In the Shadows of Faith

The Noir Approach to Christian Narratives

Christian Fiction is a genre that I am well acquainted with. Growing up in an Evangelical environment, I was bombarded with attempts to supplement popular media with Christian alternatives. At its best, this came in the form of talking vegetables; at its worst, there was Bibleman. The older I got, the further from reality Christian media seemed to be. Life became more complicated, morality grayed, and the WWJD bracelets disappeared.

Despite the harsh reality of life, the vast majority of Christian media remained dominated by happy-go-lucky feel-good dramas, where the central message is some variation of "Pray hard, and God will solve all your problems." To be fair, the intentions are good, and I cannot fault the filmmakers for trying to craft captivating storylines while being handcuffed by the limitations of MegaChurch Christianity. It is difficult to explore the complexities of human nature and the darker side of mankind when your philosophy is dominated by emotionalism.

The result is that when people hear a book or a film described as Christian, they roll their eyes and assume it will be intellectually shallow, some combination of the 700 Club and Hallmark. As an amateur writer, I found myself struggling to conceptualize what a compelling narrative with Christian themes would look like. I found the answer to the question in my love of Noir.

Noir is a particular subgenre of crime fiction that deals with the darker side of humanity. Andrew Pepper, in an essay published in The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction, described Noir as a genre that deals with "the corrosive effects of money, the meaninglessness, and absurdity of existence, anxieties about masculinity and the bureaucratization of public life, a fascination with the grotesque, and a flirtation with, and rejection of, Freudian Psychoanalysis." It is a genre that looks at humanity in the most Christian of terms, that of man as a fallen and corrupted being incapable of self-salvation.

In these dark and sordid tales lies the key to crafting compelling Christian narratives. What is a more powerful example of the power of Christ than the redeeming of those labeled irredeemable?

The Noir protagonist is a man forced to navigate a world solid with corruption, a world of vice and sin where nothing seems capable of escaping the darkness that haunts mankind. He is often a broken man, haunted by his own sin and selfishly motivated by the same vice that drives his enemies. He is nearly indistinguishable in motivation or morality from the antagonist that he faces. To put it simply, he is human.

Because of this humanity, his salvation can only be obtained through self-sacrifice. He must deny himself and all that he desires, often giving his own life for those who may very well squander the second chance he affords them. In other words, he must be Christlike.

The crucial insight isn't merely that Noir is the genre for telling Christian stories, but rather that to craft narratives that explore and effectively communicate Christian themes, we must confront humanity in its raw, unfiltered state—with all the suffering and pain inherent in a fallen world. It demands a realization that it is through the most unlikely characters that Christ reveals Himself. If the goal is to tell Christian stories authentically, one must intimately understand the darker facets of humanity, for it is in the shadows that the light shines most brilliantly.

-TJS