I’ve been thinking a lot about the literature list and the categories I’d proposed, and I’ve come to a possible problem.
See, in addition to what we’ve considered, there’s the whole problem of whether a work is:
- Christian in general (the Narnia series, Hind’s Feet on High Places),
- Catholic in particular (Lord of the Rings; The Power and the Glory), or
- Protestant to the degree that it excludes Catholicism (Left Behind).
In developing a list of fiction, how interested are we in whether a work is Catholic, “just” Christian, or Christian but anti-Catholic? How do we manage those distinctions and preferences within our framework? Do we include the huge catalogs of contemporary Christian fiction being rigorously pumped out by Protestant publishers, such as Ted Dekker‘s circle series, or are we only interested in works that are more than, say 25 years old and have kind of “proven themselves” by now?
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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In short, are we looking for a list of Catholic art, or Christian art?