And please, don’t include the scriptures of a faith as fiction.
I read a lot of books as a kid and perhaps some of the characters were shown as attending church, or something similar. A lot of books, for kids anyway, seemed to ignore religion. But the first book I noticed a character as having religion, and recognizing it, was in, of all things. Heinlein’s Rocket Ship Galileo, his first juvenile.
One of the teens(who are building a rocket to fly to the Moon), goes to his father asking permission to make such a trip. His dad leaves the decision up to him, saying "It’s been a while since you stood up in front of the congregation and said ‘today I am a man’ " I learned a little by then and said to myself “Oh! He’s Jewish.”
Not much later, in another Heinlein juvenile, Space Cadet, the protagonist and a fellow cadet shelter from a disastrous rocket crash. When it seems safe the other guy peers over a wall and murmurs “Allah the Merciful!” So, he was Muslim.
In the Daredevil comic books, he was a devout Catholic, who, as a blind orphan, had been taken in by nuns. Added a level of depth (and guilt) to a fascinating character study.
Huckleberry Finn comes to mind, and perhaps Tom Sawyer which I read first but I’m not recalling a scene at a church or anything like that. Huck Finn doesn’t go much into religion since it’s narrator, Huck, is not interested in religion. I don’t recall any specifics mentioned but some kind of Protestant church is assumed, and that would have been just a generic American church in my mind at that age.
ETA: A little later on I came across Johnny Tremain. Johnny, a young man, has his hand ruined by spilling molten silver on it, which he consider punishment for working on the Sabbath.
Probably either Heinlein’s Space Cadet, or one of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ books. Corrupt shamans and tyrannical religions were some of Burroughs’ favorite villains.
I think that church services were mentioned several times in the later Little House books. And Laura and her sisters memorized Bible verses as young children. Religion, however, was not a large part of the stories.
If I remember correctly, there’s a scene at the beginning of “Tom Sawyer” taking place in a church, though I don’t remember if religion per se was a subject or just a church/religious service serving as a setting. I must have read that book first when I was about eight years or so, so it’s the first I remember.
This is a very interesting conceit! I am fascinated by my own memories of some books where I believe there was a religious component (and whether that was more my mindset at the time).
My thoughts:
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever - which was probably 2nd/3rd grade. Now that is an easy one as the premise is around a religious event, but it goes super moralistic as well.
Little House on the Prairie books, Little Women, The Little Prince - apparently children’s books used to contain far more religion!
And then the list of Maybes begin:
Five Children and It
Calypso (?) a book about two boys who find an old sailboat and resurrect it
Grounded (?) a 3rd grade class stages a play and invites the vice president all with the goal of raising enough money to make a glider
Two Against the North - two boys travel hundreds of miles together across the tundra and snow
I read many, many books but those were all between 1st and 3rd grade and to my mind they had significant religious overtones.
I was around the same age.The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is available on-line. Chapter IV starts with Aunt Polly conducting family worship, reading scripture, referencing Mosaic law and the Sermon on the Mount right off the bat.
Quite surprising to see how this looks now with adult eyes. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn so eclipsed Tom Sawyer that I’ve never been back to it.
This will be the actual answer for me, and a lot of others too I think. Thanks for pointing it out. I can’t quite resurrect the complete memory of first hearing or reading those lines but it made me smile to recall such innocence.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I guess. When I got to the Aslan parts I remember thinking “What the holy fuck is THIS?” Not that the real characters are in any way Christians, or are they?
A Wrinkle in Time, when Charles Wallace includes Jesus in his list of humans who were forces for good, along with Bach and Einstein. “This kid is the sharpest knife in the drawer…why is he bringing that Jew thaumaturge into this?” At least he called him “Jesus” and not “Christ.”
While it probably wasn’t the first fiction I read in which a character had religion, the one I have a clear memory of is the Uncanny X-Men comic book, late 1970s-early 1980s, when it was written by Chris Claremont. Kitty Pryde was Jewish, Nightcrawler was Christian of an unspecified denomination, Wolverine and Colossus were atheists, and Storm was some sort of very vaguely defined fictional pagan religion.
In the spin-off New Mutants comic book, Wolfsbane was a Scots Presbyterian, Mirage had traditional Cheyenne beliefs (or at least a white comic book-writer’s best good faith attempt to portray traditional Cheyenne beliefs), Sunspot was a mostly non-observant Roman Catholic.
Various character’s religious beliefs, or lack thereof, were a major plot point in a couple of issues where the X-Men fought Dracula, and they occasionally came up in other contexts. In particular, the hyper-strict version of Scots Presbyterianism Wolfsbane was raised with was a major element of her character when Claremont was writing her.
The X-Men “graphic novel” God Loves, Man Kills centered around religious bigotry and fanaticism, and was the earliest fictional treatment of those themes which I can remember reading.
The Narnia books are almost certainly it for me, because they were among the very first books, period, I ever read. Of course, my mom’s religious, so it was never any great secret or surprise that the books were fundamentally Christian.
The responses so far are very interesting, thanks!
With several folks remembering Tom Sawyer I thought I’d tell a story on myself. I did read it quite young. At one point, I remember a scene describing Tom’s discomfort in church, and the statement “It was a rellef when the benediction was pronounced and the service was over.” I thougt “Oh wow, benediction means it’s over.” So next Sunday , in our own hymnal, I found Benediction, and followed the service very closely so I’d know how long it was before we got out of there. And that’s how I learned to follow the liturgy in my own denomination, thanks to Tom.
Within the standard Judy Blume collection that every 80s classroom had, one of the books had a subplot of the lead character trying out different churches because her own family was multi-religious. Not sure atm which book that was.
