A slightly updated version of this post appears on the Association for Mormon Letters blog
When I was reading a new compilation of CS Lewis’s ideas in On Writing (and Writers), I was particularly struck by this quote (originally from an essay found in God in the Dock, I believe) as it might apply to the Latter-day Saint writer:
What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects – with their Christianity latent.
In the surrounding text, Lewis claims that it’s much less beneficial to write works of apologetics than it is to write books on other subjects with a definitively Christian worldview. Ignoring the fact that this statement is exactly the opposite of what CS Lewis did in his own writing practice (both in nonfiction and fiction), I wondered whether I buy the argument.
His point was that it’s rarely the reading of Christian apologetics that causes people to lose their faith but rather the reading of other books that contain materialist or atheistic assumptions in the way they frame the material. Worldview is an insidious thing because most of the time it’s an assumption, something that we don’t even notice we’re imbibing, the water to the fish, as it were.
I don’t really want to talk about the worldview present in books about science or our modern news coverage. There are many other outlets that can cover that more adequately than I can. (If you aren’t following Get Religion, I highly recommend it.) But (how) does this concept apply to fiction?
There are certain advantages to writing from an LDS worldview without LDS subject matter. As the popularity of LDS speculative fiction and romance writers suggests, it’s certainly much more commercially viable than writing Mormon lit. But does it actually help spread the gospel? Will people better understand moral truths by reading speculative fiction? Is it qualitatively better for the purpose of spreading light and truth than explicitly LDS fiction?
I’ll return to my favorite analogy of choice. Why did Brandon Sanderson fail so badly when trying to write to the market early in his career? It’s because the market was George RR Martin. While Sanderson could certainly be capable of writing the outward trappings of a grungy and bleak epic, it never really worked because the story didn’t match his underlying worldview. And what was that underlying worldview? A picture of humanity as heroic. That even though a person might struggle with their circumstances or their past actions, they could eventually change and become a better person. In a word, it was a Mormon worldview. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Sanderson’s career took off when he finally started writing a series that embodied this hopeful view of humanity (though of course finishing the Wheel of Time didn’t hurt).
And one doesn’t have to stray far on Reddit to find stories of the people who have been uplifted from personal tragedy and struggle by the positive, empowered outlook of the Stormlight Archive. Has anyone been converted to the Church over it? I can’t say that I’ve heard of it happening. Yet maybe when the missionaries knock on their door someday, they’ll recognize the principles of agency, repentance, and personal growth that are at the core of the plan of salvation. (You could tell similar stories with Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, I suspect. I know it was massively empowering to me as a gifted kid.)
For a long time, this was enough for me. I’ve always been a champion of the latent religious worldview that was available to fantasy authors. A world where humans have to wrestle with divine power and where human agency can have world-changing effects–fantasy literature is a genre built for exploring religion. It allows us to explore morality without the instant rejection you might get for a blatantly religious book.
But lately I’ve found myself leaning more in the other direction, towards fiction that more explicitly includes religion. This is for two reasons. First, some very smart people who I’ve talked to have found the LDS connections in Brandon’s books I’m constantly explicating to be quite tenuous. They don’t see the deeply LDS worldview that I do. I wish it was easier for other people to see it. It’s harder to dig into the small but important saving details of doctrine without including religion itself in the narrative. Perhaps this is why Lewis’s fiction has stuck around so strongly in spite of the frequent accusations of being too “allegorical.” He wanted to really get into the interesting details not just skim the surface of salvation.
The second reason is my exploration of explicitly LDS speculative fiction the last few years, including writing some few stories myself. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying seeing recognizable Mormons interact with aliens or deal with portal worlds or unexplained magical powers. There’s something inherently powerful about representation, about seeing yourself as a legitimate topic of fiction, rather than something you have to twist through metaphor and sneak into people like spinach in a smoothie. (Though on the other hand, if they can see the green, the ones who need it the most won’t drink it anyway, if you follow my analogy.)
Now, I’m not saying I want an apologetics for the Church in fiction. The Work and the Glory really never clicked with me, though such blatantly faith-affirming fiction has its place. But I’m also fed up with the fact that the vast majority of portrayals of Mormons in fiction or entertainment are from the perspective of people who no longer share my worldview. Where’s the portrayal of the LDSS Nauvoo from the people who understand why it was built? Where’s the Mormon version of Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow and Children of God? Where’s the Ms Marvel starring a young Latter-day Saint woman?
Part of the reason we need fiction written for outsiders by faithful insiders is to accomplish what the “I’m A Mormon” campaign started: to get people to see us as people, not as a strange religion/possible cult to escape from. No one can see the beauty of our theology until they see us.
