Religious fiction includes literature with religious elements, regardless of the author’s affiliation. It can feature characters and narratives from various religions and may convey moral or cosmological worldviews. Publishers may use the label to promote sales, and readers can search for it in literary markets.
Religious fiction is literary fiction that has a religious element. Some people tend to think that the religious elements of fiction have to do with the author’s religious affiliation, but generally experts consider religious fiction only insofar as it addresses religious elements in the actual work. In Western societies, religious fiction is most often fiction that addresses elements of the Judeo-Christian religion, although smaller alternative religious groups may present their own types of literature in this general category.
One way religion informs literature is in providing characters and characterizations. Some types of religious fiction, for example, borrow heavily from the Judeo-Christian notion of God and general attributes traditionally associated with character or characterization of how Jews, Christians, and similar religious groups think about God. The same is true of Jesus Christ , known in Judaic religion as the Son of God. Other religious romances may borrow from specific narratives such as the Creation story, where additional characters include Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, as well as the Serpent, known in classical Christianity such as Satan or the Devil.
Other forms of religious fiction do not address theology as such, but rather focus on the manifestation of Christianity, Islam, or another religion throughout its long history. Some examples include Victorian literature with a religious element, or even a modern American setting where an authentic religious group figures prominently in a realistic plot of a science fiction novel or other piece.
Religion also provides a metanarrative for fiction and other literature. Literature often uses religion to drive home a certain point, to display a certain worldview, or to advance a theory of morality, cosmology, or other ideas central to the world community. This is sometimes known as providing a “moral to the story” where some religious novels try to implement religious thinking through fictional accounts of theoretical situations. In some of these types of religiously oriented fiction, the religious writer will try to show the results in the differences between those who faithfully practice a religion and those who do not.
One use of the term religious fiction is to properly promote and publicize books or other literature. Publishers or others may label a work as religious fiction in order to sell it or to define its sale. Readers can also search for literature based on its designation as religious fiction in a given literary market.
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