The Gospel in Secular Fiction

John Waters is an old college and seminary buddy of mine. He often writes reviews of books he's read on his blog. He just posted a review of three books including Bleachers by John Grisham. Since Grisham is one of my favorite authors, I sent him an email about a couple of other Grisham books I thought he might like. Although Grisham is a secular writer, he has a couple of books that could qualify as "Christian fiction." I thought I'd share that email here, in case any of you are looking for good reading material.

If you haven't already read Grisham, you've likely seen many movies adapted from his books, such as A Time to Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, and The Client, just to name a few.

Here's my letter to John:

I don't know how much of Grisham you've read. I think I've read everything he's published. He has two books that could easily have been marketed as Christian fiction based on their content, but he couldn't afford the pay cut ;).

The Testament tells the story of a drug addict attorney coming out of rehab who is sent to the Amazon Jungle to find the illegitimate missionary daughter of a billionaire who has left her his fortune, much to the dismay of his greedy "legitimate" children. The clear presentation of the gospel from both the missionary and a local pastor to this attorney, and the "new creation" transformation he experiences are a powerful testimony.

In The Last Juror his main character is a small town newspaper owner/editor who in the process of covering a murder trial, interviews one of the jurors who repeatedly and clearly shares the gospel with him and the readers.




On the other hand, The Brethren has a plot that made me feel like i needed to go shower and scrub myself with Ajax after I read it. It involved crooked imprisoned judges, baiting wealthy influential homosexuals with classified ads, and after obtaining explicit letters from these men, blackmailing them with the letters. The plot gets exciting when one of the victims turns out to be a "manchurian" type presidential candidate. Although it was a thrilling read, it left me feeling very dirty and I wondered how it could come from the same pen as the other two books.

If any of you have read other "secular" books that did a good job of sharing the gospel, I'd love to hear about it! Post a comment here.