USING RELIGIOUS PASSAGES AND QUOTES IN YOUR WRITING

RELIGIONS OFFER WRITERS A PLETHORA OF POSSIBILITIES AND MEANING IN MANY FASCINATION WAYS

There’s a term in literature for writing about one thing so that your readers think of something else. It’s called “signification.” So, for example, if you say, “World Trade Center” (the signifier), you’ll automatically recall things about the World Trade Center. For me (and probably most everyone around the world), the first thing we’ll think about in 9/11 and the horror of that day. But before that day, you’ll picture two gigantic buildings where (again, for most of us) we’ll have a sort of nebulous understanding of the financial and other work that took place there (the signified). Signification is a tool writers use to bring in concepts, deeper meanings in their texts, and so on.

In signification, meaning is drawn from the readers’ experiences. Metaphor, symbolism, allegory, these are all part of the concept of signification. Signification is also reliant on the context of the passage or pages or whatever. An example is if a writer wrote about a tormented diver (let’s say they’ve had an emotional collapse) going on a mission to the deepest part of the sea. Well, the reader (and rightfully so) will naturally (perhaps) think, Okay, this diver is literally going to the deepest part of the sea, but she is also going deep into the abyss of her thoughts to understand why she’s had that emotional collapse. It’s a clever shortcut for the writer to provide meaning to the reader based on their experiences, common tropes, and so on. And religious texts are a great resource for writers to pull from when it comes to signification. This is why using religious passages and quotes in your writing may help you go from writing good fiction to writing exceptional fiction.

In C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lewis uses the Christian teachings of sacrifice and forgiveness. Aslan, the lion, represents a savior figure. His journey is taken almost directly from those Christian teachings. In one of my favorite novels, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family is forced to journey to California when their farm is foreclosed on during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. Jim Casy, a preacher who loses his way and who has the same initials as Jesus Christ, joins the Joad family and sacrifices himself for others (just as the central figure of Christianity does). Casy is murdered in the novel, and, just as a fun fact, was based on Steinbeck’s friend, Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist, ecologist, and philosopher. And Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories and novels, while not overtly religious, use signification through Christian relics left behind in homes and the battle between a husband and wife regarding those relics, as well as of faith and Christian charity.

And there’s other, more overt ways of including religion in your fiction. Dennis Lehane (I know, I know, I mention him a lot [his novels are my addiction. Or one of them, anyway], uses themes of redemption, strict morality, sin and guilt, and doing the right thing in life versus what the law says in the right thing. Lehane’s from Dorchester, a neighborhood right next to the infamous Southie neighborhood, where years ago the proud Irish-Americans who lived there lived a tough, violent existence. He uses the Catholic Church to explore the morality of his characters. In his novel, Small Mercies, one of Lehane’s female characters decides not to cross herself. It’s a sign of rebellion. I can never get that image out of my head (being Puerto Rican, most of my family were/are Roman Catholic, so I’ve been in a few churches and witnessed plenty of ceremonies) and understand the importance of keeping in line. And, of course, the Catholic Church has, like any organization, religious or otherwise, plenty of corruption and morality issues staining its reputation.

So, as a writer, how do we use religious references in, and to improve, our writing. Again, signification is a great tool, but so is addressing religion, its symbols, its ceremonies, its members and leaders, directly. And while I mention Christianity and Catholicism (the largest branch of Christianity), those are not the only religions we can explore through our writing, even if only tangentially. Like minor characters, references to religions and their influences can contribute greatly to our fiction. But I’m speaking from the largest religions in the U.S., i.e., Christianity, Catholicism, Protestantism, and so on. But there are, of course, other religions not only in the U.S. but obviously around the world.

USING RELIGIOUS PASSAGES AND QUOTES IN YOUR WRITING

The below, which is taken from Wikipedia, shows the largest religious groups around the world.

Largest religious groups

SOME OF THE LARGEST RELIGIONS IN THE WORLD BY FOLLOWERS. *Courtesy of Wikipedia

But there are also medium-sized religions like Taoism (a Chinese religion), Sikhism (an Indian religion), Baháʼí Faith (an Abrahamic religion in Persia), Druze (Egypt), and other smaller-sized religions like Mandaeism (in the Middle East), Shugendō (Japan), Yazidism (Kurdistan), and others. Writers from those regions and religions incorporate their religions in their writings in the same way Christians in the U.S. and around the world incorporate their religions in theirs, in however major or minor way they see fit to enhance their fiction.

I want to share a few passages from novels where writers incorporated religion into their writings. I won’t explain the passages, because I want you, as a reader, to interpret them for yourselves. I’ll try to provide passages that give enough context for you to do so.

USING RELIGIOUS PASSAGES AND QUOTES IN YOUR WRITING

This one’s from Lehane’s Shutter Island:

“God loves violence. You understand that, don't you?”

“No,” Teddy said, “I don't.”

The warden walked a few steps forward and turned to face Teddy.

“Why else would there be so much of it? It's in us. It comes out of us. It is what we do more naturally than we breathe. We wage war. We burn sacrifices. We pillage and tear at the flesh of our brothers. We fill great fields with our stinking dead. And why? To show Him that we've learned from His example.”

From Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses:

"So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God's name. The problem's name is God."

From George Eliot’s Middlemarch:

"What is your religion?" said Dorothea. "I mean—not what you know about religion, but the belief that helps you most?""To love what is good and beautiful when I see it," said Will.

From Toni Morrison’s Paradise:

"You do not deserve love. regardless of the suffering. you have endured. You do not deserve love. because somebody did you wrong... You can only earn — by practice. and careful contemplations — the right to express it. and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say. you have to earn God. You have to practice God."

And from Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko:

"He was an educated man, and he knew how to read the Bible. If a person could believe that the Creator of the oceans and the stars had become a man and allowed himself to be tortured and killed... then anything was possible; then there was no such thing as a hopeless person."

TRY GIVING RELIGION A SHOT IN YOUR FICTION. YOU NEVER KNOW WHERE IT'LL LEAD YOUR NOVEL.

Now, these passages are overtly referring to religion. There’s no question what we’re talking about. The reason is because the characters are using God’s name, as well as some of the topics most referenced in religion. But there are other ways of getting the point across. Remember signification? References to floods and thunderstorms, blessings made by characters and characters folding their hands. Fig trees and laurel branches and tasbihs (strings of 99 beads used to chant the name of Allah), yads (metal pointers shaped like a hand used to read the Torah without touching it), red wine, resurrections, and a zillion other physical objects, motions, character ticks, and so on.

And then there’s the things characters say in dialogue or the actions they take that make you, the reader, think of something based on religion. So, rather than provide you with examples, go ahead and pick up a book at random and start reading. Or, if you have a favorite novel, skim through some passages with scenes in them where someone dies or is hurt badly, where there’s a storm coming or a plague or anything dramatic. I bet you find something mentioned above—dialogue, a symbol or relic, a conversation about the vast universe, like that.

To wrap up, here are a few novels and novelists who used bible passages in one way or another for their novels:

Psalm 23:4 ("Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil"). It’s a quote in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and in about ten billion other novels and movies.

Genesis 1:1 ("In the beginning God created...") is used by Walter M. Miller Jr. in A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Psalm 23 ("The Lord is my shepherd...") is repeated by characters throughout the aforementioned The Grapes of Wrath.

And then there are always titles of novels taken from the bible. Here are some of them:

*Absalom Absalom! by William Faulkner. Faulkner took it from 2 Samuel 18:33 of the Hebrew Bible. It is the anguished cry of King David upon learning that his rebellious son, Absalom, has been killed in battle.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck comes from Genesis 4:16: "And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden".

Flannery O’Connor used Matthew 11:12 (Douay-Rheims version: "[The] kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away") for her novel, The Violent Bear it Away.

Nancy Cato’s book All the Rivers Run is taken from Ecclesiastes 1:7: “All the rivers run into the sea".

Daughters of Men, by J. Martain, takes it’s title from Genesis 6:2: That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

Cully Perlman edits novels. Have one that needs editing? Send him an email to discuss your book.

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*Some of the passages from the titles are taken from AI Overviews from Google searches.