Monday, May 12, 2008

Christian pop culture: An Eternal Oxymoron...Part II

So I ran across this story about a Mormon author who, in the most unlikely of ways, has actually conveyed a solid gospel message in a manner that is attracting millions (in both in readership and in dollars)...

Stephanie Meyer...mother of three...BYU grad...orthodox Mormon

The content of the books are not of particular interest to me...I never was a fantasy fan to begin with and I even found Harry POtter barely over the threshold of tolerability. The Chronicles of Narnia? Please...unless I'm hunting for a good C.S. Lewis quip for a talk, I find my inspiration elsewhere...

But Stephanie Meyer demands my respect...she has made sexual restraint slightly chic (at least in her literary world...whether it transfers into actual ideological revolution...well, I'll leave that for the literary Marxists to decide). We talk of the need to produce literature that demonstrates the drama of the gospel...but all we normally get is, well, esoteric pieces with songs that cast overpopulation as the root of evil (money, political power, lust...for some reason, these manage to slip by our goodly brother artists). If only in number of copies sold (which, while no sign of literary merit, is a sign of widespread appeal), is becoming an effective mouthpiece of the values of middle American Christianity. More significantly, she is crossing over in ways that the Christian subculture folks are failing to do. Congratulations, Sister Meyers. you've done us proud.

1 comment:

Katherine said...

Uh, maybe, except that Twilight is the most sexual "clean" novel I've ever read (and I haven't read the others, as I found the first a waste of time, but I hear the second and third are increasingly so). I'm not bothered by sexuality in literature, but I find it ironic to praise the restraint in these books when sex is still at the forefront.