When I first stepped into the Bookstagram, Booktok, and BookTube spaces in 2021, I was shocked at the Romance community’s luridness. My first reflex was to try to have a laugh, to poke fun at the blue barbarian and man-chest romance novel covers and other clichés, like the growling MMC with a Coke-can sized member. But every time I tried, I felt checked. It felt wrong. And within minutes, I deleted my post.
I didn’t self-censor my thoughts because I was afraid of backlash from the smutty romance crowd. I pulled back because I felt like I was missing the target, the real issue at hand, and setting a bad example for Christ.
As I made more connections with Christian authors, I saw a collaborative movement to speak out against the harms of written-pornography as well as vulgar language and explicit violence. The best of these tried to educate using studies of addictions and the effects of porn on the brain. The worst of these used rage-bait titles and doubled down on emotionally-stoked comment sections by thumping Bible verses. Both failed miserably. When I tried to steer these Christian authors toward the heart of the issue, they doubled-down, often with “God called me to speak out on this,” and “This persecution is a sign that I am doing the right thing.” I was eventually ignored.
The Root Issues
By 2023, I’d come to realize that Christian concern with piety and the Arts and Entertainment Industry’s ability to inflict moral harm on the consumer is a complex and deep-rooted issue, let alone a touchy subject for most. But to be fair, the freedom to write and read explicit romance is just as complex a social issue for feminists and secularists.
For Christians, sin is a life or death of the soul issue. For secularists, Christians pushing for Christian values (aka, the abolition of a sinful behavior in any aspect of society) is a religious infringement on personal freedom and choice. It was soon after the assassination of Charlie Kirk when conversations around Christian Nationalism resurged, that I decided to take a closer look. I noticed that many of the Christian Authors who were the most outspoken about smut proudly identified as Christian Nationalists, or clung to a few of its ideals. Understanding Christian Nationalism helped me see this conflict from a new perspective.
The Culture Crusade
With the recent push to remove sexually explicit material from reach of children in school and public libraries, otherwise known as book banning, I grasped a new understanding of bookstores and libraries as secular spaces. Despite South Central Pennsylvania having a high Mennonite and Amish population, I realized how I never see that demographic present at book signings and bookstores. Apart from occasionally visiting Christian bookstores to snag a Christian Romance novel, they have their own specialized bookstores that sell a VERY limited selection of books for primary education and religious edification.
Out of curiosity, I tried to imagine hosting book events and owning book stores that excluded the kinds of content Christian Authors and readers avoid. And it was then I realized why literature spaces are by nature, and should remain, secular. I am not discounting the value of Christian book stores. I am emphasizing that the only way Christian book stores can exist, is in relation to secular book stores. If Christian Book stores and their materials were the default of our society, due to a Christian Nationalist establishment, they would simply be “Book Stores” and all other book stores would be anti-establishment spaces, and illegal, underground operations.
This would mean that writing, and therefore thought was legislated and controlled by one religion, and most likely in a way that not all factions of Christianity could agree upon. The only way to have a free society, is to have secular, inclusive spaces. That way, we can have Freedom of Choice (with consequences), like God gave humanity in the Garden of Eden. And freedom of religion, like the founding fathers instituted in the Constitution.
Many Christians like to claim that the existence and promotions of books and entertainment containing secular, anti-Christ, or neo-Marxist ideologies are a dire persecution of Christian values. Christian book stores and the Christian Book Association are a relatively new response to the secular entertainment industry. Since the dawn of Christianity, Christians shunned, or were forbidden from attending plays, circuses, theatre, operas, and shows. In Greek and Roman theatre, sexual acts were commonly simulated by way of exaggerated phalluses, innuendo, suggestive dancing, and raunchy humor. The Hayes Code of the 1930s and 40s policed the film industry before being replaced in 1968 by the MPAA rating system. By the 1950s, the Christian Book Association became an intermediary between publishers and book sellers, and by the late 1980s, the Purity Culture Movement happened. All of this in less than a century.
I’m not suggesting that we forsake the pursuit of righteousness and truth in our culture. But I must emphasize that if we lose the perspective of the kingdom of God as a kingdom of souls and renewed hearts and minds, and make political change the tool for winning souls, we make politics our idol. And any cultural decline will bring us despair. Our attempts to fight the culture war, to demand purity and righteousness of a pagan society will make us loose sight of what Jesus asked us to do. The moment we stop driving at the right goal, we cannot effectively preach the Gospel to the lost.
Our Inability to Define the "Enemy"
Christian Authors who campaign against smut in fiction are never able to define exactly what they’re against. They do sometimes identify offending titles to avoid. They know how to define Clean and Closed Door. They like to draw the line at kissing and hand-holding. They know how to state their own personal boundaries. But they consistently attack “Smut” without proving when and where a sentence or passage becomes enticing toward sin or pornographic. “They’ll know it when they see it.” That’s a matter of personal conviction, as we saw with the controversy around Francine Rivers’ “Redeeming Love” going to film. They’ll consistently reduce the Biblical Song of Songs to tame, spiritual allegory, as much of the erotic poetry was lost in translation. And they have all the studies proving the harms but no way to help you identify it other than an invitation to read the Clean/Closed Door books they wrote. Sadly, it appears that their method of winning readers and making sales is to attack the rest of the Romance genre.
The United States judicial system has been unable to clearly define pornography, especially of written material, due to the First Amendment.
I dare assume, some would happily give up this freedom in exchange for safety.
By now, you’ve grasped that the issue Christians have with objectionable content of any kind in arts and entertainment has a lot more to do with the desire to create a Christian society and how any government that could assuredly produce that would abolish freedom of speech. This is a Kingdom of Heaven on earth issue. This is a legislating Christian values on the whole of American society to eradicate sin, issue. This is a “We can fix it on our own, thanks, Jesus.” issue.
For centuries, religious leaders forbade the reading of novels in general, and then attacked romance novels from their birth, calling both a “moral danger” to women, boys, and society at large. Reading and writing for early Christians was functional, and not for pleasure, as is still visible in any Mennonite or Amish bookstore. The fact that “Christian fiction” has become a widely accepted thing has a lot more to do with the Industrial Revolution and Capitalism’s demands for the work-force to be literate. That novels exist and the masses are able to read them is something for which we have the Scriptures and Tyndale to thank, since a few heroes of the faith deemed it necessary that all people should be literate so that they can read the Scriptures for themselves. I believe it was these shifts in public education that pushed Christians to write their own novels and establish their own market. Which means, Christians carved out their own niche within a secular space.
The Golden Age of Christian America
Now, some Christians seem to want to legislate literature to be what entertainment was in the Good Old Days. The days when books and films didn’t contain any of the bad language and debauchery the Hayes Code aimed to suppress. When books and films weren’t actively destroying the morals of our youth and our women, and drag balls hadn’t been happening on US soil since the 1860s. Or the good old days of the 1200s-1500s, when everyone was chaste and not at all drunken. Or the glorious days of the pagan Greco-Roman entertainment, when immoral Satyr and Dionysus theatre didn’t exist, and where society at large would’ve never forced enslaved humans to fight to the death in combat against man and beast. Or perhaps the days of the early church when fornication and eating foods sacrificed to idols was not an issue.
Sexual images and material have been around since the dawn of time. Look to the pediments of any archaic pagan temple and you’ll find erotic scenes carved in marble, limestone, and granite. How do the Apostle Paul or Peter address this in their letters to the churches?
Christianity has always existed within a secular, fallen, pagan world. And a world that actively slaughters Christians for their profession. And Christ never came to establish his kingdom in this cosmos, this world order, but in our hearts. He never tried to overthrow the Imperial Roman Rule or laws, but instead railed against the legalistic burdens of righteousness created by the Jewish Religious Establishment. When addressing sin, Jesus never spoke to the symptom, but to the pain behind it. His words circumcised hearts and asked the sinner to “Follow Me,” promising a lightening of burdens, of peace and rest.
Only after the fiery passing away of this world will He establish His New Kingdom. Even in the writings of Paul and Peter following Christ’s Ascension, they speak of subjecting oneself in obedience to the powers and authorities of whatever secular nation you are in. Not in bowing down to their idols or participating in their debauchery, but in living peaceably and being image bearers of Christ to everyone around you. They never spoke of legislating Christian virtues into law or of enforcing piety upon neighbors. And they definitely understood the very high probability of being killed for their faith.
If the New Covenant of Grace doesn’t legislate the day to day behavior of a Christ-follower, but leaves that correction to the indwelling Holy Spirit, then why do Christians feel a need to legislate the actions, entertainment, thoughts and ideas of a secular society at large?
Changing the world starts with changing the heart. And while sharing the harms of unhealthy relationships and graphic depictions of sexual violence in fiction feels like warning a friend away from drinking from a poisoned cup, what we’re really doing is addressing the symptom of a deeper pain. It’s like telling a cutter to stop self-harming. Or telling a broken heart to just stop taking pills and drinking alcohol. It misses the mark. It falls short of how Jesus would address the issue.
Give People Jesus and Let Him Do the Cleaning
We’re too focused on scrubbing away the action that sin produces, much like a parent who punishes their child for a bad habit, while failing to address the cause of the behavior.
I can hear someone screaming at me now, “But the entertainment industry is corrupting children everywhere! It’s so much worse than it was fifty years ago.”
When a home comes to Jesus, the guardians of that home will be responsible for what their children are exposed to and protect them accordingly.
The enemy wants us so busy fighting the symptoms that we don’t have time to treat the illness. Every age and its moral thinkers blamed a unique vice for moral decline. And they claimed it was appallingly worse than the last generations’ degenerates. But every human is born into corruption. The decay is is hardwired into our DNA. This is why the Lord says, “You must be born again.”
Jesus’s command to Preach the Gospel was to Heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, cleanse the lepers, bind up the brokenhearted. This is service. This is love in action. This is hands on hospitalization. This is the Kingdom of Heaven within you, spreading Light to others.
Secular spaces holding humanistic, apostate, anti-Christ, lewd, idolatrous, and sensual content will exist for as long as this world order exists. Christ did not ask us to establish a kingdom of this world for Him to come back and assume rule over. His throne is not in Washington D.C. among all the pagan, Greco-Roman and Babylonian symbols. He asked to inhabit the kingdom of our hearts.
When you enter a secular space like a library or bookstore, you cannot foist your religion, or religious values upon it by suppressing the thoughts and ideas held in the volumes its offers.
The problem with posting against smut or other content objectionable to a Christian conscience is that in doing so, we’re giving people religious practice and trying to apply moral principles instead of giving them Christ.
We’ve confused piety with the Gospel of Salvation. We’re trying to manufacture righteousness to bring them closer to God, which goes against Grace (Romans 6:14.) You can rub religious practice and moral principles on someone all day and it won’t scrub sin from their heart. It won’t change the way they desire to write, read, think, speak, or act. We like to think our legalism will convict the sinner. Our fluffy, pious Christian fiction has deluded us with fantasies of sinners falling over and beating their breasts, faces tear-stained with repentance midway through our pedantic sermons disguised as entertaining stories. We’ve preached to the choir for so long, we’ve forgotten that sinners are in need of a medic. We’ve forgotten that it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convict hearts.
We Condemn the Sick Person for Having Symptoms of Illness and then say it's our duty to "Call Out Sin."
Some may think me weak or complacent with the world. But I well know our tendency to try to create righteousness in a sinner’s life before we receive them into our fellowship. It’s as if we believe a person has to live free of sin for a time before Jesus can save them.
17 When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
The scriptures that deal with calling out sin are for calling out sin within the church, first privately with the goal of restoration, and secondly with witnesses, all with the goal of reconciliation. This is familial correction among the Body of Christ. The Gospel is the Good News that shows the sinners that there is a way to escape death and live a life free of sin by Grace through Faith. And Grace will then produce Good Works.
The Things We Call Sin Are Effects of Sin
Smut is most often a portrayal of an act Christians consider to be sinful. The act of reading smut stems from desire: for connection, for happiness, for self-worth, for escape. All of these desires are good desires in the right context, but the desire is being fed with something that doesn’t satisfy. It’s empty. It falls short of what God intends for us to have.
Early Christians didn’t tell the girls who had been used in pagan religious rites that they were like chewed up gum, a licked cupcake, torn paper, or a used car. Sex was not a sin too staining for the blood of Jesus to wash away. And ironically, it’s the churches of Purity Culture America who’ve protected sexual predators, and applauded pastors for confessing their sexual sin, saying that the pastor may keep his position in the church because “we’re all equally guilty” and “if he was capable, you and I are capable as well.” Modern Church leaders write marriage help books that promote pornified views of women and sex; and I haven’t yet seen a Christian author who actively condemns smut also call out the sexual misconduct, false-teaching, and the silencing of women in abusive marriages within the American church.
We’re trying to pluck the mote out of the sinner’s eye, but we can’t see the beam in our own eye.
So We've Made Smut Shaming the New Slut Shaming
In your pursuit of bringing righteousness and truth to your culture, the next time you’re tempted to speak out against smut, or a work of fiction that presents an ideology that is contrary to Christ, ask yourself what you’re hoping to achieve by “calling out sin.” Then ask yourself how you hope those who encounter your message will respond. Do you believe God needs your words to convict the hearts of others? Or is this hidden pride?
Remember that Jesus touched the person he dealt with before he told them to “Go and sin no more.” Remember that Jesus never asked you to address symptoms. Your commission is to bear the image of Christ, to be salt and light, to be the healing hands and feet to the writer of that book, to the readers of those books. And when their hearts are converted and healed of sin, and their minds are renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 12:2) the symptoms of sin’s sickness will vanish.
14 How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
When I imagine a world where Christians have been faithful in their Commission, I see a world where immorality doesn’t sell like it used to. A world where, instead of addressing symptoms of leprosy from afar, condemning the sick for being sick, and the blind for being blind, Christian Authors are touching lepers in secular spaces and feeding the hungry.
About Laurisa Brandt
Independent Press and NYC Big Book Award Winning Author Laurisa Brandt writes immersive, character-focused speculative fiction balanced with rich world building and romantic subplot. While her novels embrace darker themes she aspires to offer readers hope and a bit of humor. She lives in rural Pennsylvania where she is at work on her next novel.
Fifteen years after his mysterious end, the Tourmaline Renegade returns to the capitol sector to fight for the Pyron people, to stop the genocide. Sable Commander Ambrosia is immediately transferred in with orders to capture or kill him, but the tides of political upheaval are rising, locking her in a deadly dance between conviction and duty, comrades and terrorists, the title of Sable Queen and a sable’s cross.
