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The undercover revolution

THE UNDERCOVER REVOLUTION
By Iain Murray
Banner of Truth. 104 pages
ISBN 978-1-84871-012-2

Any thinking Christian will agree that what we read changes the way we think and act. We try to avoid the most salacious and stick to what seems wholesome; 19th-century novels, for example.

Iain Murray, however, wants to remind us that the massive growth novel-reading in the latter part of the 19th century, and the gradual acceptance of this as a respectable habit, sprang from a decidedly secular source. He hints that this then led to a national moral decline.

Murray’s stated aim is to alert his readers to the ‘injurious’ nature of much of fiction and his subtitle is the ambitious ‘How Fiction changed Britain’. He doesn’t, though, at any point really address this question head-on. 104 pages are just too few to do the necessary historical work. (I hope someone will take up his challenge and write about the impact of novel reading on the ideas and behaviour of the public.)

Intriguing case studies

What we are given instead are intriguing case studies of how prominent authors rejected the gospel. I found these biographies well written and engaging. The letter from R.L. Stevenson’s father to his apostate son, in particular, was very moving and preachers may well find powerful illustrations here. In this way the changing literary landscape of the 1850s to 1930s is lightly sketched, from Stevenson’s undercover rejection of God to Bertrand Russell’s open promiscuity and atheism. You can continue to map the trajectory yourself — to the present day of Dawkins and sexually explicit novels taught in schools.

Historical certainty

The second and shorter section is entitled ‘Is Christianity Fiction?’ and outlines the historical certainty of the gospel, implicitly suggesting the contrast between those fictions which degrade and the facts which transform. Clearly Murray is intending this as an evangelistic appeal, but it seems to sit awkwardly with the first part.

Altogether, the value of this book is in how it opens an interesting debate; it reminds me in part of Philip Johnson’s book Intellectuals, which exposes the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of significant thinkers.

This is a vital area; evangelicals need to engage critically with fiction and untangle how fiction impacts society and we need also to think how we, as individuals, are subtly influenced by the humanist values of the vast majority of novels, whether ‘classics’ or not.

Sarah Allen