The Christian Imagination (edited by Leland Ryken, Shawbooks, 2002, ISBN 0-87788-123-5) contains a collection of essays and reflections exploring "the practice of faith in literature and writing." With selections from such master Christian writers as J.R.R.Tolkien, Annie Dillard, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, and Francis Schaeffer, The Christian Imagination reveals how religion can (and should) play a role in the creation of great art.
The book's essays and reflections explore numerous literary topics from a Christian perspective, including poetics, the Bible as art, the concept of beauty, hymns, fantasy, myth, and the portrayal of evil. The Christian Imagination is not as accessible as either Literary Converts, and occasionally the included writings can be academic in tone. But Christian readers with diverse interests in a variety of genres may all extract something of interest from this collection, which delights in exploring the intersections between faith, words, and imagination.
Dismissing God
While Literary Converts and The Christian Imagination focus on the works and lives of believers, D. Bruce Lockerbie's Dismissing God (Baker Pub Group, 1998, ISBN 0-80105-804-X) chronicles the modern writer's struggle against religion, particularly Christianity. The book traces the abdication of belief from "reluctant agnosticism" and "uncomfortable unbelief" (Matthew Arnold, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville) to "the absorption of Christian doctrine into a mélange of pagan shamanism" (the Romantics), to "cold contempt for any suggestion that religion or religious concerns merit serious reflection" (The Nihilists).
The chapters in and of themselves are quite interesting, but the author's attempt to tie them together through some overarching progression, structure, or theme falls short of clarity and consistency. Although Dismissing God is not particularly well tied together, it is an excellent overview of the treatment of religion in the major literature of the last two centuries. It is well written and easy to read: there is no unintelligible academic rant to be found here. Anyone with a basic knowledge of literature can approach this book without fear, and even a long-time student of literature is likely to find something new and stimulating in its pages.