Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A Writing in a Christian voice

Christianity is enormously broad and most Christians know little about it. Christianity is so broad that unless your character is meant to hold a special position within a specific Church that it ...

posted 5y ago by TimothyAWiseman‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T11:23:50Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43792
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar TimothyAWiseman‭ · 2019-12-08T11:23:50Z (almost 5 years ago)
## Christianity is enormously broad and most Christians know little about it.

Christianity is so broad that unless your character is meant to hold a special position within a specific Church that it is hard to write in the wrong voice. There are people that call themselves Christian that hold an enormously broad system of beliefs. Even merely looking at the major groupings The Catholic Church holds very different beliefs from the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints who in turn have marked differences from the Southern Baptists (the largest Protestant denomination in the US) who are markedly different from the Greek Orthodox Church. They all will call themselves Christian.

And those are just looking at the reasonably mainstream groupings. There are numerous smaller denominations and even cults that call themselves Christian with an enormous variety of beliefs, some of which could be considered so far beyond the pale that more mainstream Christians may deny that those small denominations are Christians at all.

Also, most adherents choose their church based on convenience rather than carefully scrutinizing the beliefs of their church, and even the ones that carefully scrutinize the doctrine may elect to ignore some minor differences in choosing their church. I am an active believer (though a bad one) and I attend a church (occasionally) where I have minor but genuine disagreements with my pastor.

With this enormous variety, you almost have to actively try to write in a voice that is clearly and absolutely non-Christian. It would be hard to even say that a statement that most Christians would vociferously deny is even truly outside a Christian voice. A plausible argument could be made that the [Baha'i](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1'%C3%AD_Faith) Faith is a type of Christianity for instance and they also believe that Muhammad was a prophet.

Also, most Christians do not know much about their faith. Many Christians do not know what transubstantiation is, much less have an opinion about it.

In short, many people may disagree on whether something is in a Christian voice or not because it does not match their view of Christianity, not because it is truly outside of a Christian Voice. What falls within Christianity though is tremendously broad.

## If you want to write about an expert in a certain denomination, consult with experts in that denomination and read specific material about it.

Things change when your main character is supposed to be an expert within a certain denomination. A Baptist Preacher will know precisely what transubstantiation is and have strong opinions on it along with a host of other things like what would constitute a miracle and a Catholic Priest will have different opinions on those topics. At that point you are not writing about a generic Christian voice, but about someone knowledgeable in a specific branch of Christianity.

The best answer there is to seek the opinion of someone who is an expert in that branch, or at least a serious practitioner of that particular branch, rather than just a Christian that chose that church out of convenience. If you cannot do that for some reason, then read the writings of that branch and get a feeling through that about what your chosen branch believes and how they discuss it.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-03-20T00:34:22Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 3