The scheme might do good and, at least, it could do no harm. Her beliefs were not extravagant. She believed steadily in the Sacred Heart as the most generally useful of all Catholic devotions and approved of the sacraments. Her faith was bounded by her kitchen but, if she was put to it, she could believe also in the banshee and in the Holy Ghost.
Finally, as the friends gather with Mr Kernan at his home to carry out their plan, they discuss priests they have known:
“O, Father Tom Burke,” said Mr Cunningham, “that was a born orator. Did you ever hear him, Tom?”
“Did I ever hear him!” said the invalid, nettled. “Rather! I heard him….”
“And yet they say he wasn’t much of a theologian,” said Mr Cunningham.
“Is that so?” said Mr M’Coy.
“O, of course, nothing wrong, you know. Only sometimes, they say, he didn’t preach what was quite orthodox.”
“Ah! … he was a splendid man,” said Mr M’Coy.
“I heard him once,” Mr Kernan continued. “I forget the subject of his discourse now. Crofton and I were in the back of the … pit, you know … the——”
“The body,” said Mr Cunningham.
“Yes, in the back near the door. I forget now what…. O yes, it was on the Pope, the late Pope. I remember it well. Upon my word it was magnificent, the style of the oratory. And his voice! God! hadn’t he a voice! The Prisoner of the Vatican, he called him. I remember Crofton saying to me when we came out——”
“But he’s an Orangeman, Crofton, isn’t he?” said Mr Power.
“‘Course he is,” said Mr Kernan, “and a damned decent Orangeman too. We went into Butler’s in Moore Street—faith, I was genuinely moved, tell you the God’s truth—and I remember well his very words. Kernan, he said, we worship at different altars, he said, but our belief is the same. Struck me as very well put.”
“There’s a good deal in that,” said Mr Power. “There used always to be crowds of Protestants in the chapel where Father Tom was preaching.”
“There’s not much difference between us,” said Mr M’Coy.
“We both believe in——”
He hesitated for a moment.
“… in the Redeemer. Only they don’t believe in the Pope and in the mother of God.”
“But, of course,” said Mr Cunningham quietly and effectively, “our religion is the religion, the old, original faith.”
“Not a doubt of it,” said Mr Kernan warmly.
Although there is a great deal of comic irony in these sections, there is no condemnation. Joyce didn’t see his characters as flawed or misguided because of their faith. He saw them as all too human.
This brings us back once again to the First Rule of Characterization: Justify, don’t judge.
The instinct to judge a character easily morphs into objectification, which is a major failing not just in fiction but in human affairs. It’s the final step before dehumanization, which provides the fuel for kind of religious hatred mentioned earlier.
Author Brené Brown has written (“Dehumanizing Always Starts with Language”):
“When we engage in dehumanizing rhetoric and promote dehumanizing images, we diminish our own humanity in the process.” We are called to find the face of God in everyone we meet, she says, including those with whom we most deeply disagree. “When we desecrate their divinity, we desecrate our own, and we betray our humanity.”
Another misunderstanding that often makes writers reluctant to depict their characters’ religious beliefs is the fear that faith automatically suggests a certain rigidity of thought and behavior, and fully realized characters should never be constrained in this way.
Here, I find a quote from Anne Lamott (Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith ) on point:
“The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.”
One of the most touching portrayals of faith I’ve encountered in my reading appears in Pete Dexter’s God’s Pocket. (The term refers to a neighborhood in South Philadelphia, not a feature of heavenly apparel.)
Minnie Devine Edwards is profoundly disturbed by the fact that one morning her husband, Lucien, decides not to go to work. In the 30 years that they’ve been married, he’s only missed work twice, once for their wedding and once again for his mother’s funeral. Hoping to find something that might supply guidance, she pores through her everyday Bible for half an hour (her church Bible sits safe in a drawer, waiting for Sunday). She goes over “the familiar comforts” but can find nothing that goes to the heart of the matter, and so she touches the picture of Christ she keeps near the sink and prays: “Dear Jesus, don’t let this be nothin’, please.” (Unknown to her: the day before, Lucien killed a young white speed freak on the work site who threatened him with a knife.)
Another favorite comes from Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. When young Madeleine “Mad” Zott is invited to the local church by a neighbor, her mother, Elizabeth, advises her: “God doesn’t exist, but we try to respect other people’s beliefs.” She has explained to Reverend Wakely, the local pastor, that she grew up in a religious household and that experience turned her against religion, and her subsequent devotion to science has closed that door conclusively. But later it’s revealed that Reverend Wakely not only knew Elizabeth’s late husband and fellow scientist, Calvin, they conducted a years-long correspondence on matters of faith and did so not just respectfully but affectionately.
The book also contains these wonderful passages:
- “I don’t have hopes,” Mad explained, studying the address. “I have faith.” He looked at her in surprise. “Well, that’s a funny word to hear coming from you.” “How come?” “Because,” he said, “well, you know. Religion is based on faith.” “But you realize,” she said carefully, as if not to embarrass him further, “that faith isn’t based on religion. Right?”
- Elizabeth: “I think [religion] lets us off the hook. I think it teaches us that nothing is really our fault; that something or someone else is pulling the strings; that ultimately, we’re not to blame for the way things are; that to improve things, we should pray. But the truth is, we are very much responsible for the badness in the world. And we have the power to fix it.”
- Reverend Wakely: “People who don’t ask questions have blind faith, and blind faith is the furthest thing from faith.”
The writings of Canadian author Brian Moore, a devout Catholic, address faith as the persistent want for reliable love, but not without insight into its capacity for stubborn, bigoted blindness. This is portrayed with particular power in Black Robe, about the Jesuit effort to convert the Hurons (adapted into film by the author with director Bruce Beresford).
And, to perhaps point out an obvious example, Graham Greene’s portrayals of faith in The End of the Affair and The Power and the Glory contrast sharply, but both are clear-eyed and poignant and cannot be separated from the underlying drama in each novel.
One could dedicate an entire post if not several to Jewish writers who address faith in their fiction. Cynthia Ozick and Isaac Bashevis Singer are two personal favorites. I also remember being deeply moved by Chaim Potok’s The Chosen and its sequel, The Promise, both of which explore the tension between modern and traditional Judaism from the waning days of World War II through the 1950s as Holocaust survivors emigrate to America, and the state of Israel survives the early years of its existence. One of the most poignant moments in the novel is when Hassidic Rabbi Rebbe Saunders explains why he raised his son Danny in silence: he feared that Danny’s phenomenal intelligence would lead him to lack compassion for others. Therefore, he raised Danny in silence so that he could learn what it is to suffer, and therefore have a soul.
On a less conventional note, author and educator Aaron Gwynn is currently preparing an article provisionally titled, “The Gnostic Conservatism of Cormac McCarthy,” and in tweets he’s posted concerning his thought on the matter he’s remarked:
“[McCarthy’s] gnosis was not a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ (though he’s not opposed to that: see The Sunset Limited). [Rather] gnosis has more to do with violence and fire and the spark of divinity, with fathers and sons and stories. [McCarthy] was, for several decades, a mystic—he said that he ended his life as a “materialist,” but I’m not convinced (and I know things I can’t say publicly about this). Thing is, [his] gnosis is not a “saving” knowledge. If anything, it’s damning. No one makes it out of the Cormac-verse alive (except Judge Holden). The best-case scenario is that you’re Sheriff Bell or Billy Parham: “after this knowledge, what forgiveness?” Bell exits his story broken; Parham ends his in a sanctuary.”
Finally, in one of the most excruciating depictions of faith I have encountered in fiction, Robert Stone in his short story “Miserere” depicts a widowed librarian who aids a psychologically fragile anti-abortion advocate in collecting aborted fetuses from women’s health clinics and taking them to whatever priest will oblige their request that the fetus be baptized. When a Roman Catholic priest turns them away (after conceding to their wishes in the past), the two women find a Russian Orthodox prelate who is agreeable. The reason for the widow’s return to such an extreme expression of her previously discarded Catholic faith? One winter night when she was drunk, listening to music, her entire family, especially “her babies,” fell through the ice of a nearby pond while skating, and she cannot escape the image of their screaming out to her for help, up until their dying breaths.
If examining the religious or spiritual life of your character serves the story you intend to tell—or if it allows you to look deeper into how the character views her life, morality, community, death—ask yourself the following:
- Was your character raised in a specific religious tradition? How did that inform their view of the world and of others? Do they still practice it? If so, how devoutly, or for what reasons? (“Cafeteria Catholic” is a term I learned in my childhood to describe those who picked and chose which tenets of the Church to follow. And one of my dearest friends returned to Catholicism after moving to Brooklyn not because of the liturgy but to integrate more fully into her largely Latino neighborhood.)
- If the character no longer practices, why? If they no longer believe, picture the time, down to the moment if possible, when they lost their faith, shrugged it off, or felt it dissipate until it disappeared. What prompted the renunciation? Why? What friends or family members did they leave behind? What new community, if any, did they turn to instead?
- Has your character embraced religion as an adult? If so, when and why? Augustine, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, and T. S. Eliot all notoriously embraced faith as Often the conversion is forged in a crucible of gutting emptiness or corruption of spirit. I know someone who, though raised Catholic, fell away, only to embrace evangelical Protestantism in his battle with drink. Memoirist Mary Karr went the opposite direction, converting to Catholicism, but for the same reason. Joe Loya, in The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell, talks embracing Buddhism as a way to renounce his criminal self. Again, picture the exact moment when your character felt faith stirring inside them—the place, the time of day, who if anyone was there as well, what specifically prompted their turn toward the otherworldly.
- How does faith or their religious tradition shape their conscience? What virtues do they honor? What sins do they, despite the ethical code of their religion, regularly commit? What sin have they never committed, but might if the circumstances were right? (And picture a moment of overwhelming temptation—better yet, include it in your story.) What sin would they never commit?
- How has their faith shaped their sense of purpose? Do they believe life has meaning because of a unique divine plan for them? Do they believe in an afterlife and that their actions here on earth will count for something after death? Does this prompt solace, dread, both? Do they believe a divinity guides their actions or takes an active role in their life?
- Do they believe in secondary spiritual beings: Satan, the angles, saints, demons, fairies, gremlins, ghosts—the banshee? How does that inform their behavior, particularly their interactions with others?
- Do they see the universe as inert matter or a realm of infinite wonder? Is it the devil’s playground or proof of divine beneficence? Is there something beyond, or within, the visible that testifies to the otherworldly nature of all things? How does this guide or inform their actions?
- If your character is an agnostic or an atheist, how did they come to this position? In the absence of religious sanctions, what influences shaped their conscience: Family? Schooling? The example of someone they admired? What gives their actions purpose? Do they see some life force or other abstract entity inhabiting or animating the world? Are they a scientific rationalist, a pragmatist, a materialist, a cynic, a nihilist? Whichever answer you provide, once again reflect on how it shapes not just belief but behavior.
Even if you disagree with faith’s response to the issues of virtue and death, meaning and community, the universe and love, no writer who wants to be taken seriously can disregard the questions themselves.
And don’t neglect to recognize how a character’s faith (or lack thereof) both connects them to and divides them from others. It is one more aspect of their sociological nature—like education level, occupation, ethnicity, regional or national culture. It at least partially defines the character’s tribe.
And as always, when considering a character’s tribe, the central question is always: What binds them to that tribe? What would they have to do to be expelled from that tribe (and at least consider including such an event in your story)?
If you need guidance on that issue, consult Hester Prynne.
[Note: You may have noticed my examples are drawn from Western and specifically Judeo-Christian traditions. This is because I can speak to them from personal experience. If you have examples from Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, or other traditions, specifically how they reveal character through ideals, morality, and behavior, please feel free to cite them in a comment.]
What examples from fiction have you considered exemplary depictions of faith in the characters? How have you addressed the issue of faith in your fiction? How different from your own religious convictions were those of your character(s)? How did you manage to justify, not judge, your character on the basis of their different beliefs?
David Corbett (he/him) is the author of seven novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, Do They Know I’m Running?, The Mercy of the Night, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, and The Truth Against the World. He has also published the story collection Thirteen Confessions and the novella The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell.
David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in a broad array of magazines and anthologies, with pieces twice selected for Best American Mystery Stories.
His non-fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest.
He has taught both online and in classroom settings through the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Book Passage, LitReactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, and at numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character (“A writer’s bible that will lead to your character’s soul.” —Elizabeth Brundage), and Writer’s Digest published his follow-up, The Compass of Character, in October 2019.
What a meaty post, David. Stories I appreciate are undergirded by religion and/or a spirituality. I think of Verghese’s Covenant of Water, Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. I think of many sci-fi and dystopian cultures and people shaped by the undercurrents of a religious or spiritual beliefs. When I look back at the stories I’ve read, I’m not picking out many with overt religious or spiritual theme, but then religion can become like the air we breathe.
In my story, churches are figuring more prominently than I originally intended. I’ve ended up with a rural Methodist, a small town Catholic, a suburban big box nondenominational, and a metro multi-racial. And there are the “spiritual, but not religious.” The characters’ varying theologies, different images of God, differing interpretations of the Bible bump and rub against one another and impacts their reaction/response, or not, to the plot. Spirituality affects secular career choices for some, while others work within their church. Just the tip of this iceberg shows, hopefully not preachy either! Religion is not what my story is about, but spirituality undergirds it.
So much more to think about here with your post. Thank you.
Thanks for the comment, Lisa. I’m currently reading a history of “self-creation” by the theologian Tara Isabella Burton. It’s titled, “Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians,” and she comments pointedly on what she refers to as the atomization of faith–the fact that people who are “spiritual but not religious” are part of a centuries-old pattern of seeking authenticity solely from within. She’s skeptical (as am I–more on that next year with respect to characterization), so I’m particularly glad to see you’ve included characters who still adhere to an established denomination. The need to hold oneself accountable to the dictates–and restraints–of a particular creed echo similar constraints from our families, our class, our profession, and so on. Modernity has been unkind to such customs,preaching a gospel of “self-realization” where we all inhabit, as it were, our own private cathedrals. This has problems beyond faith–it also makes it hard to form political alliances, in one stark example. I’ll be interested in seeing how your characters’ faith informs their behavior.
Is “to hold oneself accountable” about faith or about church? Because accountability seems more about outward doctrinal creeds, societal systems and structures, rather than the living faith that always sits within our hearts and souls and within the heart and soul of a living faith community so that we try to discern and uncover the small aspects of the Infinite that we’re able to comprehend.
Faith seems more of a “being drawn toward” and a choice, to commit or not. And there are always forks along the way that invite us again and again, to commit.
So there’s a braiding of faith and church, an interplay of being drawn toward and of being accountable to.
That seems a bit of a feel-good approach to faith. If faith demands nothing of us, but just gives us a warm inner glow reflective of the infinite, what binds a faith community together? I think when one believes one recognizes a certain responsibility to live a better life, with “better” defined by the faith in question, otherwise it’s little more than a warm bath for the soul. What is it exactly we’re being drawn toward? And what are the things that create the “forks along the way?”
I like your distinction, Lisa. By chance i am reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s ‘Braiding Sweetgrass,’ in which she discusses how the culture of religion can impact our viewpoints, our basic spirituality. For example, she notes how the creation story of indigenous peoples centers on the Skywoman, an ‘ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants,’ whereas the religion of the settlers offered Eve, ‘an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven.’ And so our spiritualities are distinctly different, even when we are not conscious of their roots.
Hi Brenda, I’ve read Braiding Sweetgrass too and have learned so much through her writing. But it’s been a while. Now I want to reread! Thank you for the mention.
A wonderful post!! I tend to notice when belief is left out of a novel — but it also irks me when it’s very casually mentioned (“we went to church that sunday”) then never brought up again, and seemingly does not impact anyone’s life.
Love the Anne Lamott quote.
One of the most interesting questions I can think of for faith-driven characters is: what do they abstain from doing solely because of their faith? Do they avoid murder or theft or adultery because of it? Do they avoid white lies? Outright racism? External homophobia? To me, a character who is only good because they’re afraid for their soul is fascinating. In real life, too! Which leads me to a wonderful quote from season 1 of True Detective:
“…if the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of a divine reward then that person is a piece of shit.” –(Character: Rust Chole; writer: Nic Pizzolatto).
Including that weighty and somewhat negative line, and the vehement monologue and dialogue surrounding it, makes Rust’s last line (many episodes later) all the more poignant. But, no spoilers!
Anyway, thank you for this article. This conversation is important and it doesn’t happen nearly enough.
Thanks, Stella. Great quote from TD/Nic Pizzolatto. I agree that the key issue of faith is what does it constrain the believer from doing–but also, what does it oblige the character to do. One of the things I appreciated about my Catholic upbringing is, for all the negative “do not” emphasis, we were also taught the theological virtues (faith, hope and charity) and the four cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, prudence). We weren’t aware these were borrowed from the Stoics, but the point of the lesson was that being good isn’t just about not doing bad. And we had to think deeply about what it meant to bring these virtues to heart and act on them in our daily lives.
Thanks for this. I am currently revising a novel manuscript in which high school book banning is a major issue. I’m having a hard time making the conservative nondenominational Christian pastor’s wife (our book banner) more than a villain. The teacher fighting her is also a church goer (Episcopalian). They have a shared history that has placed them on opposite sides of this issue. I need a bit more understanding of the ‘church lady’ and her motivations earlier in the book.
My usual advice when trying to make a character less “unlikable” is two-fold. One, identify what or who the character loves. Two, give them “a kid or a dog.”
Concerning what or who they love: the obvious choice is their children, and they are afraid that contemporary American culture and its advocates are acting like Pied Pipers drawing their children away from the life their parents want them to have. In your case the wife may also fear that her husband will somehow be faulted if she and her like-minded cohorts don’t “take the battle to the streets.”
As for a kid or a dog: what I mean is give them someone to care for other than themselves. Show them in the act of caring. This dovetails with the children and the husband but there may be someone vulnerable she cares for: a parent, or an elderly member of the congregation.
Finally, ask yourself how extreme you want to make the pastor’s wife. Does she become more or less extreme as the story progresses and her challenges mount. If she becomes more extreme, it’s likely because the forces arrayed against her and enjoying at least some victories, which only exacerbates her fear.
Hope that’s helpful.
I’ve been attempting to portray Biblical faith, the journey toward it, or the rejection of it, in fiction since I began my first novel in 1990. Hopefully I’ve succeeded in some measure with some of my novels that have made it to publication. Those are set in the 1700s so not only am I attempting to portray, to the best of my understanding, Biblical faith, but that faith as it would have been understood and practiced in the 18th century by a melting pot of different flavors of that faith. Allowing them their spiritual questions and answering them (or not) in the context of the time and place in which they live and who they are is a delicate and thought-demanding process. In my case, prayer-demanding too. I do my research as diligently in this area as in anything else. Probably more so. But it’s also one of the more fulfilling things about creating characters and writing their stories. We all put our trust and ultimate hope in something, or someone, consciously or not. Neglecting that aspect of character leaves them feeling a bit flat to me.
The 18th century is a fascinating time in the history of western faith, Lori, especially here in the US. There have been two excellent books about the at times antithetical cultural influences that forged separate regional identities in the US: “Albion’s Seed” by David Hackett Fischer and “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” by Colin Woodard. I found the latter particularly fascinating, because it explores not just the English colonies but the much more tolerant New Amsterdam. That tolerance echoes the approach of the Quaker culture in the Midlands, but clashed with Puritan/Congregational New England, Cavalier/Anglican Virginia, and the Scots-Irish/Presbyterian backcountry. Thanks for the comment–and I agree, I think abstaining from mention of faith or at least addressing the questions it attempts to answer is a huge missed opportunity.
Oh wow, thank you for that. I hadn’t realised how often that facet of human nature is omitted in fiction. Could it be that its inclusion tends to eclipse other elements of the story? Perhaps, then again, we as writers sense that readers find the subject too deeply personal, and as such is at risk of being trivialised if merely mentioned.
I’m reminded of Frank O’Connor’s fabulous Story “First Confession”. And, of course, Dostoevsky’s masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov.
I am certainly going to review my work in progress to assess whether it should be addressed. Thanks again for sharing.
Thanks, Brenda. I’m inclined to think that the reason writers avoid faith is either because they themselves are basically secular in outlook or they’re afraid they’ll offend some segment of their potential readership by including it. But as I mention in the post and in my response to Lori above, I think this is a huge missed opportunity.
I have knotty feelings about religion, and they are present on the pages of my second novel. Throughout, one of the protagonists grapples with –if not religion overtly– the notion of hopes and dreams, and a mother who knelt at the altar of Mistress Fate, believing that everything happened for a reason. The notion that “Dreams like feet better than knees” propels her to make different choices. (Forgive me for the self-quote.)
Wonderful post, David. Thank you.
Thanks for chiming in, Therese. Better knotty feelings than naughty ones, I suppose. (Forgive me.) I’ve been very much influenced by the American Pragmatists, who dismiss the idea of a transcendent truth and instead ask, “What can we justifiably believe?” That translates to hopes and dreams as well–which are realistic, which will only break our hearts, does that matter? And if fate determines everything, why act? Your foot-favoring dreams respond to that nicely.
Hi. Beth Havey is having difficulty getting her comment to upload, so I’m going to post it here and respond to it below:
David, wow. As a Catholic, those wild Irish writers have often spoken to me. James Joyce, one of my favorite stories in THE DUBLINERS being Araby. Not because of the story line as much as how Joyce takes me to a place and I follow him, I am there. And yes, The Dead. How does what we hear throughout our lives…music, poetry…also affect the flow of what we read. In my house, Bach and Beethoven; Debussy and Ravel. My scholarly older brother listening in our dining room, while also offering me books to read. My mother too. And religion? The early death of my father meant that prayer was essential in our family. “Daddy Dear in Heaven” my mother taught us. Thus, we Pfordreshers pressed on. We had faith in our mother, in family and in the Catholic Church. So much of Irish writing and culture echoes that Catholic dogma. And there are the jokes about drinking, coupled with Sunday Mass. Claire Keegan is my current favorite Irish author. Lighter than Joyce, she brings the same dark pull to religion, to following the rules that are often very unclear. As for my forever novel, there is no definitive reference to church. There is hope, there is love and the fundamental struggle to do good. That is the living of faith in our culture. Should I be braver and send my MC to church? If I had many published works, readers might see this as part of my oeuvre. But I don’t. Thanks for your post.
Thanks for the comment, Beth. I believe that as long as you address the questions faith seeks to answer, if not in the story proper at least in your background work on your characters, you’ve done the heavy lifting. One of my favorite Irish novels that deals with the influence of the Catholic Church in the years of the theocracy, especially in their maintenance of the “industrial schools,” is “The Cruelty Men” by Emer Martin. And Fintan O’Toole’s biographical history of Ireland from 1958 to the present, “We Don’t Know Ourselves,” goes into poignant detail of how the Church, hand in hand with Fine Gael, created a hideously corrupt and corrosive regime that only ended when exposés concerning the industrial schools and other abuses came to light. It’s a cautionary tale about allowing religion to exert power over or within the state.
Yes, the Magdalene Laundries. Claire Keegan writes dramatically and beautifully about them in her novel: Small Things Like These. And there have been films and novels revealing the lack of empathy, the downright cruely in the church. And thanks for much for helping me post, Beth
The cruelty and the corruption of the coverup, aided by the one-party rule they helped establish and maintain.
This is brilliant and important! Thank you for raising an issue that I also believe is too often neglected. I can see how writers might feel it is simultaneously too big and too hidden, too easily stereotyped and too complex to take it on. I feel compelled to include the religious basis of thought when I write about my own people, for whom religion directs a great many of their actions, but I’m terrified of trying to characterize the religious life of someone coming from a tradition different from my own. It’s too easy to oversimplify or get it wrong.
That said, may I share one fun little insight into the fluidity of moral behavior (and the humor) available to a believing Muslim?
One day I was trying to explain to a Syrian friend in Arabic about why I shouldn’t do something, and he explained that there are multiple ways to categorize such acts in Islamic Arabic parlance:
“Haram” means something is forbidden by religion and punishable by God. (Murder and theft, for example.)
“Mamnua” means it’s against the secular law of the land. (Driving your car the wrong direction on a given street, for instance.)
“Makruh” means (and here I quote directly), “God hates it but we do it anyway.” This wonderful and highly colloquial category includes things like smoking, telling white lies, cheating….You get the idea: we know it’s not so good, but we just can’t help ourselves. And we figure God understands.
Like the delicate humor in your James Joyce quotes, this light-hearted explanation of one person’s religious thought made a foreign set of beliefs feel universal to me. Who doesn’t have a few favorite “makruh” activities that we can’t really justify but don’t want to give up?
That’s fascinating, Kristin. Yeah, we were always taught that a certain makruh would make you go blind.
That concept is remarkably charitable, allowing for human weakness that falls short of actual evil. That certainly was NOT the approach to such matters that we learned from the nuns–Dominicans, “Daughters of the Inquisition.”
I agree that it is tricky trying to fathom another faith–so easy to get it wrong. But that’s why it’s invaluable to have friends and fellow writers who can guide you. Or sensitivity readers who can tell you your friends and fellow writers are wrong. (Joking–kinda.)
I’m reminded of Robert Thurman’s response to so many Christians and Jews abandoning their faith to take up a kind of Buddhism Lite, which was basically their old beliefs (or adopted New Age ones) without a deity in the mix. He was pretty harsh about it, saying it completely minimized key elements of Buddhist practice and thought, precisely because these “converts” could not be bothered to do more than skim the surface of Buddhism and take what they wanted while dismissing its more difficult, demanding, or inscrutable aspects.
This post unlocked a key story moment for me, one that’s eluded me in my WIP for almost a year. A million thanks!
How have you addressed the issue of faith in your fiction? How different from your own religious convictions were those of your character(s)? How did you manage to justify, not judge, your character on the basis of their different beliefs?
Religion/faith/belief is a huge part of the background of my mainstream fiction trilogy, Pride’s Children, and probably the ultimate source of 80% of the conflict.
Examined:
3 main characters, one Catholic (and liberal and working on it); one nominally Irish Catholic by birth, currently agnostic, doesn’t think about it much; one modern atheist (doesn’t believe in much of anything religious, but not dogmatic or systematic about it). I’ve had to do a lot of thinking about it as I seem to have ended up with a kid in each camp.
Justification comes from their different backgrounds – if I had grown up them…
The plot thickens and the thoughts have to work harder when the subject of how that affects children is added – it is one thing to make your own decisions, another to figure out what you will pass on. Includes everything from abortion to having a disabled child to losing a child to the involved ethics and integrity.
Several major scenes are set around a funeral in Princeton, NJ; a cathedral in Plzen, Czech Rep.; a hospital chapel in CA; an old parish church in Ireland; a mission church in India. Birth, death, marriage, other rituals such as baptisms, graveyards – all part of life. Moral people doing their best exist in different places, traditions – sometimes justifying what I or a reader might consider wrong.
Since everything I write is from the deep third pov of a character, readers get the high and the low points which would come up in the character’s thoughts, or in dialogue. Since I make a point to channel each character as I write a scene from their pov, these all come up while I am them, and aren’t too difficult to figure out.
My second novel, The River Is Everywhere, is a coming-of-age story. Much of the main character’s struggle has to do with him questioning his faith and his family’s devout Catholicism.
The book has been criticized by some people for it’s religious content. I think many people are uncomfortable with it. But I don’t think it’s possible to separate a person’s personality or culture from the faith in which they were raised. It wouldn’t be genuine.
Thanks for this post. I studied theology in graduate school because I believed it would help me better understand the world. I believe it has made me a better writer as well.
Thanks for mentioning culture and worldview as the other legs of the stool that the catchall word ’religion’ encompasses. One of many painful school experiences was a teacher telling my class that Jews were a race, not a people or nation or tribe or religion or culture or invisible minority. If a group’s collection of stories teach a way of thinking about the world, wouldn’t it impact decisions made by someone raised in or converted to the group’s beliefs? We can discuss the definition of religion or whether a group is a religion or a culture or both and more. What I take from this insightful post is how those collectively accepted teachings, beliefs and stories permeate the air believers breathe. What we label religion drives its adherents’ problem solving and decision making, so as David wrote, it belongs in storytelling.
Please note that the phrase “Judeo-Christian” is problematic for people who are not Christians.
The problem is well-explained here:
https://theconversation.com/why-judeo-christian-values-are-a-dog-whistle-myth-peddled-by-the-far-right-85922
If I may quote:
“It seems, then, that the idea of Judeo-Christian values excludes both Jews and Muslims. The phrase tacitly excludes Jews by subsuming Judaism into Christianity, and it explicitly excludes Muslims in its use in anti-immigration rhetoric. In reality, ‘Judeo-Christian values’ actually point to a particular type of right-wing Christian values. Continuing to use this phrase only contributes to exclusionary and divisive political rhetoric. When we hear it, we should call it out for what it is.”
Thank you for a wonderful essay in the role of religion in our stories. It binds peoples and cultures with common values (the word itself has the root for binding–ex. ligament). Having grown up in India, where religion is very important and directs the lives of people, it is something I always appreciate in stories because it gives me a sense of the characters’ beliefs.
Once I changed a non-practicing Sikh character into a Muslim one for plotting purposes (I needed two wives), but it didn’t work out at all because it was now a completely different character and it’s not as simple as having him go to the mosque. He would never think in the same way as my Sikh, so Sikh he remained. I also cut out the sub-plot with the Hindu-Muslim conflict because it threatened to take over the whole story (maybe it will need it’s own). In my novel, Bound, I explore the MC’s parents’ mixed marriage, that of a Hindu with a Christian, and how it affects their worldview. I find stories without religion a bit flat, like something missing.
As a someone grappling with writing Christianity-based plots and psychology while maintaining appeal for a mainstream audience, I found this article encouraging. Contemporary novels I look to for inspiration are Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen and The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall.
As a reader, I have two bug-bears when it comes to the depiction of religion in books. One, writers (and frankly, anyone else) who assume that whatever is true of xyz in the USA is true of xyz anywhere and everywhere in the world. Two, books where the only characters who profess religion of any sort are tired old caricatures: the hypocritical pervert/control freak, the reasonably decent person tormented by a constant sense of condemnation, etc. It’s like reading books in which every gay character is either effeminate or a drag queen (rolls eyes).
As a writer, I find it helpful to think of religion in terms of what characters/their culture believe about the world beyond what is seen, and what effect that has on their choices. Growing up where there was a lot of animism, I’m aware that religions aren’t necessarily about “being good” or even obtaining the benefits of divine favour – it may be about propitiating the powers to increase your chances of survival.