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

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

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

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