Paul Elie in The New York Times

Paul Elie's essay, "Has Fiction Lost Its Faith?", is a must-read.

From The New York Times:

"This, in short, is how Christian belief figures into literary fiction in our place and time: as something between a dead language and a hangover. Forgive me if I exaggerate. But if any patch of our culture can be said to be post-Christian, it is literature. Half a century after Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Reynolds Price and John Updike presented themselves as novelists with what O’Connor called “Christian convictions,” their would-be successors are thin on the ground." 

The Fine Delight--both the website and the forthcoming print volume--is an extended answer to that question. Here's a short response: the complexity and concern is one of definition, a concern endemic to Catholic literature, endemic to Catholic theology and doctrine.

But I am fully thankful that Elie continues to pose this question to wider, often secular, audiences.