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Several years ago, we carried in Encounter a profile of highly successful US novelist John Grisham, who is apparently a committed Christian. (One indication of his exceptional success is that he is making more money as a novelist than he made as a lawyer.) I had never read any of Grisham's novels. Shortly after the article appeared, my wife and I picked up his first novel, A Time To Kill, and began to read. We almost quit after the first chapter, which contains a description of the extremely brutal rape of a young girl. I later concluded that the detailed description was necessary to make sense of the plot; Grisham's point is that some sin is so awful that it deserves death as a punishment (the book's title comes from Ecclesiastes 3:3).
In spite of his Christian profession, Grisham's novels do not seem to be Christian. Many have been made into Hollywood movies with no concern on the part of the producers that they were too religious. His central characters rarely go to church, and the church is often portrayed as flawed, a mixture of good and evil. (Sadly, this may well be an accurate portrayal of the American church.) Grisham says that his novels are dark because they deal with the law and hence with evil.
Then came The Chamber. Grisham's fifth novel was thought by some to be a critique of capital punishment (the "chamber" is the gas chamber). Yet Grisham never said in the novel that capital punishment is wrong. The book rather seemed to deal with the inevitability of death as a just punishment for sin. The book, however, contains a remarkably clear presentation of the gospel, forgiveness through simple faith in Jesus Christ. This presentation was powerful, perhaps, because it was read by millions of non-Christian readers who had become Grisham fans through his other, less overtly Christian novels.
While none of Grisham's other books presents nearly as clear a gospel message as The Chamber, many of them deal with important moral issues of interest to Christians: greed (The Firm), environmental protection and political corruption (The Pelican Brief), organized crime (The Firm, The Client), unscrupulous big business (The Rainmaker) and the tobacco industry (The Runaway Jury).
Grisham's most recent novel, The Street Lawyer, has one of the least rivetting of Grisham's plots (although it is quite rivetting by most other standards). Yet it deals more clearly and passionately with a moral issue than any of his other novels. Grisham uses his popularity and his skill as a novelist to highlight the plight of the homeless. The lead character is so moved by the plight of the homeless that he turns his back on a partnership in a big firm, and the millions of dollars that go with it, in order to become a street lawyer dedicated to helping the poor in return for a very minimal salary. In the book, the church is generally portrayed in a positive light as being on the side of the homeless. This may not be a "Christian" novel, yet it may ultimately do more good than most of the poorly written romances that pass as "Christian fiction" these days.
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