Evangelical Culture and the

Horror Genre

My first published novel, The Resurrection (Charisma House 2011), contained

a character I named Mr. Cellophane. Mr. Cellophane was a phantom or

apparition who appeared at several key junctures in the story. I was

purposely ambiguous about the nature of Mr. Cellophane. Was he a

ghost? A demon? A dimensional interloper? It wasn’t clear. However,

being that I was shopping that novel in the Christian market, this

ambiguity worked against me. Several publishers declined the novel

because of this ghostly element, holding to the common evangelical

belief that ghosts are demons. When the novel was eventually sold to a

Christian publisher, they requested that I write an Afterword clearing

up any confusion about the nature of Mr. Cellophane. However, in my

piece, I did not “out” Cellophane as a ghost. Instead, I pointed out

other “ghostly” occurrences in the Bible and conjectured what

Scripture teaches (or doesn’t) about an intermediate state of

existence. (For more on this subject, see Appendix On Ghosts.)

This would be the first in a long series of interactions I would

have with evangelical culture regarding its uncomfortable relationship

with horror tropes.

The term “evangelical” is used broadly, most often to describe

the branch of Protestantism that emphasizes the centrality of a

conversion experience (being born again), the authority of Scripture,

and a commitment to evangelism. While evangelicals have sought to

interact with and influence culture through various means tent

preaching, tracts, crusades, politics—more recently, cultural

commodities like television, film, music, technology, and fiction have

been embraced as tools to evangelize and strengthen the faith of its

adherents. Nevertheless, the wedding of these forces has been an

uneasy one.

Though not representative of all, there are some evangelicals who

flat-out reject the horror genre, seeing it as a vehicle of occultism

and a tool for Satan. In his essay, An Apologetic of Horror, novelist and

screenwriter Brian Godawa quotes from former Vision Forum president

Doug Phillips,

Horror is an example of a genre which was conceived in rebellion.

It is based on a fascination with ungodly fear. It should not be

imitated, propagated, or encouraged. It cannot be redeemed

because it is presuppositionally at war with God. i

Sadly, Phillips’ perspective is not all that uncommon among

evangelicals. In an article entitled Is It Okay for Christians to Watch Horror

Movies?, one group of conservative Christian ministers concluded that,

Horror movies are created by disturbed and evil people, by the

inspiration of the devil, for the purpose of manifesting demonic

wickedness and evil in a tangible, visible and audible way.

Horror movies contain evil wickedness, murder, rape, abominations

and various satanic content that traumatizes the viewer’s brain,

emotions, mentality and subconscious. This is the goal.ii

More recently, televangelist Pat Robertson claimed that watching

horror movies and programs like The Walking Dead can invite demons into

someone’s soul.iii

No doubt, some horror stories do seek to evoke “a fascination

with ungodly fear” and “are created by disturbed and evil people”

seeking to traumatize or titillate their audience. However, sinful and

impure impulses and motives could be attached to just about any genre,

its consumers, or creators. Also, as Robertson correctly fears,

imbibing some forms of entertainment could give foothold to demonic

agencies. But are all horror tales a gateway to Satan? Are all horror

stories conceived by “disturbed and evil people”? Is there nothing

redeeming in such a varied genre?

So while the aforementioned statements may not reflect the

consensus among evangelicals, they are representative of a perspective

that, in some form, shapes much of evangelicalism’s approach to art

and culture. Hence the avoidance of the word horror amongst Christian

publishers.

What makes the contemporary evangelical perspective so

fascinating is the historical roots of the horror genre. Horror, the

macabre, and the grotesque were once quite compatible with Christian art.

In his essay, An Introduction to the Grotesque: Theoretical and Theological

Considerations, Wilson Yates notes the proliferation of religious horror

themes during the Renaissance.

Images of the grotesque in the history of art have always drawn

heavily on religious iconography. Perturcchio, Michelangelo,

Signorelli, and Raphael worked directly with the newfound

grotesques of the Roman caves, and works of Bosch and Brueghel

were soon identified as grotesque. The medieval period provided

one of the richest troves of grotesquerie in drawings,

architectural detail, and carvings such as misericords and

corbels, bosses and gargoyles, and the unfolding periods of the

Renaissance and the Baroque further endowed the body of images.iv

Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450 – 1516), in particular, was

internationally celebrated as a painter of surrealistic religious

visions that often dealt with sin and the torments of hell. Bosch was

a member of the Catholic order Brotherhood of Our Lady for whom he

painted several altarpieces. The most famous of Bosch’s works is The

Garden of Delights, a triptych (three-paneled painting) that is considered

by some one of the most terrifying paintings ever made. Listverse

describes the painting this way,

The Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych showing, on the

three panels respectively, the Garden of Eden and the creation of

mankind, the Garden of Earthly Delight, and in the last panel the

punishments for the sins which occur in that earthly garden. It

is that final panel, and the imaginative torments in it, which

have become associated with Bosch. A glance at the panel is

enough to give a feeling of the horrors divine punishment hold…

All in all, Bosch’s work is some of the most horrific, yet

beautiful work in the history of western art.v

Part of the “imaginative torments” Bosch depicted in that

painting were images of men having arrows rammed into their anuses and

fish-headed monsters devouring people and defecating their remains

into a pit filled with vomit, and demons inflicting a variety of

exotic tortures.

Yet it was Bosch’s belief in “God’s power to deliver all people”

which informed his horrific visions. James Luther Adams writes,

Bosch could depict the full range of the grotesque precisely

because he believed implicitly in God’s power to overcome

any evil, any horror, any monstrous condition; and likewise,

he believed in God’s power to deliver all people into an

ideal utopia. In this framework, the more imaginatively

Bosch was able to represent the grotesque and the demonic,

the greater enhanced was the glory of God. That’s the

thinking behind the inclusion of such works by Bosch for use

as altar pieces; and very likely herein lies the reason

contemporary expression is ‘flat’ without ‘faith,’ artists

are afraid to challenge the chaotic abyss.vi

Interestingly, Adams concludes that it was Bosch’s implicit

belief in God’s power that freed him to “depict the full range of

the grotesque.” For “without ‘faith’” contemporary expressions of

the grotesque are “flat.” In this sense, the artist’s depictions

were not simply a gratuitous display of morbidity “based on a

fascination with ungodly fear.” Rather, the monstrous conditions

he portrayed were simply that—monstrous, deformations, anomalous,

and completely outside the “Garden” of God’s intended “Delights.”

Knowing God’s power to deliver from these horrors, Bosch was free

to color them as the hellish abominations they were.

Rogier van der Weyden’s (c. 1399 – 1464) Last Judgment is perhaps

his most famous work. Used as an altarpiece, the massive work consists

of fifteen paintings on nine panels, six of which are painted on both

sides. The painting, as its title suggests, portrays the last judgment

with an ascendant Christ at center surrounded by saints and angels. On

opposite ends of the lower panels are exits to heaven and hell with

naked figures traveling to one or another destination respectively.

Most shocking are the figures gaping in horror as they stagger into

hellish torment, eyes turned in dread from Christ the Judge. As we’ll

see in the next chapter, these images are so shocking and disturbing,

some have even claimed they played a part in their conversion

experience.

On the fiction circuit, Dante’s Inferno (completed in 1314) and

Milton’s Paradise Lost (originally published in 1667) were significant

works of their respective eras. Dante in particular conjured profound,

yet disturbing images. Widely hailed as one of the great classics of

Western literature, Dante detailed a harrowing journey through the

nine circles of Hell including a virtual bestiary of oddities: minions

of anger, fire, gluttony, and greed, Medusa, Minotaur, Hoarders and

Wasters, Furies, Harpies and “the great worm” Cerberus all made

appearances in Dante’s Inferno.

What’s more, Dante’s fantastical vision provided fodder for many

artists. Perhaps most notably is French artist and illustrator Gustave

Dore (1832 – 1883). Dore detailed many wood-graved illustrations for

religious works—Milton’s Paradise Lost (1866), Michaud’s History of the

Crusades (1877) and The Holy Bible (1866), to name a few. But some consider

his 186 plates for Dante’s Divine Comedy (of which Inferno is included in)

to be some of his best.

The World of Dante website, quoting an uncited source, put it this

way,

As one critic wrote in 1861 upon publication of the illustrated

Inferno: “we are inclined to believe that the conception and the

interpretation come from the same source, that Dante and Gustave

Doré are communicating by occult and solemn conversations the

secret of this Hell plowed by their souls, traveled, explored by

them in every sense.”vii

Indeed, Dore’s engravings for The Divine Comedy are some of the most

fascinating and disturbing in his canon.

William Blake (1757 – 1827) was another artist/poet who melded

religious sensibilities with gothic, grotesque, and fantastical

imagery. Though quite unorthodox and even hostile to organized

religion, Blake’s rendition of Dante’s Divine Comedy transformed more

than a hundred of Dante’s visions of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven into

engravings, sketches, and brilliant watercolors. Blake’s The Great Red

Dragon and the Woman Clothed with Sun (1805) is one of a series of

illustrations of the Book of Revelation. (In fact, this piece became

the inspiration for Red Dragon, a prequel to Thomas Harris’ crime /

horror bestseller The Silence of the Lambs, and was eventually made into a

film entitled Hannibal.)

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

For Blake, the Bible was the greatest work of poetry ever

written, and comprised the basis of true art, as opposed to the

false, pagan ideal of Classicism. viii

But the use of horrific, hellish, and fantastical imagery was not

isolated to just artists and writers. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is a

famous sermon delivered by Christian theologian Jonathan Edwards. The

sermon was widely studied and provides a glimpse into the theology of

the Great Awakening (c. 1730–1755). In it, Edwards described in

excruciating detail the sufferings of hell and the impending anguish

of the unrepentant and unregenerate. This sermon became a template for

many revivalists. Edwards declared,

There are in the souls of wicked men those hellish principles

reigning, that would presently kindle and flame out into hell

fire, if it were not for God’s restraints. There is laid in the

very nature of carnal men, a foundation for the torments of hell.

There are those corrupt principles, in reigning power in them,

and in full possession of them, that are seeds of hell fire.

These principles are active and powerful, exceeding violent in

their nature, and if it were not for the restraining hand of God

upon them, they would soon break out, they would flame out after

the same manner as the same corruptions, the same enmity does in

the hearts of damned souls, and would beget the same torments as

they do in them. The souls of the wicked are in scripture

compared to the troubled sea, Isa. 57:20. For the present, God

restrains their wickedness by his mighty power, as he does the

raging waves of the troubled sea, saying, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but

no further;” but if God should withdraw that restraining power, it

would soon carry all before it. Sin is the ruin and misery of the

soul; it is destructive in its nature; and if God should leave it

without restraint, there would need nothing else to make the soul

perfectly miserable. The corruption of the heart of man is

immoderate and boundless in its fury; and while wicked men live

here, it is like fire pent up by God’s restraints, whereas if it

were let loose, it would set on fire the course of nature; and as

the heart is now a sink of sin, so if sin was not restrained, it

would immediately turn the soul into fiery oven, or a furnace of

fire and brimstone.ix

Edwards relentlessly elaborated in this manner, describing those

unsaved congregants as dangling over a “dreadful pit of the glowing

flames” wherein “hell’s wide gaping mouth” prepared to swallow them at

any moment. So powerful and effective was the sermon that reports of

congregants fainting and clinging to their pews lest they slide into

hell, followed.

Of course, there is debate about whether such tactics are

biblical or ultimately effective. Should we scare people into heaven?

(This is a question I’ll go into more detail about in Chapter 5.)

Either way, Edwards, like van der Weyden and Bosch, employed horrific

imagery of judgment and damnation to shock his audiences from their

spiritual lethargy.

Several prominent Christian novelists of the 19th and early 20th

century trafficked in what could be labelled the horror genre. One was

Arthur Machen. Machen (1863 – 1947) was a Welsh author who is best

known for his influential supernatural and horror fiction. His novella

The Great God Pan is now recognized as a classic of horror, with Stephen

King calling it “Maybe the best [horror story] in the English

language”x But it was Machen’s philosophical and religious beliefs that

most shaped his stories.

In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Richard Rayner summarizes Machen’s

writing this way:

Machen was interested in visions, in ecstatic experiences, not

just the supernatural as such. All his fiction ponders the idea that other

realities exist beside, or just beyond, or within the everyday one that we normally

perceive, and all his fiction features characters who reach for that dangerous mystery.

Sometimes, as in “The Bowmen” or “The Great Return,” that other

reality introduces miracle and wonder into quotidian life. Other

times, especially in the work he produced as a young man during

the years 1887-1901, the discovery that lies on the other side of

the veil is utmost horror.xi (emphasis added)

At the digital magazine Christ and Pop Culture, in a memoriam to

Machen, Geoffrey Reiter traces Machen’s “dangerous mystery” back to

his belief in a mystical reality beyond the pale of our material

world.

…as his wife Amy was dying of cancer, Machen’s writing changed to

a new phase, a phase that is perhaps his most interesting for the

Christian reader.  He took a renewed interest in the Christian

faith, though it was now his own custom blend of Celtic mystical

Christianity derived from the history of his native Wales, as

opposed to his father’s more passive, warmed over Anglicanism. 

Increasingly, he saw his faith as the answer to the emptiness of the modern world, and

in his writings from the twentieth century, his stylistic

emphasis is one of juxtaposition: mystical experience occurs as

an occasional burst in his narratives.xii (emphasis added)

In a piece at Christianity Today on sacred terror in pop culture,

horror novelist Jonathan Ryan expands upon Machen’s push toward “a

more holy terror,” contrasting him against H.P. Lovecraft’s secular,

materialistic worldview.

While Lovecraft was an atheist, Machen fully embraced the

doctrines of his Anglican faith. His horror contained the mystery

of abandoned places, forgotten gods, and utter terror at the

unknown, but also the possibility for humans to find hope beyond

despair. Unlike Lovecraft, Machen pushed toward a more holy terror, a sacred fear

that could prompt a person to kneel before God.

Machen felt despair could be avoided by seeing the good God who

ruled over the world “behind the veil.”xiii (emphasis added)

Another author who embraced this idea of “holy terror” or

“sacred fear” was George MacDonald. MacDonald (1824 - 1905), the

Scottish author and Christian minister who so greatly influenced

many notable authors (like W. H. Auden, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R.

Tolkien and Madeleine L’Engle), often employed the dark, macabre,

and horrific in his stories. Though MacDonald’s works include

short stories and fairy tales, many consider his novel Lilith his

darkest, yet best work. The story is a surreal exploration of the

nature of life, death, and salvation. Chapter headings include,

The Evil Wood, A Gruesome Dance, A Grotesque Tragedy, To the House of

Bitterness, eventually ending as the protagonist finds true life in

The House of Death.

In his preface to a book called Letters from Hell, MacDonald

addresses the issue of Christian engagement with horror.

I would not willingly be misunderstood: when I say the book is

full of truth, I do not mean either truth of theory or truth in

art, but something far deeper and higher – the realities of our

relations to God and man and duty – all, in short, that belongs

to the conscience. Prominent among these is the awful verity;

that we make our fate in unmaking ourselves; that men, in

defacing the image of God in themselves, construct for themselves

a world of horror and dismay; that of the outer darkness our own deeds

and character are the informing or inwardly creating cause; that

if a man will not have God, he can never be rid of his weary and

hateful self.xiv

MacDonald describes the “unmaking [of] ourselves” as an “awful verity”

(or awful truth). To him, humans “construct... a world of horror and

dismay” by “defacing the image of God in themselves.” Because of this,

MacDonald argues that we should “make righteous use of [this] element

of horror.”xv

Let him who shuns the horrible as a thing in art unlawful, take

heed that it be not a thing in fact by him cherished; that he

neither plant or nourish that root of bitterness whose fruit must

be horror—the doing of wrong to his neighbor; and least of all,

if the indifference in the unlawful there be, that most unmanly

of wrongs whose sole defence lies in the cowardly words: “Am I my

sister’s keeper!”xvi

Interestingly enough, MacDonald sees shunning “the horrible as a

thing in art” as potentially evil in itself. By refusing to engage the

“awful verity” of our fallen condition we potentially “nourish that

root of bitterness whose fruit must be horror.”

Charles Williams (1886-1945) is another author whose faith

influenced his fantastical, often horror-themed tales. Though Williams

was a member of the Inklings, the literary group made famous by C.S.

Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, his strange mash-up of Anglican and esoteric

beliefs makes him a bit of an odd man out. Nevertheless, many of his

novels seek to combine the overtly religious and supernatural,

horrific themes. For example, Descent into Hell (1937), which is generally

thought to be Williams’s best novel, concerns various forms of

selfishness, and how the cycle of sin makes redemptive acts necessary.

Some suggest the novel is illustrative of Williams’s belief in the

need for substitutional love. All Hallows’ Eve (1945) introduces us to the

ghosts of two dead women wandering through London. The book explores

human suffering and how the barrier between the living and the dead

was dissolved through both black magic and divine love.

C.S. Lewis, though never considered a horror author, employed

themes that often veered into the macabre, disturbing, and horrific.

The Screwtape Letters (1942) is a correspondence between two demons

regarding one’s “subject” and the best means to ensure his eternal

damnation. In The Great Divorce (1945) Lewis envisions a bus ride from

hell to heaven in which the travelers receive a second chance at

glory. The idea that there are no “mere mortals,” only people in

process of becoming either “immortal horrors or everlasting splendors”

is a theme found often in Lewis’ writings.

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and

goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person

you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it

now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror

and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a

nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other

to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of

these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the

circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our

dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play,

all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked

to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these

are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But

it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and

exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”xvii

It’s no wonder that Lewis’ novels contain occasional

depictions of these “human horrors” in process to “immortal”

terror. Professor Weston, found in both Out of the Silent Planet and

Perelandra (1943), is a good example of the personification of

Lewis’ vision. Weston was an eminent physicist on earth who

travels to the unfallen planet Perelandra with Ransom, the

protagonist, where he progressively becomes more sinister. As

Weston yields to his evil urges, he is overtaken by a demonic

spirit, becoming what Ransom names the Un-man. The climax of the

book involves a prolonged battle between Ransom, the Un-man, and

another dark creature.

Slowly, shakily, with unnatural and inhuman movements a human

form, scarlet in the firelight, crawled out on to the floor of

the cave. It was the Un-man, of course: dragging its broken leg

and with its lower jaw sagging open like that of a corpse, it

raised itself to a standing position. And then, close behind it,

something else came up out of the hole. First came what looked

like branches of trees, and then seven or eight spots of light,

irregularly grouped like a constellation. Then a tubular mass

which reflected the red glow as if it were polished. His heart

gave a great leap as the branches suddenly resolved themselves

into long wiry feelers and the dotted lights became the many eyes

of a shell-helmeted head and the mass that followed it was

revealed as a large roughly cylindrical body. Horrible things

followed-angular, many jointed legs, and presently, when he

thought the whole body was in sight, a second body came following

it and after that a third. The thing was in three parts, united

only by a kind of wasp’s waist structure- three parts that did

not seem to be truly aligned and made it look as if it had been

trodden on-a huge, many legged, quivering deformity, standing

just behind the Un-man so that the horrible shadows of both

danced in enormous and united menace on the wall of rock behind

them.xviii

Ransom resolutely does battle with the Un-man, bashing a

stone “as hard as he could into the Un-man’s face” until it fell,

“face smashed out of all recognition.”

The sequel to Perelandra, and final book in Lewis’ Space Trilogy,

equally contains disturbing and horrific elements. In That Hideous

Strength (1945), a malevolent technocratic organization planning

to recondition society and usher in an apocalypse is in contact

with evil spiritual beings who are animating the severed head of

an executed criminal. Even Merlin the magician makes an

appearance to battle the forces of darkness with angelic

assistance. Which is one reason, among others, that author and

literary critic Nancy Pearl categorized That Hideous Strength as a

“horror”xix novel.

Likewise, Flannery O’Connor often included freakish, morbid

characters in her stories. For example, A Good Man is Hard to Find

includes The Misfit, a serial killer who forces his victim to

reconsider the wasted opportunities of her life before murdering

her. In The Life You Save May Be Your Own, a “gaunt figure” missing

half of one arm named Tom Shiftlet tricks an elderly woman into

giving him her car to marry her mentally handicapped daughter.

The young Harry in The River drowns himself in an attempt to find

God. Manley Pointer in Good Country People steals a wooden leg from

a woman and then reveals his Bible to be a hollowed-out box

containing whiskey, condoms, and playing cards. Her novel Wise

Blood contains a man who steals and then wears a gorilla suit, a

museum mummy that is coddled like a baby by one character, and

the main character Hazel Motes who blinds himself and wraps

barbed wire around his chest in a quest for redemption.

O’Connor spoke often about the theology of the grotesque. In

her essay Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction, she writes,

Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a

penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are

still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you

have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South

the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological.

That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for

almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in

the next breath with equal propriety. But approaching the subject

from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that

while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly

Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn’t convinced of it, is

very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and

likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They

cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any

case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our

essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.xx

O’Connor shared the view of many Christian writers of “dark

fiction” that portraying evil and the freakish evoked the good and

provoked reflection upon our “essential displacement” in this fallen

world. On another occasion she said,

To insure our sense of mystery, we need a sense of evil which

sees the devil as a real spirit who must be made to name himself,

and not simply to name himself as vague evil, but to name himself

with his specific personality for every occasion.  Literature,

like virtue, does not thrive in an atmosphere where the devil is

not recognized as existing both in himself and as a dramatic

necessity for the writer.xxi

For O’Connor, seeing the devil “as a real spirit” who “must be

made to name himself” is an essential role of the Christian

storyteller.

These examples, and more, reveal that many authors and artists

have viewed horror, the macabre, and the grotesque as quite compatible

with, if not necessary to, Christian art. As long as there is a real

devil, he must be named. Far from being avoided and condemned, horror

can be a vital tool in “naming” the darkness; shocking the senses,

challenging jaded and calloused consciences, speaking to the plight of

fallen Man and his “essential displacement,” and evoking our intuitive

awareness of goodness, holiness, and redemption.

Despite significant historical roots in the genre,

evangelical fiction as it’s currently constituted mostly eschews

expressions of the horrific and grotesque, some (as we saw in the

introduction to this chapter) even considering horror as inspired

by the devil and unable to be redeemed. How has this happened?

What has caused this divide? Why have we replaced the art of

Bosch, van der Weyden, and Dore for that of Thomas Kincaid and

Precious Moments? When did we move from the dark, philosophically

rich stories of Machen and Williams, the monstrously exotic world

of Dante, or the freakish and grotesque tales of Flannery

O’Connor, to a Christian market predominantly tilted to “family

friendly,” Amish, romance, and Historical fiction?

While it is somewhat difficult to pinpoint the exact

historical roots of contemporary Christian fiction, the current

evangelical culture is clearly informed by a worldview and

strictures which can be traced to the rise of Fundamentalism in

American society. Whereas Christian novels had a rich tradition

in Europe, it was the move from more literary and/or allegorical

books to populist fare which spawned a new form of storytelling.

Religious themed tracts and serials became popular in the 18th

and 19th century. By the late twentieth century, evangelicals had

begun embracing technology and culture as a means to galvanize

adherents and spread its message.

In an article in The Evangelical Quarterly from 1966 entitled Early

Evangelical Fiction, A.G. Newell writes,

The great flowering of evangelical creative writing falls

between 1789 and 1818. During this period were published

the evangelical best-sellers, which set the pattern for

subsequent Christian fiction: Hannah More’s Cheap

Repository Tracts and Coelebs, Legh Richmond’s The

Dairyman’s Daughter, Rowland Hill’s Village Dialogues

and Mrs. Sherwood’s The Fairchild Family. Evangelical

fiction developed and spread, but it became

standardized.xxii

Of these four leading authors, Newell isolates the specific

religious beliefs they shared. Beliefs which motivated them and

shaped their stories.

They hold similar views about the fundamentals of

Christianity. Each believes very strongly in the total

depravity of fallen humanity, and, as we might expect,

insist with equal vehemence on the necessity of

regeneration by the sovereign grace of God. They declare

it to be no more than the duty of professing Christians

to conduct their lives according to the standards of the

New Testament.xxiii

Sharing “similar views about the fundamentals of

Christianity” is still an essential element of today’s

evangelical fiction, as is a belief that Christians should

“conduct their lives according to the standards of the New

Testament.” As a result, these authors’ stories functioned as

Gospel tracts couched within contemporary narratives that

appealed to the readers of their respective eras.

In Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction, Lyn S.

Neal highlights another author who significantly influenced the

trajectory of evangelical fiction by blending “religion and

romance.”

Frequently overlooked in the annals of American Protestantism,

the writing of Grace Livingston Hill (1865-1947) blends faith

with fiction in ways that reflect aspects of a Protestant past

while revealing glimpses of an evangelical future. Hill’s

prolific writing and sales success exemplify evangelicalism’s

long and intimate involvement with various media forms.

Simultaneously, Hill’s work itself represents the offspring of

this involvement—evangelical romance novels—and provides one of

the reasons for its emergence as a genre in the late 1970s and

early 1980s. Her combination of religion and romance illustrates

how evangelical women have navigated the contested terrain of

popular culture as creators of products, arbiters of taste, and

makers of meaning.xxiv

Blending “faith with fiction” would become a central tenet

of evangelical authors. In Hill’s case, this identification of

fiction with evangelical women and the romance genre would become

a mainstay in popular Christian culture. Not only was a consumer

demographic becoming defined, but the blending of certain

thematic elements—in this case, religion and romance—was taking

shape for a future “consumer” culture.

Following Hill’s lead, Canadian author Janet Oke became

another trailblazer of inspirational fiction, writing stories

about pioneering days centered on strong female protagonists. Her

first novel was published in 1979 and was followed by over 70

others. Oke’s stories became a template for many aspiring

evangelical authors. Themes of hardworking prairie life, strong

morals, devout faith, and chastity found a rich market among

evangelicals disillusioned with an ever darkening secular

culture, pining for a simpler, purer existence. This sentiment

would eventually inspire a new generation of Christian readers

who would migrate from Oke’s prairie romances to Amish and

Historical fiction, which continue to comprise a large portion of

the Christian fiction market.

In her book The Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels

(2013), author Valerie Weaver-Zercher explored the reasons for

the popularity of Amish novels among evangelicals, a sub-genre

that has now sold well-over 24 million books. In one interview,

she boiled it down to “three R’s”:

As I researched the history of Amish fiction, I figured out that

the thematic elements could be (perhaps oversimplistically)

grouped as: rurality, romance, and religion. That is, throughout

the twentieth century, as Amish-themed fiction slowly gathered

itself into a subgenre, these three elements began to accrue. The

first several Amish romance novels, published in the early part

of the 1900s, only contained the rural setting and the romance-

driven narrative. It was only in the 1960s that the spiritual

faith (religion) of the protagonist became a central feature of

the novels. Of course, religion would have been present to a

certain extent in the early novels, but only in the 1960s, with

several novels written by Clara Bernice Miller, does religious

piety become a hallmark feature of Amish romance fiction.xxv

Other factors, according to Weaver-Zercher, that have bolstered

this trend within evangelical publishing is the rise of hypermodernity

and hypersexualization. “The speed, anomie, and digital slavery of

contemporary life have sent many readers, weary of hypermodernity, to

books containing stories of a people group whom readers perceive as

hypermodernity’s antithesis: the Amish.”xxvi And with the

hypersexualization of American society through television,

advertising, fashion, pornography, and erotica, Amish fiction became a

literary respite for those who valued sexual purity and virtue.

Weaver-Zercher concludes, “The exponential growth of Amish fiction

during the first decade of the twenty-first century cannot be

understood apart from these ‘hyper’ cultural developments.”xxvii

Thus, fiction and faith, religion, and romance (and in the

case of Amish fiction, “rurality”), were becoming defining

elements of an evangelical brand.

As evangelicalism and the Christian Right took shape in

America, another significant religious movement dovetailed,

informing evangelical approach to culture. More specifically, a

mindset of cultural retreat and its subsequent “culture war”

mentality, adopted from fundamentalists, became part and parcel

of the evangelical approach.

Andy Crouch, in his award-winning book Culture Making,

described this perspective as an “article of faith” which

eventually led to an almost complete withdrawal of Christians

from institutions of cultural import.

...fundamentalist Christians did often, as an article of

faith, withdrew from many of the institutions of American

culture, from entertainment to politics. Whether their

absence was voluntary or forced, lamented or welcome, by

mid-century Christians of orthodox theological convictions

were scarce indeed at institutions where in many cases they

had been dominant two generations before: eastern

universities, newspapers and publishers, even the YMCA and

YWCA.xxviii

Among other things, this withdrawal led to the creation of a

Christian subculture. Based upon a growing animosity toward

“secular” culture and a need to fill the vacuum left from their

cultural retreat, evangelicals began to identify and target a

growing market of Christian consumers.

Crouch outlines four historical stages in the Protestant

approach to culture:

Condemning Culture: Fundamentalist withdrawal

Critiquing Culture: Evangelical engagement

Copying Culture: The Jesus Movement and CCM

Consuming Culture: Evangelicalism’s Present-tense

According to Crouch, the posture of contemporary evangelicals to

culture has morphed through several important stages, moving from

cultural retreat, to cultural engagement and critique, to copying

culture, to an indiscriminate consumption of culture,xxix where Crouch

suggests we currently find ourselves.

A large part of consuming culture, for evangelicals, involves

consuming “Christian” culture. The “Christian art” industry—Christian

films, Christian music, Christian novels, and a whole range of generic

products like T-shirts, bumper stickers, jewelry, and home decor

bearing Christian insignias, symbols, and messages—is a byproduct of

this fundamentalist cultural withdrawal. Now a massive multi-billion

dollar industry, evangelicals represent an enthusiastic niche among

consumers.

But what makes films, books and movies “Christian”? Besides the

obvious religious symbols or references, what are the distinguishing

characteristics of Christian art?

Holiness, for fundamentalists, was often framed in negative

terms. Separation from the world meant literal separation. No smoking,

no drinking, no cursing, no movies, no makeup, no dancing, etc., etc.,

became basic tenets. Thus Christian art became an alternative to

“worldly” fare, often defined as much by what it didn’t have, as what

it did. Books, films, music, radio stations, review sites, soon came

to be labeled as “safe” or “family friendly.” Defined as wholesome, G-

rated fare, these offerings emphasized the absence of profanity,

violence, sexual innuendo, as well as containing solid moral or

redemptive themes with explicit references to God, church, and/or

Scripture.

This culture gave rise to review sites and media watchdog groups

(part of evangelicalism’s aforementioned cultural critique) who became

moral bean counters, neatly cataloging infractions for concerned

parents or easily offended saints. For example, one media watchdog

group noted that the popular film The Blind Side (2009), despite a positive

portrayal of evangelicals and a redemptive message, contained 10

sexual references, 3 scatological terms, 8 anatomical terms, and 7

mild obscenities — offenses that eventually resulted in Lifeway, one

of the largest Christian bookstore chains in the world, removing the

movie from its shelves.xxx Such checklists of moral infractions are now

fairly common in evangelical circles. As evangelicals nurtured this

divide between the “sacred” and “secular,” its art institutions

reinforced these standards in keeping with its constituency’s

expectations. Often at the expense of worthwhile products.

Perhaps it’s no wonder that horror and the grotesque has drifted

out of favor with evangelicals. As Christian consumers demanded light,

safe, and edifying fare, horror films and fiction came to be seen as

more naturally fitting into the category of “dark,” “worldly,” and

“unholy.” Especially in a market saturated with romance novels and

historical fiction. Bosch, Dante, van der Weyden, Machen and O’Connor

were consigned to another era, anomalies from evangelicalism’s distant

past.

Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness (1986) somewhat changed things.

Based on a phrase found in Ephesians 6:12—”For we do not wrestle

against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the

authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness,

against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (ESV)—the

book employed many horror tropes, primarily that of angels and demons

and their invisible struggle for the citizens of a small town. Though

keeping within the strictures of the religious market (no profanity,

no graphic violence, no sex, and a redemptive conclusion) This Present

Darkness employed horror elements. The Publisher’s Weekly review

described the book this way:

Nearly every page of the book describes sulfur-breathing, black-

winged, slobbering demons battling with tall, handsome, angelic

warriors on a level of reality that is just beyond the senses.

However, Christian believers and New Age demon-worshippers are

able to influence unseen clashes between good and evil by the

power of prayer. Peretti’s violent descriptions of exorcisms are

especially vivid: “There were fifteen [demons], packed into

Carmen’s body like crawling, superimposed maggots, boiling,

writhing, a tangle of hideous arms, legs, talons, and heads.”

This book is not for the squeamish. But for page-turning

spiritual suspense, it’s hard to beat.xxxi

Despite the “sulfur-breathing, black-winged, slobbering demons”

packed into victims’ bodies “like crawling, superimposed maggots,

boiling, writhing, a tangle of hideous arms, legs, talons, and heads,”

the book came to be labeled as suspense and mystery, with some sellers even

shelving it under religious science fiction. Nevertheless, the novel was a

breakout success. It has sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide and

remained on the CBA bestseller list for over 150 consecutive weeks

after its release.

Peretti produced a sequel, Piercing the Darkness (1988), as well as

Prophet (1992), The Oath (1995), and The Visitation (1999), all of which

dealt with themes of evil, judgment, generational curses, apocalypse,

or the supernatural, and their intersection with the divine. And all

clearly employing horror, the macabre, and the grotesque.

Why was This Present Darkness and Peretti’s brand of supernatural

suspense so well received among evangelical readers? One reason is

that they tapped into a new readership. Up to that point, the

Christian fiction market had largely mined the female romance and

bonnet reader demographic. Peretti opened the door for other genre

readers, especially males (who comprise a large part of the horror

market) and horror readers in general. This Present Darkness also resonated

with themes that were central to evangelicalism: spiritual warfare,

culture war, angels and demons, God and Satan, the truth and power of

Scripture, and the power of prayer in cultural / spiritual engagement.

Finally, Peretti’s novels reintroduced horror as a viable genre for

religious readers, not just something for sick, twisted minds, but an

expression of the struggle between real evil and good.

Peretti would go on to write other horror / supernatural themed

novels, branding himself as a master of dark suspense. His works

spawned a whole new generation of Christian writers and readers.

Angels, demons, and spiritual warfare were suddenly back in play. As

were speculative and horror themes. What followed was a glut of books

seeking to capitalize on the new spiritual warfare craze, but none

ever reaching the level of Peretti’s early success.

One popular writer who built on this trend of supernatural,

darker, more edgy fare in Christian fiction was Ted Dekker. Dekker’s

first mainstream novel was Thr3e (2003). Published by Westbow Press, a

crossover division of Christian publisher Thomas Nelson, the book’s

plot concerned the stalking of a seminary student by a serial killer.

The book became a contemplation on the nature and problem of evil. The

Publishers Weekly review described the novel as “an almost perfect

blend of suspense, mystery, and horror.”

Aside from following certain Christian fiction guidelines such as

making his gorgeous 20-something characters entirely virginal,

Dekker eschews most of the conventions of evangelical fiction.

His spiritual message is subtle and devoid of the theologically

and politically conservative agenda present in other novels.xxxii

Dekker would continue to develop his brand as a writer of dark

fiction with “subtle” Christian themes. House (2007), Adam (2009), Bone

Man’s Daughter (2010), The Bride Collector (2011), The Priest’s Graveyard (2011),

and others all contained various thematic elements of horror.

Nevertheless, it was Dekker’s unconformity to “most of the conventions

of evangelical fiction” that would eventually lead to a collision with

the evangelical censors.

House was developed into a film in 2008. Adapted from the novel

co-written with Peretti, the film was marketed as straight horror. One

movie poster even bore the satanic symbol of the inverted Pentagram

featuring Baphomet, the goatish demonic deity, and a quote from the

Bible “The wages of sin is death.” The film was not well-received

either by critics or Christian consumers.

The film was labeled “Christian horror” and received an R-rating,

both which alerted evangelical censors. The CBA Industry Blog

(Christian Booksellers Association), in a post entitled The First Christian

Horror Film, summarized:

…House, which is based on the novel of the same name by Frank

Peretti and Ted Dekker, has been labeled the first ever Christian

horror film.

Adding to the buzz surrounding this film is its inked MPAA rating

of R. Despite the filmmakers’ multiple appeals to the MPAA, the

association remained firm on its rating. So now we have a

Christian horror film with an R-rating. One sentence with several

contradictory terms.xxxiii

What are the “contradictory terms” they note? “Christian horror

film” and “R-rating.” The Christians in Cinema site echoed that sentiment

in a post (which has since been removed) entitled Christian Horror: House [the

film] and Other Oxymorons. Clearly “horror” and an “R-rating” made the work

difficult for evangelicals to embrace, an oxymoron at best.

In an interview with Relevant Magazine, Dekker and (Christian

producer) Ralph Winter spoke to some of the concerns being expressed

by evangelical viewers.

RELEVANT: This film is based on a book with Christian themes, but

resides in the horror/thriller genre. Do you think this is a

genre that could alienate some Christians? Why?

RALPH WINTER: The world is full of darkness, and many stories

from the Bible are dark. Life is not PG…

TED DEKKER: Christians are alienated by all sorts of things,

including large portions of the Bible. Much of the struggle

between good and evil resides in the horror/thriller genre,

assuming you believe evil is horrific. The problem with most

depictions of evil coming from Hollywood is that they offer no

thread of spiritual hope. House is very different in that

respect. Still, there are many Christians who have no interest in

Christianity beyond its ability to offer distraction from

reality. House isn’t necessarily for them.xxxiv

Though Peretti and Dekker (and Ralph Winter) are Christians and

have brought that worldview to bear on their stories and films, the

main objections to House—that the horror genre and an R-rating are

incompatible with Christianity—reveals an essential divide between

many Christian artists and the contemporary evangelical market.

Perhaps the central tenet informing evangelical discomfort with

works like House is the idea that Christian art should be “safe” or

“clean,” “inspirational” or “family friendly.” But is this really a

biblical approach to art?

In my final chapter, I’ll go more into detail about some of these

objections to Christian horror and the arguments often used by

proponents of clean, family friendly fare. Suffice to say, there are

theological problems to such an approach.

In my article at Novel Rocket, What’s More Dangerous, Amish Heroines or

Christian Vampires?xxxv, I challenged the idea that Amish fiction is any more

“safe” than any other type of fiction. I concluded this way:

…”Amish heroines” are just as potentially dangerous as “Christian

vampires.” Besides, if the devil appears as an “angel of light”

(II Cor. 11:14), there’s more chance he’s lurking under a bonnet

than in a coffin.

The article produced some interesting comments. Camille’s comment

was representative of a theme that emerged in response to my assertion

that Amish fiction can become escapist, even idolatrous.

I’m a little confused. I’ve never been interested in reading an

Amish story [to date], but it seems to me that there is another

simpler and less “dangerous” reason for reading it than to escape

reality and worship the idol of the idyllic. My Christian friends

and I are always hoping to find entertainment (novels and movies)

that aren’t full of garbage and profanity. You may call it

escapist, but that may be a little narrow a view of why some

people read it. What about wanting to simply read a book they

know isn’t going to fill their mind and heart with crap? To

desire that isn’t to say you’re closing your eyes to reality;

maybe they just want to take a break from the constant onslaught

of profanity around us. We are surrounded by people, situations,

media, etc. that add to the temptation to lust, curse, gossip,

backbite, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice to pick up a book or pop in a

movie and know you can ‘escape’ from the battle for your mind’s

purity for a little while?

Camille’s concern is extremely common among evangelical readers.

They want to read something “clean,” something that does not deride

their values, offend their moral sensibilities, undermine their

parental objectives, or “fill their mind and heart with crap.” An oft-

used verse to support such a position is Philippians 4:8:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever

is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is

admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about

such things. (Phil. 4:8)

I’ll look at this verse more in detail in Chapter 5. Either way,

it makes clear that there is a legitimate biblical basis for avoiding

“crap,” and taking heed to what we read, listen to, and view.

But does this verse imply we cannot watch or read horror stories?

Does thinking about “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is

right” demand that we refrain from watching R-rated movies? Does

focusing on “whatever is pure [and] whatever is lovely” mean that we

should avoid reading about ghosts, demons, serial killers, or global

apocalypses? Does the hypermodernity and hypersexualization of culture

demand we retreat into tales of Amish rurality and sanitized

inspirational fare?

The Christian Church was once considered “the patron of the

arts.” As such, its artists did not shy away from the horrors spoken

of within Scripture, nor incorporating the macabre and grotesque into

their works. In fact, Christian artists employed such images as

opportunities to shock the senses of their readers and viewers, to

waken minds to the awful consequences of sin, and to force reflection

upon God and the ultimate Good. Or as Flannery O’Connor put it,

portraying the devil “as a real spirit” who “must be made to name

himself.”

Nevertheless, despite a rich history of employing horror tropes

and the grotesque in its art and literature, evangelicals have now

embraced a more fundamentalist view of the world, one which divides

the “sacred” from the “secular,” approaching art and storytelling as a

vehicle for “safe,” “family friendly” values. Now horror fiction,

films, and art are condemned by well-meaning Christians as “conceived

in rebellion” and ultimately unredeemable, leaving us with kitschy,

feel-good, “painters of light” and artists fearful of pulling back the

veil on the truly horrific. At the least, our stories are labeled

something—anything—other than horror and made to comply with the

evangelical censors.

Perhaps if we believed, like Hieronymus Bosch, “in God’s power to

overcome any evil, any horror, any monstrous condition,” we too would

be free to “depict the full range of the grotesque.” Instead,

contemporary evangelicals have relinquished a very powerful tradition

in favor of something safely sanitized.

i Godawa, Brian An Apologetic of Horror http://www.equip.org/article/an-apologetic-of-horror/#christian-books-1. ii Is it okay for Christians to watch horror movies? One Ministry blog (2015) http://www.onechristianministry.com/truth-335.html.iii Pat Robertson: Demons get ‘permission’ to wreck your car from X-rated movies Raw Story blog (2014)http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/pat-robertson-demons-get-permission-to-wreck-your-car-from-x-rated-movies/.iv Edited by Adams, James Luther and Yates, William The Grotesque in Art and Literature: Theological Reflections Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. p. 39.v Top 10 Terrifying Paintings by Great Artists Listverse 2011 http://listverse.com/2011/09/15/top-10-terrifying-paintings-by-great-artists/.vi Ibid. The Grotesque in Art and Literature pp. 47-48.vii The World of Dante website: Gustave Dore http://www.worldofdante.org/gallery_dore.html.viii Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art: William Blake http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/blke/hd_blke.htm.ix Christian Classics Ethereal Library, Edwards, Jonathan Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God http://www.ccel.org/ccel/edwards/sermons/sinners.html.x StephenKing.com website Messages from Stephen (2009) http://stephenking.com/stephens_messages.html. xi Rayner, Richard The White People and Other Weird Stories Los Angeles Review of Books (2011) http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/paperback-writers-arthur-machen#.xii Reiter, Geoffrey In Memorium Arther Machen: Celebrating 150 Years of Horror and Ecstacy Christ andPop Culture blog (2013) http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christandpopculture/2013/03/in-memoriam-arthur-machen-celebrating-150-years-of-horror-and-ecstasy/#ixzz3E3dheS3G.xiii Ryan, Jonathan Meaning to the Madness Christianity Today blog (2011) http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/october-web-only/meaning-to-madness.html?paging=off.xiv MacDonald, George Preface to Letters from Hell, Anonymous. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1887), Vi-vii.xv Ibid. MacDonald, viii.xvi Ibid. MacDonald, ix.xvii Lewis, C.S. The Weight of Glory HarperOne, (2001), pp. 45-46.xviii Lewis, C.S. Perelandra Scribner; Reprint edition (2003) ch. 14.xix Pearl, Nancy Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason, Sasquatch Books; 1St Edition (April 13, 2005) p. 213.xx The University of Texas, Department of English, Flannery O’Connor, Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/grotesque.htmlxxi “On Her Own Work,” in her Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, edited by Sally Fitzgerald and Robert Fitzgerald, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969, pp. 107-18.xxii BiblicalStudies.org archives Newell, E.G. Early Evangelical Fiction http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/eq/1966-1_003.pdf, p. 4.xxiii Ibid. pp.4-5.xxiv Neal, Lyn S. Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction, The University of North Carolina Press (2006) p. 16.xxv Fischer, Suzanne Plain Talk about the Amish: Why is Amish Fiction So Popular? Christian Post (2013) http://www.crossmap.com/blogs/plain-talk-about-the-amish-why-is-amish-fiction-so-popular-2616.

xxvi Weaver-Zercher, Valerie Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels Johns HopkinsUniversity Press (2013) p. 10.xxvii Ibid. p. 12.xxviii Crouch, Andy Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. Downers Grove, IL. Inter-varsity Press. 2008.xxix Ibid. p. 89.xxx Lifeway Pulls ‘the Blind Side’ From Its Shelves The Christian Post (2012) http://www.christianpost.com/news/lifeway-pulls-the-blind-side-from-its-shelves-76752/.xxxi Amazon posting of Publishers Weekly review http://www.amazon.com/This-Present-Darkness-Frank-Peretti/dp/0842361715.xxxii Publishers Weekly review of Three http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8499-4372-0.xxxiii CBA blog The First Christian Horror Film? (2008) http://cbablog.typepad.com/cba/2008/11/the-first-christian-horror-film.html#more.xxxiv Relevant online Ted Dekker’s R-Rated Film: House (2009) http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/film/reviews/137-ted-dekkers-r-rated-film-house.xxxv Duran, Mike What’s More Dangerous, Amish Heroines or Christian Vampires? (2009) http://www.novelrocket.com/2009/09/whos-more-dangerous-amish-heroines-or.html.