Not the inflammatory topic you might think. Instead, I received my RITA books (note to non-romance readers: The RITA is the romance novel equivalent of the Oscars), and one of them is an Inspirational Historical. Of course, I ranked inspirational as the last genre I would like to receive, but historical was likely near the top. Ergo, the Inspirational Historical. I believe I can remain neutral, and judge the work a priori in terms of its quality. At least I hope I may. It wouldn’t be fair to judge it in any other way, and I pride myself in being as objective about things and issues as possible.
And I was listening to WFMU, which played some religious sermons, and included Psalm 23:4:
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”
which I sometimes hear as:
“Yay! Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
You can do this and so it well. If you need to just take the religion out of it and think of the inspiration. Lots of people go to religion for the inspiration of it. There is a lot to be frustrated with when it comes to religion. Tons that is not fair and more scandal then you can shake a stick at, but for lots of folks there is comfort.
I was brought up in many, many churches and hated and mistrusted organized religion for a very long time. I still look at lots of things with the screw eye, but I can take the whole spirituality thing for what it is.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death My mother would make me and my brothers recite this over and over to memorize it and I could not stand it. At that time yes, I would welcome that valley of death so, Yay! I hear ya. But now, and you will probably think I’m nuts, 30 something years later after finding the need for comfort of my own, I get it. The idea of not being alone when you so scared. I can now appreciate it and am happy to know the rest of it so that my imagination can pull that being close to me and ease my fears.
Too much for a blog comment? Maybe. I posted on the twins birthday today and with some hesitation used bible references because they worked and let the kids know it’s what I was feeling. Now I know there are some who will suddenly think I’m out there or have turned into my mother but it’s a chance I had to take to get the feeling a across. It was not about the religion but about the feeling.
All that being said, watch your book be all preaching and try and convert you to Christianity and my comment will be all bull crap!
I just went through something like this. One of my fellow members of the local RWA has just switched from historical to inspirational historical. Her first book in the genre came out in December. She asked me to review it for our newsletter, as I have reviewed her other historicals and enjoyed them very much. I was a bit nervous because, well, she is a nice woman and I was afraid I would hate what I’d read. But I was pleasantly surprised (although now I wonder why I was surprised, because at the heart of it, she is a good writer). True, some of the parts where the characters come back to their faith were a bit much for me, but for the most part, I stayed focused on the relationships and the story. I hope your reading goes as well as mine did!
I recently reviewed an inspirational historical about Anne Boleyn over at Scandalous Women, and I found it quite good, although she condensed Anne’s life to just over a year.