Prayerpunk
I’ve titled this entry “Prayerpunk,” but it might have just as fairly been titled “Crosspunk.” Or I could have named it “Why Christian Fiction Needs To Tackle Certain Problems Before Chasing New Genres,” but that’s a little wordy. In a previous week, I mentioned that one of the biggest problems I see in aspiring steampunk authors is the mistake of writing a novel about steampunk, instead of writing a novel that is steampunk, or contains steampunkish elements. There is a tendency to slap a few airships, a dozen clockwork devices, and some goggles on something and call it good. That’s not how this thing called writing works.
Similarly, there’s a tendency in Christian circles to produce stuff that is about Christianity, or about prayer, rather than producing things that are inherently Christian or prayerful. Walk into any Christian book store, and you’re bound to find Christian breath mints, Christian writing utensils, prayer pillows, and cross necklaces. But a Christian breath mint doesn’t do anything additionally Christian when it freshens your breath. Prayer pillows really aren’t any more beneficial to your prayer life than regular pillows. Unless you know how to use them, prayer beads are going to make you into some kind of spiritual intercessory warrior. Christian marketing groups have sold us on the idea that slapping a cross or a pair or praying hands on something makes it worthy of the name “Christian.”
It’s not a travesty or anything. Nobody’s going to Hell over it. It’s just a little hard to take seriously.
Let’s move on.
Steampunk is fun. It’s fun to write. Fun to read. Fun to role-play. And it’s catching on. Sooner or later, we’ll start seeing Christian steampunk, dieselpunk, atompunk, clockpunk, and punkpunk. Do you see where I’m going?
The people responsible for transforming Christianity into a philosophy of If-you-like-it-you-shoulda-put-a-cross-on-it will now be moving into a genre (or set of genres) that are already unusually susceptible to cultural veneering. Hmmm… that’s not a bad name. Maybe I should have gone with that.
So that’s the problem as I see it. We have two futures spread out before us. We can either go nuts, stamping crosses and cogs on mediocre manuscripts in an attempt to honor God, or we can these two examples of veneering to see our way out of committing it in either form.
Building Long Tail City 