[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
Sounds like fun. Seriously.
Just a nitpick, though. Orson Scott Card is a devout Mormon and many of his books directly - the rest indirectly - reflect his faith. Without getting into the debate over whether Mormonism is Christian or not, I think that the Christian publishing world considers Mormon fiction to be a separate category. And while specialty Christian publishing houses existed earlier, as a publishing category and phenomenon the field really has only existed for about two decades or so, long after Canticle was published.
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Bear with me here, the computer I’m using hates me, and obviously Christian Fiction. I’ve lost two versions of this post, so far, and I hope not to lose another, but… 
To address the most recent of your points first - let me discuss a bit about why I mentioned Orson Scott Card, and that specific work of his. I agree he’s a very open Mormon, and has used his fiction to proselytize for his religion, some works more than others, of course. But I choose specifically to mention Speaker because it read to me as a very favorable view of Catholicism, both the cultural aspects as well as the religious ones. I know, when the next book in that series came out, I’d had a book store clerk complain to me that the author had spent much of Xenocide giving a positive view of Mormonism. I told the clerk I’d expected him to give equal time in the series to his own religion, after the good words he’d given Catholicism in the previous book.
I don’t equate Catholicism with the whole of Christianity - but even if you accept the idea that Mormonism is outside of Christianity (a position I agree with some days, and disagree with others) I think Speaker should count as well-written Christian fiction, on it’s own. (Before you go off on this, please read the rest of the post - I’ll explain the definition I’m using, and I realize that for most people in this thread it is a highly flawed definition.)
Which brings us to the points you’d raised in post #19 in this thread.
After thinking about things overnight, I’ve come to the conclusion that in addition to my errors from going with outdated data, what we’re really arguing rests in different definitions. And for the sake of this discussion your definition is the mroe common one - which makes it, I believe the more correct one.
I’m an SF/Fantasy reader, mostly. I read other fiction, as well, but I tend to look at a lot of things through the filter of someone who has felt in the past that his taste in fiction is being marginalized, because the Powers That Be don’t think that serious literature can be written within that genre. If a book has things that I consider SF (especially) features, such as not-yet realized technologies, taking place in the future (at the time of the writing of the work), or simply an exploration of current trends taken to extremes, I’ll tend to think of it as SF. Whether or not the marketing, or the readers, agree with me or not. So, I view such relatively recent works as The Handmaid’s Tale, and The Time Traveller’s Wife as SF, even though I’d met and talked to several people telling others that it’s okay to read them, they’re not really SF.
So, when I think of the expression Christian fiction, I use the same decision tree. Is the work in question one where the story has questions of Christian faith and morality as a signifigant, and sympathetic, part of the plot? If the answer is yes, I will tend to think of such works as Christian fiction, whether they were marketed that way or not. Hence my view of things like Canticle for Liebowitz as being Christian fiction, even though it predates, as you say, the modern publishing model of Christian fiction by several decades.
What I have to accept and concede, however, is that while my definition is not invalid - it’s also not the common perception. You, and others in this thread, are talking specifically about things published as Christian fiction, not fiction published in other genres with a Christian worldview.
Which brings me back to where we’d orginally had our rupture - when I started talking about “well-written Christian fiction.”
What I was thinking, when I used that phrase, was that it described that subset of well-written fiction which happened to have a Christian worldview. I tend to be very suspicious of ‘message fiction,’ to use Robin’s excellent phrase. In my experience (which I have to admit is out of date with respect to the publishing genre of Christian fiction) most message fiction begins with a message, then tries to fit a plot around that. Characters sometimes even get into the writing. More often than not the works I’d read seemed to have characters that were little more than a return of Everyman , with all the individuality that implies.
To my mind the first, and most vital, test of any work of fiction is: Does this story work for the reader, viewer, or listener? If a work cannot pass that first test, it fails of the label ‘well-made fiction.’ Again, my experience with message fiction is that the writer’s first test, and even more importantly the publisher’s first test, is: Is this the right message? If the answer to that is yes, it seems any other storytelling sin is forgivable.
Now, one of the links you’d provided mentions that modern Christian fiction is “not your grandmother’s Christian fiction.” It’s quite possible that in the time since I last looked at the publishing genre of Christian fiction they’ve fixed what seemed to me to be the major flaw in their offerings.
Given the success of the Left Behind series, in spite of the problems I keep hearing about it, I’m not so sure they have. And not so sure that their target audience shares my view about the primacy of the story over anything else.
Oh, for Robin, another question for you, if I may: I know you’ve said you’re a Jew, but do you mind sharing what branch of modern Judaism you belong to? Just an idle curiousity, of no particular importance, so if you don’t care to answer, I won’t be bothered. (Though I’d be shocked to hear you were orthodox or ultra-orthodox.)
