The great 19th-century American evangelist Charles Finney once declared, “I cannot believe that a person who has ever known the love of God can relish a secular novel.” And he went on to denounce explicitly Lord Byron, Walter Scott, even Shakespeare. Now such attitudes may strike some as strange, yet, historically, some American evangelicals have been suspicious toward secular literature. To give us the tools we need to know whether that attitude is justified, Louise Cowan and Os Guinness …
