A basic misunderstanding …

… Has American Fiction Lost Sight of God? | First Things. (Hat tip, Julie Chovanes.)

… part of why religion was always a compelling, even essential, aspect of literature is that novelists used to take it seriously—even those who didn’t, in the end, believe. The struggle to keep one’s faith, even in the face of suffering, and to be transformed by it, is one of the hallmarks of human experience: working out the inherent tensions between body and spirit, judgment and mercy, right and wrong—this is interioritypar excellence, and exploring that interiority, making it come alive, is what fiction is supposed to do.

See also: Restless for Good Art.