The Old Life Theological Society posted a reaction piece by D.G. Hart titled “The Protestant Novel?” in which he considers “whether Protestantism has produced novelists the way that Roman Catholicism allegedly has.”

To answer that question he turns to Wikipedia and writer David Lodge, who writes, “If there was ever such a species as the Protestant novelist . . . Mr. Updike may be its last surviving example.”

Hart concludes, “Protestants intuitively know (but often refuse to admit) that novels don’t need to be Christian, that the question of whether a novel is Christian is actually silly. Some of the worst novels have tried to be redemptive, while some of the best don’t make the slightest reference to religion, let alone sin and grace.”