From my angle, honest Christian fiction can be literary or genre, realistic or fantasy, but it probably won’t fit into a firmly established niche. It may be gritty and/or more likely to feature flawed characters with whom we readers can sympathize. You probably wouldn’t find it on display in church bookstores. It can be but doesn’t need to be inspirational. Think of books that remind you of Graham Green’s The Power and the Glory, or Flannery O’Connor’s story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” or “Revelation”.

It may be too raw for publishers who are established members of the Christian Booksellers Association and perhaps too Christian for mainstream publishers unless the author is already well known and consistently selling big numbers.

Probably at least one of its characters will be a believer or in hot pursuit of faith. It is a book that a discriminating reader who believes in Christ’s message will likely find compelling, thoughtful, memorable, and in some way significant to Christian faith or how that faith plays out in the world.