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Into the Darkness
Reviews, Feb 3, 2023

The Chosen Succeeds Where ‘Woke’ Stories Fail
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Silver Bounty, Victoria McCombs
A Sword for the Immerland King, F. W. Faller
Calor, J. J. Fisher
Once Upon A Ren Faire, A. C. Castillo
The Genesis 6 Project, Michael Ferguson
Exile, Loren G. Warnemuende
Aberration, Cathy McCrumb
The Truth Beyond the Lies, Kathleen Bird
Frost, Winter's Lonely Guardian, E. E. Rawls
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Quest of Fire: Desperation, Brett Armstrong
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147. Why Can Christians Celebrate Stories about Merlin and King Arthur? | with Robert Treskillard
Fantastical Truth, Jan 31, 2023

146. How Did Animators Adapt The Wingfeather Saga For Streaming TV? | with Keith Lango
Fantastical Truth, Jan 24, 2023

145. How Did Edmund Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queene’ Shape Christian Fantasy? | with Rebecca K. Reynolds
Fantastical Truth, Jan 17, 2023

144. Which Top Six Fantasy Franchises Gave Fans Grief in 2022?
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143. Which Top Ten Lorehaven Stories Proved Most Popular in 2022?
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142. What Christmas Gift ‘Tools, Not Toys’ Helped You Grow As a Person?
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On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness
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Into the Darkness
“Charles Hack’s Into the Darkness summons a close-range science fiction story, focusing on the personal challenges of space warfare among alien cultures with a steady pace and serious tone.”
—Lorehaven on Feb 3, 2023

A Crown of Chains
“A Crown of Chains creatively retells a biblical tale to explore themes of providence, racism, faith, and fidelity.”
—Lorehaven on Jan 27, 2023

Lander’s Legacy
“Lander’s Legacy stacks modern thrills and complex characters on a foundation of biblical what-ifs.”
—Lorehaven on Jan 20, 2023

Prince Caspian
“Pacing starts slow but creature lore grows in C. S. Lewis’s sequel, introducing practical tyrants and talking-beast politics into a Narnian resistance.”
—Lorehaven on Jan 13, 2023

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Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
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84. How Did Bestselling Christian Novels Build Evangelical Culture? | Reading Evangelicals with Daniel Silliman

Christianity Today news editor Daniel Silliman explores why fans loved top Christian fiction, including This Present Darkness, Left Behind, and The Shack.
Fantastical Truth on Oct 19, 2021 · 3 comments

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“Christian fiction is so cringe and cheesy, so let’s ignore it.” Some critics talk like this. But today’s guest challenges this line: Daniel Silliman, Christianity Today news editor and author of the new nonfiction book Reading Evangelicals. He surveys five bestselling titles, including Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness, Tim LaHaye’s and Jerry B. Jenkins’s Left Behind, and Wm. Paul Young’s The Shack. Why did Christian readers love these books? How did these novels define their fans’ imaginations and help build our evangelical communities?

Concession stand

  • Here, we can define “Christian fiction” as “a Christian wrote the fiction.”
  • Yet we also speak about fiction by Christians, for Christians, a subculture.
  • We don’t condemn this subculture. In fact, we think the idea is necessary.
  • Christians often formed this subculture in response to being marginalized.
  • See The Christian Publishing Show, Thomas Umstattd Jr. with Leslie Stobbe.
  • Today’s guest wants to understand the definitions/culture of evangelicals.
  • Even if you are one, it’s good to see ourselves academically from outside.
  • We also need to confront how political cultures replace fandom cultures.
  • Stephen wrote How Political Punditry Has Taken Over Christian Popular Subcultures.
  • This isn’t a class. Or fiction book club. Instead, we’re asking questions after class!

Daniel SillimanIntroducing Daniel Silliman

Daniel Silliman is a journalist and a historian. He is the news editor for _Christianity Today_, the author of a history of bestselling evangelical fiction, and teaches humanities at Milligan University.

Daniel spent several years as a crime reporter outside Atlanta before pursuing higher education in Germany, earning a MA from Tübingen University and a doctoral degree from Heidelberg University. He was a Teaching Fellow at the University of Notre Dame from 2016-2017 and a Lilly Postdoctoral Fellow at Valparaiso University from 2017-19. He has reported and edited news coverage for CT since 2019.

  • DanielSilliman.org
  • @DanielSilliman on Twitter
  • Explore more of Reading Evangelicals on Amazon
  • “New Book ‘Reading Evangelicals’ Will Focus on Famous Christian Fiction,” Lorehaven news, Jan. 27, 2021
  • “What’s True About Christian Fiction,” Daniel Silliman, Christianity Today cover story (members only), Sept. 20, 2021

Left Behind, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

Exploring Reading Evangelicals

1. How did you discover biblical truth and Christian-made fiction?

2. What questions do you hope to answer by exploring top Christian fiction?

  • From chapter 2 (page 78), about Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness:

The Shack, William P. Young

… Conspiracies depend on keeping secret meetings from becoming public.

The novel is not just staging cultural conflicts, it is inviting readers to see how the staging itself is part of the cultural conflict. The first political fight is always about the rules of political fights. This Present Darkness returns again and again to the conflict of what is allowed in meetings, and who is allowed in meetings. The first pragmatic principle of the public sphere, its publicness, is shown to be suspect.

  • From chapter 3 (page 98), about Tim LaHaye’s and Jerry Jenkins’s Left Behind:

Apocalypse-minded Christians have been motivated by their expectations of rapture, the tribulation, and the antichrist to pay close attention to world events and take an active interest in American politics, both foreign and domestic. There is a myth that fundamentalists disengaged from cultural conflicts because of their theology.

3. How do you think Christian-made fiction could (or should) grow from here?

Next on Fantastical Truth

Dragons. Light. Raiders. Lightraiders! One shepherd boy with four companions, plus a talking silver wolf, begin their quest to restore the Lightraider Order, destroy a portal, and stop an invasion. So begins novelist James R. Hannibal’s Lightraider Academy series book 1, Wolf Soldier. It’s releasing Tuesday, Oct. 26, and we’re hosting James again to explore this new young-adult fantasy.

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    In the Fantastical Truth podcast from Lorehaven, hosts E. Stephen Burnett and Zackary Russell explore fantastical stories for God's glory and apply their wonders to the real world Jesus calls us to serve.
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    1. notleia says:
      October 19, 2021 at 6:12 pm

      But DO Charismatics count as Evangelicals? Do other evangelicals think so, too?

      My analysis: Subcultural pop fiction is about the only non-political way to achieve some form of theological coherence within the low-church end of Protestantism. Lots easier to update than Elizabethan English prayer books, too.

      PS All you dweebs who are trying to hobby-farm your way into self-fulfillment: I mean, I get it. I should know better than to romanticize farming, but it still has a sentimental pull on my heartstrings, but fortunately most of the cool parts you can still do in your suburban backyard or gardenshare plot. There are heaploads of books about sub/urban farming. Tho canning still sucks. (Pro-tip: Do your boiling on a hot plate OUTSIDE. Your a/c will thank you.) Butchering sucks. Chickens are cannibals.
      Any perks of rural life IMO are pretty much outweighed by the horrible inconvenience and emotionally crippling isolation.

      Reply
    2. E. Stephen Burnett says:
      October 19, 2021 at 9:19 pm

      But DO Charismatics count as Evangelicals? Do other evangelicals think so, too?

      I’m not charismatic. And yes, they do count. Many are not just evangelicals but biblical Christians.

      Reply
      • notleia says:
        October 20, 2021 at 2:03 pm

        Extra Thought: CS Lewis reintroduced all this (Neo) Platonism (or at least insofar as the real being a reflection of the Ideal), but besides from some massaged verses from Thessalonians or whatever, there’s not much biblical about the idea. But then we’ve been scavenging from Greek philosophies for about as long as Christianity was invented, like Stoicism.

        But my monkey wrench in the thought experiment is that the Ideal is a social construct, like money or social class. So do you still want to retain the Neo Platonism and why?

        Reply

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