Reading Evangelicals: Doctrine, Culture, and Popular Christian Fiction (Daniel Silliman)

The Biblical Mind

Left Behind. This Present Darkness. Love Come Softly. The culture of faith in the West has been greatly shaped by Christian fiction. Many books that are popular in Christian circles plant flags of doctrines within their pages, providing something for Christians to buy into.

Join us this week as Daniel Silliman (author of Reading Evangelicals: How Christian Fiction Shaped a Culture and a Faith and news editor for Christianity Today) discusses how books such as Left Behind have influenced evangelicalism, and how the book market more broadly has influenced Western Christianity.

Show notes:

• 0:27 Fictional vs. non-fictional arguments
• 2:44 Christian fiction and the effect on culture
• 4:44 Novel belief and worldviews
• 8:17 How to think about evangelicals
• 9:54 Advocating vs. reflecting
• 10:47 The book market shapes evangelical culture
• 13:54 Creating narratives literature
• 16:48 Mental spaces and formative belief
• 21:26 Supposing
• 24:26 Fighting the imagination
• 30:18 Assume the importance of the four gospels
• 31:59 How Scripture teaches through narrative
• 32:09 Objection to mass Christian literature
• 34:24 Book recommendations

Show notes by Dominique LaCroix

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