Category: Fiction

By Ernie Bowman  / 

Christians typically don’t read as much fiction as non-Christians do. This could be because much of secular fiction has content offensive to the Christian conscience, or because there is a dearth of quality Christian fiction to read. But I’d like to suggest a third possible reason.

I think Christians would like to read more fiction, but who has the time? After work, family, church, extracurriculars with the kids, upkeep at home, Christian service, continuing education, and everything else we cram onto our calendars, there is precious little time left for reading. Even among people who want to read, non-fiction becomes the default priority in an effort to make the most of our time, as Ephesians 5:16 says.

Ironically, the problem is actually compounded by the publishing industry itself! Traditional publishing practices don’t help matters when fiction offerings are as prohibitively long as they often tend to be. In the traditional model, in order to make money the economics work a typical novel has to clock in at 70,000+ words. I won’t take the time here to go into the technicalities, but anything short of that and the price points don’t work out well.

I think a lot of Christians look at the sheer size of most novels and think, You’re kidding me, right?