Faith and Fiction Saturday: Is Christian Fiction Really Cultural?

Faith and Fiction Saturday is a weekly discussion of the intersection of faith and fiction. To participate, please leave a comment or write a post on your blog and leave the permalink in comments.

I always enjoy reading literary agent Chip MacGregor's blog. He has a lot of thoughts to share on the market and the industry and he works in both the general market and the Christian market.

His post yesterday was pretty interesting to me as he made some pretty bold claims. Basically he said this:

1) Christians authors don't know how to write for the general population.
2) General market authors don't know how to write for Christians.

Chip seems to think the idea of integrating the CBA and the ABA markets can't happen. It's possible he's right, yet we try!

I do take issue with the idea that the ABA is more money driven than the CBA. What I'm about to say may seem offensive, but they are both BUSINESSES. I think they both take risks for books they feel are meaningful, and both do things, like marketing, to sell books. The argument that Christians publishers are all about the message doesn't ring true with me. I do agree most Christian fiction is too narrowly focused on one evangelical view of things.

I think Mike was right on when he said last week that faith driven fiction is different from Christian fiction. Faith driven fiction has to do with faith while Christian fiction has to do with culture.

I'd love to know your thoughts about this...do you think Christian authors mostly can't write to the general market and vice versa? Do you think the concept of Christian fiction is harmful as it perpetuates an insular culture incapable of speaking the outside language?