Safety has become a very important concept in Christian entertainment. Pick up any Christian parenting magazine that talks about healthy entertainment for your kids, any online guide to what entertainment Christians should or shouldn't indulge in, and you'll find it can almost all be summed up as, "anything outside this very specific zone is unhealthy …
C.S. Lewis and gothic horror? One of these things does not sound like the other. That's what I was thinking five years ago, where I started reading a book called Terence Fisher: Horror, Myth and Religion by Paul Leggett. Among other things it suggested that Fisher, probably best-known today for his gothic horror films made …
If you've read my blog for a while, you know that I like exploring the nooks and crannies where most don't venture. Whether it's little-known comedy screenwriters who created classic horror movies, underrated rock musicians, or poets who wrote fantasy novels about whales, I will gladly dive into a little-known subject and mine it for …
Continue reading George Lucas, Apocalypse Now, and Early Films
Every time this season comes around, a sort of mini-debate comes up in various churches. Can horror movies be good for Christians? What about the way that horror films frequently use religious imagery? What would would a horror film with a Christian message look like? I've circled around these questions in various blog posts, but …
This being the month of Halloween, it's a time to write about scary things. This year, I've talked about writers like Dorothy L. Sayers who were associated with the Inklings and sometimes wrote about dark things. At the very end of last year, I wrote about the dark, fascinating novel Nightmare Alley and its interesting …
Continue reading C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and other Christians Who Wrote Scary Books
Six years ago, I did a blog post about William Peter Blatty, the writer who provided one of the funniest movies ever made (A Shot in the Dark) and one of the scariest movies ever made (The Exorcist). I was mostly interested in the fact that Blatty had these two sides to his writing ability …
Continue reading Frank Peretti and William Peter Blatty: A Compare and Contrast
He was school friends with Jon Belushi and he won against Belushi in a comedy competition. His band toured with Peter Gabriel, who called the band "the future of American music." His collaborators included not just Gabriel, but also Robbie Robertson, Bono, and Jim Kerr of Simple Minds. Despite being a Christian who wrote insightful …
It probably goes without saying that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien changed fantasy with their works. While a lot has been written about their works, a lot less has been said about other Inklings like Charles Williams and Owen Barfield, or about the fantasy writers who were influenced by them. Writers like Walter Wangerin, Robert …
Continue reading Great Fantasy Writers (Who Aren’t CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien)
Charles Williams was an interesting fellow. He wrote supernatural thrillers about murders in publishing houses that turn out to be connected to the holy grail. He wrote theology books that usually called God mystical names like "the Omnipotence." He was great friends with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, and probably the only Inkling who was …
Continue reading An introductory article on Charles Williams
Frederick Buechner died yesterday. I haven't had the chance to read many of his works yet, but I discovered him in a class where we read "Faith and Fiction," where I discovered this line: The danger, I suppose, is that you start out with the idea that sainthood is something people achieve, that you get …
J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis played an important part in exposing me to fantasy literature, as did T.H. White with his Arthurian writings. They're not only great fantasy authors, but their work provides a great lens for asking important questions about Arthurian books and movies. Is a real warrior just a fighter, or someone like …
Continue reading Thoughts on Daniel Lowry’s The Green Knight
G. Connor Salter 