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When the first installment of The Ekron Initiative appeared, I was unsure what kind of responses I would get. One friend liked it. Another friend said “Oh no, not you too.”
He was sick of seeing Screwtape imitations, and couldn’t see the point of a new one.
In his defense, there are quite a lot of Screwtape imitations (I surveyed about ten during my research phase and that’s probably only a third of the ones available). So, it is a good question to ask. Why do another one?
Well, for me, it began with a stage. I probably should not admit that I first experienced The Screwtape Letters as a play instead of the book, but there we are.
It was 2011 and I was in a Colorado Springs theater watching The Screwtape Letters produced by the Fellowship for the Performing Arts (FPA). Screwtape, a posh demon in a smoking jacket, strides around his office, dictating letters to his secretary Toadpipe. Theology. Black comedy. Even some topical satire; in one scene, Screwtape talks about treating Christianity as a trend and picks up a large book. “Have you read any of these modern biographies? They are full of people trying out trends.” He holds up the book, showing MADONNA emblazoned across the cover.
I have a great time. The play is well worth seeking out if you ever get a chance. Curiously, my biggest memory came before the play. As my mother and I wait in the auditorium to be seated, she hands me my ticket and a packet. The packet contains FPA promotional material, including a 2010 newsletter with the essay “Why Good Theatre Matters” by FPA founder Max McLean.
McLean talks about starting the FPA in 1993, when “many influential voices within the Christian community were lamenting the influence of the arts on our culture. From the right there was condemnation. This resulted in alienating artists from the church. The left seemed to affirm artists uncritically. They recognized the importance of artistic expression but failed to address the cultural impact of their work.”
Furthermore, “very few serious Christians were actively engaged in artistic expression, especially in the theatre. If they did, they mostly kept it to themselves.”
McLean developed a response: art that engaged with Christian ideas, high quality enough to play in secular venues, supported by the Christian community.
I don’t remember if I finished McLean’s essay in the theater, or later that night. I do remember that finishing the essay felt like coming home.
My church experience was complicated. Being a second generation Missionary Kid who spent half my life overseas, I never had the born-and-bred evangelical experience that left so many of my friends confused, hurt, and deconstructing. However, I did sense a gap in the way most Christians I met talked about creativity. Too many conversations where chintzy Amish fiction seemed the only thing that qualified as Christian entertainment. Too few discussions about how to do things better (except with people around my age who were wondering if it was possible to make any changes).
I kept the newsletter in my desk at home. Ideas simmered for a few years. High school gave way to college. I entered a college with a rare publishing program, which happened to be a private Christian college. Christian history and philosophy courses gave me more food for thought. Books like the Barna Group’s book You Lost Me got me thinking about why my generation was apparently giving up on church, and whether creativity might help change that.
None of these ideas seemed to fit my main studies. I met a few professors who admitted they didn’t care for cheesy Christian novels. However, none seemed to have a clear vision of how to avoid becoming the sort of person who writes cheesy Christian novels. Seeking advice about whether it was possible to work outside the Christian publishing system did not lead anywhere either. One professor I highly respected talked about secular publishing in a tone that made it sound like he was mentioning something unhygienic.
Since the usual channels weren’t giving me clear answers, I did my own research. I read anything I could find on American evangelicals and the arts. I got a position writing weekly articles for The Odyssey Online and turned my research began a five-part article series.
Articles on misunderstanding what it meant to be in the world but of the world. On unease about anything that did not not fit the “Christian culture” label. On sidestepping tough questions and complexity. On what it meant to believe in a God who made a world and said “it was good.” On how our beliefs about the final things change how we live today.
The series didn’t get much response, other than from someone who thought I was too nice in an article that mentioned Roman Catholicism. I realized later that my tone made the series feel too much like a manifesto, not enough like an invitation into a discussion.
The semester after my series finished, I took a business writing where I had to write a mock business memo. I wrote a Screwtape-style piece, “Memo from One Demon to Another,” rediscussing my series ideas through a fictional character. I got a good grade and encouragement to do a collection of them.
A few months later, I stepped away from school for financial reasons. I worked jobs to save money for my last year of college, and used my downtime to write more memos. The Ekron Initiative during the next year. It proved easy to take my research and retell it as letters from one demon to another.
The challenge was keeping my anger out of certain memos, especially the ones written about indignation. Lewis said that if The Screwtape Letters worked, it was only because he wrote about temptations he knew. Perhaps it’s not surprising that by the time my Screwtape project was finished, I’d begun writing about my own temptation to anger.
More anger followed. I returned to school. I found more friends who sympathized with my concerns, but none of us could find any solutions to the problem. During my last semester, I had a conversation with a classmate about whether the Bible’s teachings about witnessing to the unreached might apply to working in secular publishing. Would it be possible to treat working outside the Christian bubble as something missional? Our professor happened to be in the same room, though class was not in session. She walked over and interrupted me. She said, “the thing with working in secular publishing is that it’s hard.” Then she smiled as if she had reprimanded a rude toddler. I did not tell her that I had been freelancing for a secular publisher for over a year.
I graduated college in 2019 and shelved The Ekron Initiative. By the time I wrote a new draft in 2022, my anger had somewhat cooled. I had traveled to the L’Abri center in Switzerland, and found some people who gave answers on what it might look like to have a Christian vision of excellent creativity.
Shortly after I returned to America, a Christian artist’s community advertised a monthly group reading The Screwtape Letters. We had a good time, especially during our final meetings… which occurred in a house on a street called Purgatory Drive. Several people in the group decided to start a writer’s critique group, and invited me in. I found a new space to talk about bad Christian art, but with people who were exploring ways to do it better. Somehow, The Screwtape Letters had brought me to a community that fed the hunger I had gained in 2011.
The largest surprise came a year later. I had found a home to publish The Ekron Initiative and was revising it one last time. The opportunity to visit my college for a conference came up. Some good friends would be presenting at the conference, so I attended. To my surprise, the keynote speaker spent a lot of time talking about the industry, but just as much about vision. He talked about how to treat writing as a craft, not just as a business. He talked about calling and practical skills interchangeably. He made Christian writing sound like something that could be done with excellence, and expressed no judgment on Christians who did not work in his area.
Two different sides of my writing life finally seemed to fit.
I am glad that my journey that began in 2011 has continued. I am glad to have experienced The Screwtape Letters as a play and as a book. I am glad the Screwtape format gave me an avenue to explore questions about faith, creativity, and why my particular faith community has struggled to do art well. I am glad that while I have had good teachers and bad teachers, I have not stopped wrestling with these questions. And I am glad that by some providence, I did not publish The Ekron Initiative until I had a chance to revisit somewhere I found disappointment and discovered new life.
I have no real answer for my friend who was sick of Screwtape imitations. I do know that I have tried to use the format to deal with questions that were worth exploring. Questions that I could have explored in nonfiction, but always came out dry or aggressive in that context. And I hope that the work gives readers what The Screwtape Letters has given me: open the doors to question flawed faith and seek a better way.