Anyone else out there grow up on Christian inspirational fiction? If so, I invite you to join me down this (somewhat cringey) memory lane and we can roll our eyes together.
I’ve been revisiting some of the Christian media that was so central to my childhood and young adult years. While I’m drawing the line at rewatching Veggie Tales–I spent enough of my youth signing about a lost hairbrush, thank you very much–over the past year, I’ve reread a couple of the books that I loved growing up. And I mean, LOVED.
It’s been…interesting. I reread the first book in Francine Rivers’ Mark of the Lion series, A Voice in the Darkness, which was published in 1993 and immensely popular. My younger self read the whole series in junior high, high school, and again in college–and they’re not short books! One of the central characters is a young (and physically tiny as the book mentions over and over again) Jewish woman captured by Romans after the fall of Jerusalem post-Jesus. She becomes a Christian and her faith never waivers despite a bunch of really awful things that happen during which loads of people become Christians because of her. Also, she falls in love and gets married and has babies.
Another huge name in 90s Christian fiction was Jannette Oke. I read all her novels, though A Bride for Donnigan was my absolute favorite. I couldn’t tell you how many times I read that book. The protagonist is a young (also physically tiny as is also mentioned over and over throughout the book) Irish woman who signs up to be a mail-order-bride for a rough, manly, handsome farmer on the American frontier. It’s a very Christian spin on the old enemies-to-lovers trope where the shift occurs after 1) they’re given a Bible from a neighbor and they both find Jesus and 2) they have a bunch of babies.
Looking back, I cannot believe I loved these books–at the time I read them, I was a very tall, not physically tiny young woman, who thought all babies were gross, loud, and sticky. Why did I love these books? Why–I hate to admit it–did I still kind of love them after rereading them all these years later?
Because of the romance.
I went through a brief romance novel obsession in my early twenties, but didn’t LOVE any of those books. During the pandemic, I returned to romance through the wonderful genre of cozy queer fantasy novels, like Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne, and The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune. I LOVED (and highly recommend) all of these books.
What I like about both Christian inspirational fiction and cozy queer fiction is that they both put sex as an off-the-page aspect of romance. That statement is loaded with problematic cultural (and maybe personal) context that is far beyond the scope of this post, but because I found that correlation interesting, I will leave it there for you to do with it what you will.
Now, that very long intro is all to preface the most recent novel I read: Oxygen by John B. Olson and Randall Ingermanson. This is another Christian novel that I read multiple times growing up. I was surprised to find I still enjoyed it. I even read it with less eye rolling than the other two books I mentioned.
Oxygen by John B. Olson and Randall Ingermanson
In the year 2012 Valkerie Jansen, a young microbial ecologist, is presented with an amazing opportunity to continue her research as a member of the NASA corps of astronauts. When a sudden resignation opens the door for her to be a part of a mission to Mars, her life dream becomes a reality.
Dreams turn suddenly to nightmares for NASA and the crew as an explosion cripples the spacecraft on the outward voyage. The crew’s survival depends on complete trust in one another–but is one of the four a saboteur?
This book is definitely out-there (pun intended). Written by two scientists with PhD’s, it’s much more sci-fi thriller than romance, but of course there’s a love interest on board that spaceship for Valkerie and readers like me. My favorite part of the book was that Valkerie is almost as tall as her male romance counterpart. Can you believe it! Tall women find love too! My other favorite part was the way the writers thought out loud through their characters (though any craft teacher would probably call this terrible writing) to ask a bunch of questions about religion, faith, science, God, how it all exists together and how it sometimes doesn’t (or, at least, doesn’t appear to on the surface). Towards the end, as the two main characters are falling in love, they talk about faith:
“You can’t have faith without doubts,” Bob said. “And you can’t have doubts without faith. That’s just the way the universe is.”
“Well, it’s not a very comfortable universe.”
“The truth usually isn’t comfortable.”
I like romance novels because they are typically very comfortable. You know they’re going to have a happy ending. I rarely find romance very comfortable in real life because you cannot know the ending.
My issue with both romance and religion is the importance people tend to place on certainty. I’m just not a very certain person. I can always come up with a question. Hence this blog.
What is the role of doubt in romance? What is the role of faith? Does doubt always have to be uncomfortable? Does it always have to make other people uncomfortable? Can doubt be separated from worry and fear?
What comes to mind for me then is curiosity. What is the relationship between doubt, faith, and curiosity on an interpersonal level?
Maybe someday I’ll write some curious romance-adjacent fiction that is both comfortable and uncertain. If any books like this come to mind for you, let me know!
Amy C. Lutz 