160. How Does ‘Cultural Christianity’ Harm and Help Stories?

Did you grow up in “cultural Christianity”? Do you think this background helped you love Jesus more, or drove you away from him? What would your neighbors think? As people debate whether we even live in a Christian culture, how do these public moral tropes and gospel reflections influence our stories, Christian-made or otherwise? Subscribe to Lorehaven articles • news • library • reviews • podcast • gifts • guild Episode sponsors Enclave Publishing: Radiant by Ashley Bustamante The Wizard’s Stone by Herman P. Hunter The Pop Culture Parent 1. What do we mean by ‘cultural Christianity’? 2. How does cultural Christianity hurt our stories? 3. How can cultural Christianity help our stories? Quotes and notes What is Cultural Christianity?, GotQuestions.org In Praise of Cultural Christianity, Mere Orthodoxy Pop Culture Gets Religion, Christianity Today Positive, Negative, and Neutral World, First Things Com station Jo Ann Dagis Samide enjoys “dangerous books” in right ways: Reading this thread made me feel so nostalgic. I loved reading to and with my five kids when we homeschooled. We used sonlight curriculum which had a great deal of fabulous reading choices. My youngest is 20 and my oldest is 35, and they all talk about the days of reading aloud and what we learned…. Keep it up, folks, you are truly doing the Lord’s work! R. M. Archer commented on Twitter about A. D. Sheehan’s article: Though this topic is nothing new to me, I personally found this @Lorehaven article timely to share given my very recent disappointment with the Dungeons & Dragons movie and with the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian. Andreas commented on the article itself: Good article. I feel the same way. In recent years, I’ve been going back to the classics more and more. Jane Austen and Jules Verne in particular are just fun to read. I personally found your first point particularly challenging. When I read “The Inklings” by Humphrey Carpenter a while back, all I could think to myself was, “I could never be friends with Charles Williams!” But you’re right. In such cases, it can be helpful to put aside one’s theological beliefs to discover literary treasures. Next on Fantastical Truth We’ve explored how big franchises keep failing their fans. More recently we delved into how some fiction can’t stop deconstructing its own heroes and lore. That’s frankly discouraging. Still, we’re not without hope, because we know some destroyed worlds can be restored! If we’ve already felt grief over a story’s death, how can we best celebrate a story that comes back to life?