What do you dislike about Christian fiction stories?

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And stuff like that is the reason Fiction that mocks Christians is so accepted.

It's clear that a lot of Christians need to learn how to write stories first, before they start trying to write stories about Christians.

Or at least that's what I think.

I have to wonder: do other religions have this problem? Do they come off as bad as some other Christian stories do.

Perhaps Christian themes are so imbedded in works coming from western cultures, that any attempts to make it more obvious would come across as preachy.

Meanwhile have a character being a person of faith in a different religion and pulling Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane events in the story would probably not receive as much eye rolls.

edited 19th Apr '14 2:06:13 PM by Worlder

Within their own culture? Yes, at least in places that can accept such things like India.

One must recall that the acceptability of criticizing works strongly in favor of the dominant religion is low, socially, in much of the non-Western world, and in some places actually criminal.

I've read/watched Hindi fiction, pagan fiction, Muslim fiction, and Jewish fiction. There's always bad shit, but the DEGREE of badness in other religion-centric pieces is considerably less than with Christianity.

Maybe it is because those are considered non-Western in a sense and we get some sort of Import Filter on a personal level.

Oh yes, markets would make sure to import the best stuff.

Might be a matter of personal preference. Fiction with pagan themes that I've read was, on average, full of Dan Brown-ish reinterpretations of history, wishful thinking, and demonisation of Christianity (or at least I don't remember any case of something else than Abrahamic taking the brunt of the bashing). That said, I'm a bit overly sensitive to preaching in fiction, so they probably don't fall so bad in comparison. Haven't read too much involving other religions, so I can't anything for sure, but I speculate that religions that are exotic enough may, so to say, slip under the reader's radar (a story about a Shaolin monk shooting hadoukens and speaking in koans would probably not register as preachy Buddhist fiction to most Western people).

...Just realized I may also be misinterpreting the quality of pagan fiction since I lean hugely toward fantasy. When they aren't conflating paganism with Wicca or something else, fantasy writers capture the spirit of paganism pretty damn well.

I wonder where does Anime Catholicism fall in this discussion?

In general, anime leans more towards using Christian elements for spectacle rather than the religion's philosophy. Much like how mainstream Western fiction tends to treat paganism (when they're not evil), or Eastern religions.

Right the spectacle, stuff like Hellblazer or Priest.

IIRC the preachy stuff tends to be slice of life stories filled with Glurge instead of some horror story or action story using surprise and spectacle.