This evening I went to the Louisville Free Public Library for the first time in at least a year. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, but was merely accompanying my mom and looking for a book that seemed suitable for poolside reading. In addition to using the Dewey Decimal system numbers, the LFPL also identifies books with little stickers that help readers who are searching for books of a particular genre. Mystery books are marked with a sticker showing a magnifying glass. Westerns are marked with cowboy hats. Sci-fi/Fantasy books are also marked, although I can't remember the symbol. (Maybe UFOs??) These books have been marked for as long as I remember, and I've never thought much about it. The markings don't create categories but simply identify books belong to well-established genres. Today, however, there was a new marker on quite a large amount of books. The new marker was a cross and was labeled as Christian Fiction. I looked but didn't find any books marked with Stars of David or other such symbols. There was no Jewish Fiction, Muslim Fiction, Hindu Fiction, Buddhist Fiction, Atheist Fiction, etc. So what, I wondered, makes Christian Fiction worthy of its own special designation? Is it really that requested of a category? If it weren't identified as such would Christians not know what to read? Kind of insulting, isn't it? It seems to me that it is saying that if you're a good Christian this is the kind of fiction you should be reading and all the rest is god-forsaken trash to be left for the hell-bound non-believers. God forbid they pick up something like The Power and the Glory (I'm sure the whisky priest didn't make the list) or Their Eyes Were Watching God (faith without religion...now what is that?). I can't help wondering what exactly is Christian Fiction and who designates it as such? Is it fiction that has God (the conventional Christian God of course) as a central character? Is it fiction that deals with Christian churches, ministers, and evangelism? Is it the type of fiction that is reprinted in magazines like Catholic Digest? Or is it the "Left Behind" series?
Now the "Left Behind" series is one scary set of books. Maybe they should be cross-referenced as horror. I haven't read them, and I have no intention to, but there are millions of people around the world turning the books into bestsellers. Perhaps these numbers are the inspiration for the Christian Fiction label. From what I've heard about the books, they are books that vehemently preach Christianity as the one true way. Anyone who is not Christian is not simply living in the dark, but is actually despised by God. Whatever happened to the benevolent God figure I grew up with? Anyhow, the scary thing about these books is that they preach hatred toward non-Christians. They not only depict the terrible destruction that non-Christians will fact at the hand of God, but they celebrate it. In a sense, it's hate literature. It's literature that had it been written by a group of Muslims would be denounced as terroristic. Being that it's Christian though, we accept it or look the other way. Now I don't think we should ban the books (that's the job of the Christian right towards any book that is not as close to Christian fiction as they would like it to be), but I do think we should take it upon ourselves to have open and loud discussions about such books and the implications they have for our world. I'm not going to go on any longer about this, because Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times already wrote a very thoughtful article on this that I can't better. I suggest you read it.
I find all of this disconcerting. Why do we all keep turning to religion as the answer when time and time again it has shown to be the most divisive thing this world has known? If you don't believe me, reference the Crusades, the Holocaust, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the current bouts of terrorism rocking the world. Why is our way (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever)always the right way? Why can't we see that whatever God it is we believe in, there's no way this is what he/she/it could want for the world? Why can't we just drop all the designations?
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