Graphic by iStock/ByllWill

December 8, 2009 | It is a line that would make many Christian leaders sit up and take notice: “If you’ve been redeemed, I wouldn’t want to be,” blurts Hazel Motes in Flannery O’Connor’s “Wise Blood.”

Motes' pronouncement jumpstarts the imagination and causes us to take stock of our own lives. Are we skimming along the surface of Christian faithfulness and leadership? Driving on cruise control? Is there any spark within our work that makes any difference at all? As one of my students said upon first encountering Motes, “Shoot, if I was half as excited about proclaiming Jesus Christ as Hazel Motes is about denying him, my county would be on fire for the Lord!” Fictional ministers such as Motes can awaken Christian leaders to fresh perceptions of our vocations and renewed commitment to the practices that guide our work.

Some fictional pastors were created by their authors to wake up the complacent Christian leader or poke a stick in the eye of moribund institutions. Some writers, with good reason, lambaste the church and its leadership. A character Rita Mae Brown’s novel “Bingo” says, for example, “If God is so smart, you’d think he’d hire better help.” Satire has its place, reminding us of how short we fall from realizing our own ideals. Yet satire is not the only way fiction writers deal with Christian leaders.

In researching my book, “Preachers and Misfits, Prophets and Thieves: The Minister in Southern Fiction,” I discovered a colorful array of characters who speak vital words to the church today. Many of the best fictional ministers are theologically savvy practitioners of Christian ministry. These include Gail Godwin’s liturgically grounded Episcopal priest, the Rev. Margaret Bonner in “Evensong;” Clyde Edgerton’s word-intoxicated Pentecostal evangelist, the Rev. L. Ray Flowers in “Lunch at the Piccadilly;” Martin Clark’s always-reforming Baptist minister, the Rev. Joel King in “Plain Heathen Mischief;” and William Hoffman’s prayerfully exasperated Presbyterian pastor in “A Question of Rain.”

When we extend the circle beyond Southern fiction, we discover the pull of clergy characters of many other writers, such as Marilynne Robinson (“Gilead” and “Home”), Alice Munro (“Pictures of the Ice”) and Tobias Wolff (“The Missing Person”). These fictional ministers come at us with such creative force and depth of perception that they coax and sometimes shock us into our own vocational skins.

Of course, fiction writers do not tell their stories primarily to instruct the church or its leaders. As artists, they write because of their own desire (some would say “calling”) to create. As writer Doris Betts says, “I am not selling God wrapped in my plain brown stories.” Fair enough.