We have had a very long wait for a credible Christian fiction writer. C S Lewis was writing more than 50 years ago and since those days there really hasn’t been any credible Christian fiction. It is as though a new Puritanism has swept through Christian circles – an empahasis on The Biblical Word and a suspicion of things creative. OK so we’ve had The Shack, but while that was an interesting and successful book it wasn’t exactly quality writing. I for one sent it pinging into the bin after a few chapters.

Perhaps the shadow of Lewis’ brilliance hangs heavy over modern writers. Perhaps the whole genre of allegory has somehow been used up and taken as far as it can go?

Or is there a more subtle problem? A postmodern world is suspicious of over-arching belief systems and of didactic writing – writing that is trying to explicitly teach something. And so perhaps, even if Lewis were writing today he might look leaden and clumsy. A polemicist under the guise of a novelist.

It is with such questions pressing in that I knock gingerly on the door of Alister McGrath’s room at Kings College London. The room is piled high with books.

I’m here because this renowned academic and Christian apologist, the veteran of public debates with Richard Dawkins and others has written his first children’s novel, Chosen Ones.

It is an allegory. But perhaps most of all it is a risk. Reviews can be sharp and for a renowned thinker and academic to open himself up to writing fiction is quite something. Why do it?

“I’ve been telling students that we need to rediscover fiction as an apologetic medium and I began to feel morally inadequate because I hadn’t actually practiced what I preached. So I decided to launch in and write a novel.”

The novel in question is an allegorical story about two youngsters who find themselves in a mythical land that isn’t quite what it seems. But why move away from the academic writing and the Theology books...

“I belive in giving yourself a challenge. So I confronted myself, and said, ‘Alister you have got set in your ways you need a challenge, why not write a children’s book.’ This was a way out of my comfort zone. I am very much at ease in writing words of 100,000 words pitched at senior academic level. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever tried, but it was part of my own personal growth. I had to think myself into the mindset of 9-12 year olds and write something that would really interest them. It was a very significant process of learning for me. ...I think it has made me a better person. It has challenged me.”

This is some claim and points to McGrath’s enduring love of fiction and his sense that we Christians, and perhaps particularly we evangelicals, have tended to downgrade creativity...and downgrade novels. Why on earth is fiction left to the secular world? Is there any place for specifically Christian fiction?

“There is problem in English evangelicalism but not American...Take Richard Baxter’s comment that fiction really is about deceiving people. You can see immediately that Baxter has real problems with the idea of telling stories that are not gospel stories. I want to say that I recognise the issues here, but I also recognise that there is a battle for minds going on. My concern is that English evangelicalism I am sure for reasons that make sense to itself has in effect shut down on the creative arts.”

McGrath points out that Lewis believed that well-told stories captivate the imagination, open the mind to new worldviews.

McGrath says with some passion “this shutting down on the creative arts and this has deprived us of critical apologetic openings. Evangelicalism needs to rediscover the way God can use film, books and plays as instruments of grace. Things are rather different in the United States. They are streets ahead of us.”

But isn’t real fiction more than just a vehicle for messages – a didactic tool to change minds? Are we still painting fiction too small? F R Leavis pointed out that fiction is transformative in some deep and essential way, although he had to pull together a rather odd-ball canon of greats to back this up - Conrad and the rest. Perhaps God is in the very action of creating a world on paper.

“Well, fiction challenges us to think and ask whether we have got things right...I wouldn’t go as far as Leavis, but I would say that fiction begins processes that can lead to us being improved and does make us rethink and reconsider. I would want to contextualise Leavis’ comment in British culture right now...”

McGrath smiles and confesses a weakness for tapping people on the shoulder on tube trains and asking them why they read and what they get out of it. “For all those people on the train reading a novel on the way to work, fiction is a creative lung, remove it and life is devalued. People tell me they have no time for thinking in a busy job, but reading keeps their minds alive...that said to me that these people won’t read massive apologetics books on the train, but might read a good novel...and if it is a good one it will open up imaginative possibilities that they might follow through.”

But is fiction even more important than this? To Kill a Mockingbird has a central premise that we only understand others, and especially people who are very different to us, if we walk around in their shoes. Fiction like nothing else does this, It can feel more real than real life. Is there something of God in the sheer creativity of fiction that allows you to get out of yourself and into somewhere else?

“Well Tolkein says there is something of God in this. His wrote a famous poem, Mythopoieia in which he talks about us being sub-creators – God has created us and endowed us with the power of creativity and in exercising a creative ministry we are in some way undertaking a divine calling. Now I know what he means. He doesn’t mean all fiction is good fiction or all fiction is great fiction but that in trying to create a world we are thinking through issues of character, destiny and a series of things which matter profoundly.”

But surely there is still a timidity about Christian fiction writers. Chosen Ones is a ripping yarn, but it is also an allegorical work, set perhaps at a distance from the messiness of regular people’s lives. Could a Christian fiction be set in the middle of imperfect lives and broken families with all the moral uncertainties that we really face? Just think about Graham Greene, a Christian, and his morally ambiguous characters dealing with issues of faith, lust, power and greed...could an evangelical write in this kind of mucky depth at all? Why are Christian writers so timid about getting their hands dirty, when Jesus himself was involved in the rank business of messy lives?

McGrath smiles:

“There is a problem, an issue, here. I’m not sure if the problem lies with Christian writers or with the audience. Christian writers write for a mainly Christian audience and there are some scenarios that these readers may not be comfortable with...This leads to a disconnection. I suppose that even Lewis set his tale in a conventional middle-class family. Authors feel uncomfortable with presenting a narrative with recognisably Christian elements in a context that somehow subverts those elements...I am sure this will change over time.”

But what does Alister read? “As a child I loved Enid Blyton and Biggles...by the age of 10 I was reading fiction for adults...I still read fiction all the time...I have just finished the Millennium Trilogy which was marvellous – good characters, great pace and sense of place and a moral backbone. It is set in Sweden, and I began to mentally inhabit Sweden.”

And what about the comparison with C. S, Lewis. Is Alister worried by this? After all they both were Oxford Professors, both apologists, both from Northern Ireland and both wrote allegorical tales.

“I am concerned with this. I was reluctant to write fiction in case someone might say that McGrath is the new Lewis, or worse still, he wants to be the new Lewis. I have the highest regard for Lewis, but he was writing 50 years ago. I don’t see myself as the new Lewis at all. I just wanted to show that we can use fiction, that we need to be creative...”

Alister pauses for a moment and looks up and we get a deeper insight into McGrath’s motivation for his move into fiction. It isn’t that he sees himself as the new Lewis, or that he feels best equipped to open the eyes of evangelicals to the potential of fiction...it is simply that he has stood up to be counted, because no-one else has put their hand up first.

“Steve, I decided to fill the gap until someone better arrived...I wanted to show that this is a direction we need to go in...I am not the best person or the best writer of fiction... and I will be delighted when better authors come along. I want to encourage other people to take this up – a useful stimulus for people who are much more talented than I am. I will be so pleased if this happens.”

It may seem an odd motivation with which to launch into being a creative writer. But then again McGrath didn’t want to be the public academic face of the battle against the new Atheism. I remember Alister addressing a packed public debate at St Aldate’s church and having to endure much ridicule. Eventually a man stood up in the audience with a question that he framed with the remark that he too was a Scientist and a Christian...to which McGrath countered, “then why aren’t you standing up here doing what I am doing...”. Now, as then, McGrath has stepped forward because no-one else seems to have the courage to stand up and be counted.