The Faith and Fiction Roundtable Discusses Small Town Sinners

The Round Table hosted by Amy at MyfriendAmy, is a group of bloggers who read books dealing with faith, religion and inspirational aspects. Six books were chosen this year and at the scheduled time we discuss the book and then post our thoughts on personal blogs. This years fourth book and discussion was:

Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker

Paperback 272 pages

Published July 19th 2011 by Bloomsbury

Review Copy

               
Does falling in love mean falling out of faith? Small Town Sinners is the story of Lacey, a small-town girl who is excited to star in Hell House, her church's annual haunted house of sin, until a childhood friend reappears and makes her question her faith.

Thoughts

The main theme underlying all the drama in this book was the topic of "Hell Houses"-

If you haven't heard of these before they are small productions (normally hosted by small Charismatic churches) that have teens or adults acting out different scenarios ie..teen suicide, drinking and driving and such. In this book the play acts out many of these same scenarios and a gruesome abortion scene which was over-the-top and reeked with condemnation.

The hell house theme also seemed to be the biggest topic within the FFT group with various opinions to what effect these type of "shows" really have. Personally Ive been to two of these, one as teenager in the 90's and one last year with my own daughter. The one I went to as a teenager was really cheesy, it had some kids drinking and driving in a car accident along with a teen suicide and what happened to all of them after death. Then some preacher yelled at us for about an hour and told us we were all gonna burn....I left that one (15) rolling my eyes.

The one I took my teen too was called The 99 and it went through scenes like texting and driving, a gang initiation, a teen suicide, a teen addicted to drugs and the end which had all of us go down an elevator to Hell, with people screaming in cages. After we left it sparked a very great conversation but my daughter found it to be overboard as did I..( I have to let you know too that The 99 is an open event, it took place outside, and not in an actual church building, so a lot of inner city teenagers were there, it was sponsored by one of the mega-churches in my area and a big group of us all went with the youth group). But never have I seen a reenactment of abortion or gay marriage like what was in this book, Ive heard of actual "Hell House" productions that feature stuff like this and my overall feeling is that they are used to scare teenagers into accepting Christ. Mostly the only people seeing these are ones in the community, so basically its aimed at the youth already there and unfortunately gives itself an open door for everyone to judge it, stereotype it and form an opinion without having seen one.

I knew going into this book I was going to encounter stereotypes, most secular YA** that depicts religion always has the typical blatant format and while I didn't have a problem with the way Walker presented the faith aspects in this novel, she made Lacey a very weak-minded character. I think I would have appreciated the novel more if the MC at least had a sense of her own faith before she began to question it. For me the book cast Lacey, a professing Christian as a brainwashed airhead, who questioned everything about it without really knowing what it was. Which to question is normal of course.. we all (those of us who have been raised in a faith) come to point where we must decide if our parents religion is what we believe, but none of Lacey's searching or questions really made sense with her lack of understanding. None of the questions though got answered in the book, I think in some places the author even skipped over some tough dialog, making the airhead teetering of Lacey's faith seem insufficient. Honestly despite the branch of Christianity the author chose to showcase, (the most extreme form of Pentecostal today) the book was pretty mild in its stances and never gets to deep. While Walker never makes fun of the Christian faith she presented it in a way that left readers with two scenarios, giving the impression that Christians are either:

A- Religious freaks or fundamentalists
B- Hypocrites

How sad....! No character represented in this cast of religion featured a level-headed, responsible adult that encouraged Lacey. Nor did any character balance the stereotype. Walker used her character to showcase a typical teen raised by radical Christian parents, yet in the grand scheme of things her parents really weren’t that radical in what they believed - despite the small town thinking- abortion, premarital sex and homosexuality- are all things taught as sins in most churches minus Episcopals maybe. Although I would argue these issues are very touchy subjects and ones that we vastly disagree on in the church.

Now I wont use this post for an abortion debate but I think that's mostly what I took from this book, the difference of what society thinks of abortion and what the church is teaching about it. I wanted to end this with a clip from a sermon I found to be a very bold take on the issue of the abortion debate. Mark Driscoll's message on abortion is the first preacher I've heard talk this openly and boldly....(Part two is even more bold than clip one).

That one tough to hear?........Do you need some Feel-Good faith today to water that message down?





So my question: 
Does the church have an obligation to water down its message in order to not offend people?

Most churches Ive been in and the things that Im seeing have watered down the message, many people want the feel good Joel Osteen- everything's going to be alright. Dont get me wrong Im sure there are still doom and gloom churches out there teaching Hell every Sunday, but a sweeping movement in the Christian culture is lukewarm watered down self-help righteousness instead of Christ.

Personally I want balance, I want encouragement from a pastor but I also want the truth that the Bible teaches, even if its hard to hear (like Driscolls thoughts above) I don't want condemnation, which I think the Hell Houses represent, nor do I want the -don't get down in dumps because if you have enough faith God will make you rich either. If I lived in Seattle, Driscoll would be my pastor, I guess for me personally I want the teachings that give it to me straight with no sugar coating.


Check out the entire Tables thoughts 

Book Addiction Book Hooked Blog Books and movies  Crazy-for-Books.com  Ignorant Historian Linus's Blanket My Friend Amy My Random Thoughts One Persons Journey through a world of Books  Roving Reads  Semicolon The 3 R's Blog // Reading, 'Riting, and Randomness  Victorious Café Word Lily

**Ok, so there are a few books I've read in YA that showcase Christian or religious family's in the general market with a positive light and those would be:


Bree Despain's- The Dark Divine
Sara Zarr's- Once was Lost