This semester I’m taking a postsecular literature course from Mikayla Steiner. Postsecular is a term complicated by a multitude of definitions, but in essence, it represents the “religious turn” in modern literature. The death of religion predicted by those who worshipped at the temples of rationalism has mostly failed to come to pass, and many writers have turned back to the ideas of religion (in all shades of orthodoxy and non-orthodoxy) to seek the consolation that had been lost in modernism. (Understand that this definition is based on three weeks of reading and is certain subject to the flaws of my current naiveté, though it fits with things I had noticed but never been able to articulate.)
However, as we’ve been reading foundational essays on the topic preparing to study novels that fall under the postsecular umbrella, I’ve noticed something strange: many of these essays cite as examples books that could also fall under the moniker of speculative fiction. John McClure in Partial Faiths points towards Thomad Pychon’s Nebula winning novel Gravity’s Rainbow as a prototypical example of the half-in, half-out nature of postsecular faith. Rita Felski uses Miyazaki’s portal fantasy masterpiece Spirited Away as an example of the enchantment that the postsecular seeks to return to literature in Uses of Literature. Her argument on the importance of being transported by a work grasps at the exact same ideas as Tolkien’s discussion of escape On Fairy Stories while managing to never cite it. (“Who would speak loudest against escape? Jailers.”) Now I’m digging into the first novel of the term, Lousie Erdich’s The Round House, and I find that not only are the chapter titles all drawn from episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but that the show seems to be a major metaphor within the text.
The connection between the spiritual or religious in literature can seem obvious. Both deal with things that the rational mind would consider impossible. Angels are just as unbelievable to a rationalist as dragons. There’s just as little evidence for believing in miracles as there is to believe in magical realism.
But is the connection really that simple? Does it really make sense to align fantasy which is transparent about being fictional with faith-based ideas that claim to be about ultimate reality? It seems to align with those who accuse believers of being blinded to reality by a story, and not even one as interesting as the latest installment of Star Wars at that.
Granted, I’ve seen some believers make the same conflation. Some worry that fantasy will confuse readers about their faith. You know the sort of thing: Harry Potter will teach your kids witchcraft; D&D is at best a waste of time and at worst Satanic; a visit from Santa Claus will cause them to doubt Jesus’s existence; even simple unease about studying Greek mythology and the worship of false gods.
But these concerns usually come from people who don’t actually read or enjoy fantasy. Among those who are religious and also enjoy speculative fiction (and if the size of the first Salt Lake City FanX is any indication, there are many), there’s no confusion about products of the imagination and the equally impossible things that they believe are real. Perhaps there are believers who have been led away from the faith by reading fantasy novels, but I’ve never met one.
Perhaps the key to the massive overlap between the literature of speculative fiction and literature concerned with spirituality is that both tend to leave behind concerns with the everyday and focus on ultimate concerns. Despite the recent turn towards cozy SF, a good percentage of fantasy novels focus on epic events that are country-, world-, or even universe-imperiling. Even when the plot is smaller, the magic system or technological innovation at the center of the “speculation” often deals with the deep forces of the universe–at a word, metaphysics.
Related to this large scope is the attitude of wonder that pervades the speculative and the religious. Whether we call it awe or the sublime, both genres put humanity in its place as a smaller part of something vast, something in the end unexplainable by logic and reason. Even the science in science fiction is less based on logic (except in the hardest sci-fi) than on what Sanderson calls the “rule of awesome.” Though I’m sure he didn’t intend it, it’s easy to see the connection to our human impulse to awe in speculative fiction.
Does this mean that speculative fiction is intended to be a substitute for religion? I’m certain some stridently atheistic authors might see it that way. I recently read Childhood’s End by Arthur C Clarke, and it’s clear that he is substituting the sublime of cosmic aliens for the sublime impulse of religion. Yet this substitution fails to account for the vast number of believers who read and enjoy speculative fiction. I was not really surprised to find in our podcast episode about Mormons watching Star Trek that three out of the four of us shared the experience of watching Star Trek with our very religious families growing up.
I would argue instead that religious people are drawn to speculative fiction precisely because it flexes the same intellectual muscles that they use in their faith. It’s like cross-training for our spiritual sensitivities. When done well, fantasy scratches the same itch for deep meaning that we seek in religion, but rather than a replacement, it acts as a supplement for our ability to think and believe abstractly in things beyond our everyday experience.
