"Christian" Authors.

First Thing's Evangel blog points to a Christian author who no one would ever think of as a "Christian author":

This has nothing to do with the Left Behind books by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye.


Nor am I referring to writers behind recent surprise hits like Facing the Giantsor Fireproof.

In fact, the individual I mean to talk about isn’t considered part of the Christian subculture at all.

He has sold over 400,000, 000 books. According to his website, the number is growing by about 17 million a year globally. He has made a reputation writing about evil, but his most popular character is one of the finest fictional human beings you can imagine.

Who am I talking about? Who has those kinds of sales figures and yet sets forth a philosophy which embraces the Christian faith, tradition, and a generally conservative philosophical viewpoint?

The answer is Dean Koontz and he’s been dominating the supermarkets, airports, and bookstores for a few decades now. His career has successfully spanned a book business that was once about names like Crown and B. Dalton and then moved to Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. He has little need to worry about the transition to ereaders. He’ll sell just as well there.

There are probably two reasons that Koontz has never been labelled as a "Christian writer."

First, unlike the other authors mentioned, Koontz isn't trying to write an evangelical tract.  He's writing entertaining stories about a character he likes.  A character that has been described by - in an interesting bit of the "Kevin Bacon Game" - First Thing's "Second Hand Smoke" blogger, Wesley Smith, as a "a life of a saint."

But according to Koontz, he was never aware of that until Smith pointed it out to him.

So, the lack of self-consciousness in the religious message distinguishes Koontz from the very self-conscious "Christian writers" who inhabit the shelves of Bereans Christian stores with their wooden characters and didactic plots.

Second, Koontz is Catholic.

I was listening to one of the Odd Thomas stories when it gradually dawned on me that Koontz had to be Catholic.  His description of Odd Thomas' very odd and non-catholic view of the afterlife seemed to be very Catholic:

I noticed some things in the book that seemed, well, familiar. For example, Odd mentions that his destiny after life is "between two fires." He ponders the dark place in Hell that those who would kill the disabled, either before or after birth, will inhabit. And he puts a G.K. Chesterton observation about those who believe in nothing will believe in anything into the mouth of a deputy sheriff.

Perhaps those two facts are sufficient to keep him out of the "Christian bookstore ghetto."