You’ll find no shortage of articles talking about “The Gospel According to [Insert Popular Franchise Title Here].”

New takes on classics like C. S. Lewis’s Narnia and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings make for easy pitches. But you’ll find plenty of evangelical pieces doing this with the Harry Potter series, various Marvel films, Game of Thrones, the new Barbie movie—and yes, even Twilight. Earlier this month, Rick Warren’s church made the news for their pastors cosplaying while presenting a Toy Story sermon series.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: you can find real beauty in mass-market speculative fiction novels.

You can find beauty in the elegant simplicity of Patrick Ness’s prose in A Monster Calls: “Every inch of his bedroom floor was covered in short, spiky yew tree leaves.”

Beauty lingers in the poignant reflections of the autistic protagonist in Elizabeth Moon’s The Speed of Dark:

Several moments in The Chosen season 3 have generated a lot of online buzz ever since the biblical fiction drama began releasing new episodes in late 2022.

In season 3, episode 2, Jesus (played by Jonathan Roumie) explains why he’s chosen not to heal the disciple James (called “Little James,” played by Jordan Walker Ross). In the story, Jesus explains how the disciple’s physical disability gives him unique ways to testify about God’s goodness in the midst of suffering.

Many viewers found themselves tearing up by the speech’s end. It’s a touching scene. Yet it’s also 100 percent made-up. Jesus never said or did anything like this in the four gospels. That’s given pause to some Chosen viewers.

Earlier this year, I saw a film with a rather Marxist villain who complained about the protagonist being rich and entitled. By the film’s end, this psychotic villain was defeated and all his arguments were shown as deeply flawed and inaccurate.

Imagine, then, my surprise when I came home to find a Christian film reviewer blasting the film’s “wokeness” because of the villain’s speech. Never mind the fact that the film clearly showed this villain being in the wrong. This reviewer seemed to conclude that, because the villain gave a monologue that wasn’t immediately rebutted, that apparently made this belief part of the film’s message.

Christians want moral stories. But sometimes we fail to understand a story’s actual message. Sometimes this failure leads Christians to condemn stories with moral messages. And sometimes Christians trust stories that slip in devious messages.

Christian cringe is real.

As Lorehaven’s Fantastical Truth podcast explored in episode 126, Christian fiction shares plenty of campy conversion scenes, bad parodies, and simplistic Christ-figures to poke fun of.

There’s a reason many of these tropes come off as cringy: they don’t feel true-to-life. We know cringey events can only work in a fictional world. And so many readers rightly want more in the fiction they read.

Could we enter a new “golden age” for fantastical Christian fiction?

This question has featured in several Lorehaven podcast episodes over this past year, most notably episode 110, in which E. Stephen Burnett and Zackary Russell devoted to this question. While I’m hesitant to use the phrase “golden age” just yet, I favor the idea that we could at least be entering a “silver age.”

If you look at the fantastical Christian novels published over the past several years, you will see many admirable works, from Nadine Brandes’s Fawkes to Catherine Jones Payne’s Breakwater to Harper’s Silence the Siren to Kerry Nietz’s Amish Vampires in Space. To riff off Realm Makers’ old slogan, this isn’t your grandmother’s “corny Christian fiction.” Today’s Christian fantastical fiction often faithfully grapples with robust themes in entertaining ways.

Some critics too easily claim that Christian-made stories often portray characters with non-Christian beliefs in cartoonish ways. You might already know the stereotypes: the villainous atheist, the angry Muslim, or the scheming liberal.

These figures may appear in evangelical movies. Contrary to some critics’ charges, such characters aren’t terribly widespread in Christian-made novels. But even when these novels don’t turn non-Christian characters into cartoons, the novels don’t always present compelling arguments for the non-Christian’s position.

Lani Forbes’s Mesoamerican-inspired fantasy The Seventh Sun is one book that does present non-Christian characters who are complex and sympathetic—and even dares to portray people who defend human sacrifice, of all things.

One of the original Dune novel’s arguably best portions did not appear in the 2021 film. I’m speaking, of course, about the infamous dinner scene. Duke Leto Atreides and Lady Jessica invite a smuggler, a banker, and an ecologist for a royal banquet. This sets up a dinner theater performance featuring the secretive characters.

Many fans felt disappointed to see this scene cut from the film—even if the scene’s internal nature would make it hard to portray effectively onscreen. Dune author Frank Herbert uses this scene to establish many of the story’s hidden tensions, along with the sense of shrewdness that House Atreides possesses.

Today we will explore that virtue of shrewdness (or cunning), following after last week’s part 1 that examined how Duke Leto’s nobility shows how Christians can live in a hostile world. In that article, I unpacked what it means for Christians to live in negative spaces and how Leto constantly displayed nobility against pressing odds, and how Leto’s fictional portrayal can give Christians a model to emulate.