Over the years I\u2019ve heard many people who love novels decry the lack of good, popular fiction written from an evangelical Christian perspective.\u00a0 There have been some (in the last few years) written from a generic Christian perspective: Gilead and Peace Like a River come to mind as excellent examples.<\/p>\n
But what popular novels have been written by evangelical Christians that reflect an evangelical worldview AND are well-written?<\/p>\n
Well, of course, The Shack comes to mind.\u00a0 What else?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a fan of John Grisham novels; I\u2019ve read or listened to all of them and seen all the movies based on them.\u00a0 While Grisham is himself a Christian and perhaps even an evangelical, his books don\u2019t explicitly work from that perspective.\u00a0 I can detect Christian themes in them (especially justice), but they are not what I\u2019m asking about here.\u00a0 (One exception to that may be The Testament which revolves around a Christian missionary in the Amazon jungles of South America.)<\/p>\n
Recently I was looking for something new by Grisham and came across a reference to his latest novel The Litigators (due out this week!).\u00a0 But buried in and among the references to Grisham\u2019s many novels I saw one to a book by an author I\u2019ve never heard of\u2013Joshua Graham.\u00a0 (Look at the list of books by Grisham at Amazon.com and you\u2019ll see one by Graham in the middle of them!\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure how that happened.)<\/p>\n
The book by Graham is entitled Beyond Justice and it comes highly recommended by many readers and is inexpensive.\u00a0 The plot sounded a lot like Grisham\u2019s books.\u00a0 I had just purchased my Kindle and Beyond Justice is only $3.95 (for a 400 plus page book!) so I downloaded it and read it on my trip to California.\u00a0 I did not know it is explicitly evangelical (even \u201cThird Wave!\u201d) when I purchased it.\u00a0 If I had known that I might not have bothered; my experiences of trying to read novels by evangelicals have been mostly disappointing.<\/p>\n
Beyond Justice is different.\u00a0 It\u2019s gritty, raw, realistic\u2013about crime and punishment and injustice and justice.\u00a0 Graham doesn\u2019t shy away from the language and behaviors one would encounter in a justice system dealing with murder.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t stop reading it.\u00a0 It may not be great literature or even as good as Grisham\u2019s stuff (although I think it\u2019s not far from it), but it is to date the best explicitly evangelical novel I have read.\u00a0 And there\u2019s no rosy ending one might expect, even though the ending is very satisfying.<\/p>\n
Beyond justice is about sin, redemption and forgiveness.\u00a0 It\u2019s also about spiritual warfare (but not the Frank Peretti kind!).\u00a0 IF you like novels about crime and justice (like Grisham\u2019s) you will like Beyond Justice UNLESS explicitly evangelical Christian themes and events and behaviors (e.g., prayer) bother you.<\/p>\n
What are your favorite novels written from explicitly evangelical Christian perspectives with evangelical themes?\u00a0 Stick to ones that are either in print or easily accessible (e.g., from a local library).\u00a0 Put your recommendations here and say a little about why you are recommending them.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the years I\u2019ve heard many people who love novels decry the lack of good, popular fiction written from an evangelical Christian perspective.\u00a0 There have been some (in the last few years) written from a generic Christian perspective: Gilead and Peace Like a River come to mind as excellent examples. But what popular novels have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n