Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction

by Lynn S. Neal

In the world of the evangelical romance novel, sex and desire are mitigated by an omnipresent third party-the divine. Thus romance is not just an encounter between lovers, but a triangle of man, woman, and God. Although this literature is often disparaged by scholars and pastors alike, inspirational fiction plays a unique and important role in the religious lives of many evangelical women. In an engaging study of why women read evangelical romance novels, Lynn S. Neal interviews writers and readers of the genre and finds a complex religious piety among ordinary people. In evangelical love stories, the success of the hero and heroine's romance rests upon their religious choices. These fictional religious choices, readers report, often inspire real spiritual change in their own lives. Amidst the demands of daily life or during a challenge to one's faith, these books offer a respite from problems and a time for fun, but they also provide a means to cultivate piety and to appreciate the unconditional power of God's love. The reading of inspirational fiction emerges from and reinforces an evangelical lifestyle, Neal argues, but women's interpretations of the stories demonstrate the constant negotiations that characterize evangelical living. Neal's study of religion in practice highlights evangelicalism's aesthetic sensibility and helps to alter conventional understandings-both secular and religious-of this prominent subculture.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, Christian Living, Christian

260 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2006

About the author

Romance novels, fictional television, and fashion designs. These are just a few of the topics investigated by Lynn S. Neal. An award-winning teacher of Religious Studies, Lynn S. Neal's innovative research examines how various forms of popular culture shape our understanding and experience of American religion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In her first book, Romancing God, Neal provided a new perspective on contemporary evangelicalism by talking with the authors and readers of Christian romance novels. Her co-edited documentary history with Professor John Corrigan traces the history of religious intolerance in the United States through a collection of primary sources (stay tuned for a new edition). Looking ahead: Her upcoming book looks at Christian figures and imagery in the world of high fashion.

Reviews

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany) · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book that takes an ethnographic approach to studying evangelical women and their reading practices. The author/researcher takes seriously the devotional practice for these women reading inspirational romance and traces the role this reading plays in their lives and in the reinforcement of their beliefs and sense of spirituality. Interestingly she speaks not only to white women, but also to a group of Black women and the differences between them are striking.

As a former evangelical who came of age reading many of these books, I think Neal is very generous in her treatment of the topic. I have a lot of thoughts to share in a video to come...

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Christian literature.

I love C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and Flannery O’Connor and Frederick Buechner and Wendell Berry and Alice McDermott.

But when discussing Christian literature, it’s all too easy to focus on the acclaimed luminaries. For millions of conservative Christian readers, their bookshelves are not filled with the Inklings, but with names like Janette Oke, Beverly Lewis, and Karen Kingsbury. These authors churn out book after book in the “Christian romance" genre and they delight and encourage their faithful readers but these writers are not the darlings of Wheaton’s English department. Indeed, as this book notes, historically “literature” was deemed to be masculine while the sentimental fiction of early authors like Grace Livingston Hill was panned by the literati.

That is why I so appreciate Lynn S. Neal’s sympathetic treatment of the Christian romance genre in her (twenty year old!) ethnographic study Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction. To be sure, there are a few non-evangelical voices in the book (author Peggy Stoks is frequently mentioned and she is Roman Catholic), but the vast majority of Christian romance readers are white, evangelical women. Neal recounts her “consultants’” answers to her questions about why they read Christian romance and what they have gained and experienced from them. Rather than shrug these novels off as escapist, mawkish fluff, Neal delves deep into the social imaginary fostered by Christian romance.

Much of what Neal reports I already suspected. Readers of Christian romance often inhabit a “Christ against culture” posture and reading saccharine, religiously-tinged romances are a way for them to separate themselves from other readers who consume smutty harlequin novels; Marty Davis is worlds apart from Anastasia Steele (p. 12). These novels help inculcate traditional Christian values like gender roles, masculinity and femininity, and the importance of faith (though sometimes the male characters are overly idealized saintly spouses that leave some female readers dissatisfied with their own lacking husbands, p. 150).

Although authors like Karen Kingsbury set many of their novels in the present day, many Christian romance stories take place in the past, particularly during the pioneer days. Readers testified that they enjoyed learning about history through reading these novels; the women who wouldn’t pick up a Mark Noll text might learn some history through Redeeming Love. Granted, I am sure the history presented is often simplistic and even whitewashed of its complexity. But reading evangelical romance also transformed how they read the Bible; at times, reading Christian romance prompted readers to explore Scripture in more depth (p. 153).

Through reading about the protagonists’ (most often women like them) trust and faithfulness in God, these readers are inspired in their own spiritual lives and in their own walk with God, especially as they face many of the trials the fictional characters do as well, including singleness and finding a spouse, infidelity, illness and death, and raising children (p. 13, 144). Many of the consultants interviewed for Romancing God revealed that the characters they read about inspired them in their own lives; readers wrote to Robin Lee Hatcher after reading her story The Forgiving Hour (which sounds absolutely scandalous - Claire, the protagonist, divorces her husband after he has an affair and then must struggle to forgive her son’s wife, who is in fact her ex-husband’s former mistress!!!!!) to confess their own difficulties with forgiveness after devastating betrayal:

Rather than an abstract sermon on the necessity of forgiveness, Hatcher’s combination of this religious message with a relevant plot provided readers with a vital spiritual resource. While not an easy lesson to learn and still impossible for some, it enabled many of these readers to persevere in living their religion. They knew - from attending church, hearing sermons, being a Christian - that forgiveness constitutes a vital component of evangelicalism…However, despite their knowledge, inspirational heroines and romantic fiction helped women realize this in a new way (p. 148).

Christian romance centers on heterosexual relationships but readers also attested that Christian romance helped nurture their relationship with God. Neal relates, “Through their reading, they realize the presence of this romancing God who pursues and woos them. The novels affirm God’s presence and participation in these women’s lives, as well as his love for them. This assurance initiates, for readers, a larger love story - a sacred romance” (p. 173). Maybe, one day in Heaven, Bernard of Clairvaux will read Love Comes Softly while Janette Oke reads one of the saint’s many sermons on the Song of Songs.

But there were other insights that were novel to me. The first is obvious but it is that Christian romance:

while upholding contemporary evangelical ideas about gender, transports these women from the periphery to the center of evangelical life. By foregrounding women’s spiritual lives, as well as their concerns about marriage and family, the genre validates women’s experience of evangelicalism and their roles as wives and mothers, friends and leaders. In a subculture where men continue to dominate religious leadership, the genre offers fictional worlds where women occupy center stage (pp. 12-13).

Historians (or, perhaps more accurately, historian-activists) like Kristin Kobes Du Mez and Beth Allison Barr and popular bloggers like the late Rachel Held Evans and Sarah Bessey rightly challenge an oppressive patriarchy that has suppressed women’s voices and kept them out of the pulpit (interestingly, the major Christian romance publishers like Bethany House and Multinomah provide guidelines on what is kosher and what is verboten for their authors and, alongside censoring topics like “divorce, drinking, and dancing,” they also direct them to avoid discussing women’s ordination, p. 112). I think that complementarian arguments against women’s ordination, despite their provenance in tradition, are deeply flawed. But I also think many conservative Christian women are able to exercise a kind of “soft power” that takes shape through, say, nurturing and teaching children in Sunday school. I also think that authors like Janette Oke, Beverly Lewis, and Karen Kingsbury have shaped evangelical imaginations in ways that are not appreciated by professors who sneer at Hickory Hollow while raving about Port William and Gilead. As Neal writes, “Ironically, even as publishers eliminate the possibility of women’s ministry in fiction, they provide the opportunity for women’s ministry through fiction” (p. 112).

Neal also showcases how often readers of Christian romance write to their favourite authors expressing both appreciation and, at times, seeking counsel and wisdom (as noted above, this book is twenty years old and I am sure the increase in social media - and increase in readership more familiar and comfortable with it - has only led to an increase in outreach by readers to authors). Again, here is an example of behind-the-scenes leadership and pastoral, prayerful influence that these authors quietly exercise (p. 113).

A few tidbits fascinated me. One was that church libraries played a not insignificant role in spreading Christian romance among congregants. Neal also relates how Francine River’s popular novel Redeeming Love was first released in 1991 and then re-issued by Multinomah in 1997. Initially published through Bantam, the Multinomah version was more explicitly Christian (Rivers herself had undergone a spiritual transformation) and scrubbed out bad words; “‘Shit’ becomes ‘dung,’ and ‘whores’ become ‘soiled doves’” (p. 160).

Romancing God, like Todd Brenneman’s Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism, is a perceptive examination of “evangelical aesthetics.” Neal doesn’t simply dismiss Christian romance as “low culture” and concentrate on a “worthy” writer like Marilynne Robinson, but seeks to understand why this genre is popular and how it affects its readers. Christian romance may not win any Pulitzer Prizes in Literature, but it has a notable influence on pop culture. Several of Karen Kingsbury’s novels have been adapted into television series, some novels like Redeeming Love have been made into films, and even CBC, the godless bastion of Canadian liberalism, airs the Hallmark Channel’s adaptation of When Calls the Heart (even if the show gets details wrong; a minister holds up a copy of the ESV even though the series is set in the early 20th century). Through reading Christian romance, readers have their values and beliefs fostered and reinforced, they experience encouragement in their devotional lives and walk with God, they glean knowledge of history, and they are able to witness (fictional) examples of characters who put their faith into practice, inspiring them to do the same. Maybe, just maybe, through Christian romance readers cultivate “the love of learning and the desire for God.” So why not visit your church library, make yourself a cup of tea, and cozy up this weekend with a Laura Thomas novella?

[Melody Schwarting · Rating 4 out of 5]

Romancing God considers real women who read evangelical romance novels. What compels them to read? What do they get out of reading? How does this practice fit into their lives? Neal avoids much of the misogyny and snobbery that permeate aesthetic criticism and reader-response theory, especially concerning women, often concerning evangelicalism. She concerns herself with her many interview subjects, not her own aesthetic judgments on the novels, though she does consider them closely.

Neal’s study is the first I’ve seen that goes back to the nineteenth century and the burgeoning of the woman’s novel. Her work is influenced by Nina Baym and it shows in the best way possible. Most of the first chapter, “The History of Evangelical Romance,” discusses Grace Livingston Hill and her merry publishing journey despite never receiving critical acclaim, and not following religious trends. It’s almost as if women like things despite what “critics” and “the _____ establishment” think we should enjoy.

Though I don’t read evangelical romance novels often, I have read a few, such as Redeeming Love, The Shunning, Love Comes Softly, and so forth. They’re just not my thing. I rarely pick up romance novels, and when I do, I need to have another reason besides couple-gets-together to read them. Occasionally I am down for a retelling, like Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin, which riffs on You’ve Got Mail, which is a riff on The Shop Around the Corner, which is an adaptation of Parfumerie by Miklós László, which was adapted into She Loves Me, which….it’s a great story, ‘nuff said. I enjoy a good bookstore romance like The Bookish Life of Nina Hill every once in a while. Society stories like those of Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope are also fascinating to me, even when the plot is Who Marries Whom? Neal notes how the fictional worlds of evangelical romances have traits spanning various authors and books. Perhaps my ambivalent feeling toward that world reveals why I don’t turn to the genre more often. I hold out hope for the genre but at the end of the day, it’s not what I enjoy.

Comfort and predictability, which Neal finds to be reasons why women return to the genre, are something I seek in my reading too. I just get it elsewhere. Re-reading, especially children’s books, provides me with a lot of comfort, and since I’m not a plot-driven reader I enjoy the predictability. I also turn to mysteries and series like Thrush Green for those reasons too. This doesn’t make up all of my reading, but I do consciously turn to those areas for comfort in times of real-life concern like sorrow or anxiety, and for predictability when I’m in a reading slump. I enjoyed learning similarities in my reading life with women who read evangelical romances, even if our choices are different.

Overall, I highly recommend Romancing God to those looking to understand the genre and its readers. I discovered Romancing God through the footnotes of Resisting the Marriage Plot by Dalene Fisher, so the intertextuality is perpetually interesting to me. Other books I’ve read on the subject include Protestant Evangelical Literary Culture and Contemporary Society by Jan Blodgett, Reading Evangelicals by Daniel Silliman, and Thrill of the Chaste by Valerie Weaver-Zercher. Honestly, I hope people never stop publishing books on this subject. I find it so fascinating. Romancing God has a tighter focus on evangelical romance novels than Blodgett’s and Silliman’s books, and a broader focus on the genre before the Amish trend became so huge. It would be immensely helpful to anyone doing research on the subject. Though the book was published in 2006 and scads of new evangelical romance novels have been published since then, it still felt insightful for today (I say as a non-reader of the genre). The “rules” haven’t changed that much, and while literary trends come and go, I think many of Neal’s findings might be quite similar if she had interviewed her subjects today.

[reneamac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Romancing God succeeds in being academically satisfying while also engaging, accessible, even artfully written: a rare gem among scholarly monographs.

Neal, who specializes in the study of religious intolerance in America, winningly challenges her colleagues (people like me) whose impulse is to ignore, dismiss, even scoff at the genre, and worse… its readers… including the religious views both the books and readers espouse.

She contends that taking these women and their spiritual, or “devotional,” practice of romance reading seriously “defies simple dichotomies of liberation and oppression or reductionist theories of delusion and repression” and makes room for a “critical yet empathetic exploration of these women’s religious lives” (10). Through this double-paned window of empathy and critical analysis, Neal tracks how and why these novels cause masses of women to devote themselves (often reading a novel a week or more) to a genre generally disparaged by their own spiritual leaders.

Well-organized chapters guide readers through discussions regarding Evangelicalism’s historical relationship with media and technology and how Christian romance novels supply their faithful readers with three basic needs: identity, value, and theological support—needs that these conservative Evangelical women find in devotional romance reading more than they do from male-dominated pulpits (12-13).

Chapters 1-3 discuss why Evangelical women are “devoted to” Evangelical fiction, while Chapters 4-6 provide a framework for understanding why and how these women are “devoted [to Evangelicalism] through” liturgical reading habits of stories that provide role models—If she can, with God’s help, have faith through her trials or battle her demons, so can I!—and reiterate the overarching biblical narrative of God’s long suffering love for and romantic pursuit of his people (13).

Each chapter opens with an excerpt from a popular Christian romance novel—a surprisingly enjoyable way of easing her audience from a position of unfamiliarity to familiarity—and weaves the novels’ plots, themes, settings, and ideologies together with testimony from readers and insights from authors. This method effectively demonstrates how Evangelical romance readers “are both devoted to and through the genre in ways that reflect and configure the contours of their conservative Christian piety” (12).

Neal further situates the Christian romance genre, and thereby her work with the genre, amid the past and present leaders and scholars of Evangelical theology and aesthetic thought. This—combined with Neal’s methodical and open-hearted interviews of romance readers and authors and her archival analysis of reader-to-author letters—makes Neal’s conclusions regarding what Evangelical romance novels supply their readership largely well supported and logically consistent.

Neal’s weakest argument suggests religious romance authors’ frequent employment of historical settings provides readers a way to “imagine and define their role in history as evangelical women” (177). Given the political and social ideologies of modern conservative American Evangelicalism, which Neal establishes in the first chapter and expounds upon throughout the book, Neal creates a plausible argument, but the strong support from interviews and letters, or even reader-response theory, that otherwise consistently characterizes Neal’s work is simply lacking here. Had Neal discussed anthropological scholarship showing how readers of all demographic stripes enjoy historic fiction in part because it empowers them to see themselves as heroes of history, her argument would have been stronger.

I picked this book up hoping it would broaden my own perspective of Christian romance novels and deepen my understanding of the women I know who participate in the genre. It did. As we challenge ourselves to understand those who espouse ideas we consider “most unpalatable or unfathomable” (195), we become better scholars—and better human beings.

[Melodie Roschman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fascinating and clearly written! I appreciated Neal’s respect for her subjects, and especially enjoyed the excerpts that opened each chapter. I feel like this book gave me a better insight into my mother’s reading habits especially.

[Eve Lumerto · Rating 4 out of 5]

This study was so analytical it made inspirational fiction sound so interesting and complex, I actually feel like someday, when I'm in a good place with my other writing, I want to try to write one book in this genre, to see what I can do with this framework. I've never read inspirational fiction, but now it sort of seems like its own world with its own rules, and I want to know if I can play by them. Haha. Without sacrificing complexity and depth of characters of course (which is often the case with romance...).

[Kara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was a mildly interesting read. I'm not at all religious, but it was interesting to read about and thereby gain a better understanding of evangelical Christianity, and to learn about the subject of inspirational fiction itself, and how it has become a means to further practice faith for many evangelical Christian women.

[Susannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, this book really is awesome as a model of how to study/present/analyze evangelical women in a nuanced and rigorous way.

[Cade · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, really, but an interesting read

[Frankie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid ethnographic study that deals with the socio-cultural and religious dimensions with sensitivity