Christian Stereotypes
In response to an earlier thread, John Schultz asks: “What’s a nice canonist like you reading Stephen King fer?” I admit the guilty pleasure I derive from reading Stephen King novels isn’t from the vulgur language or the occasional descriptive sex scene that one encounters in his novels. In fact, I find both a distrction from his otherwise gifted story-telling. Rather, my weakness for his novels is a little more triumphalist than that. In short, I derive a certain guilty enjoyment from how he always seems to stereotype Protestants as fundamentalist kooks while casting Catholic clergy in his novels as generally intellegent protagonists who, despite their struggle with a personal weakness or two, are devout and likeable. This is even more fascinating when one considers, if I recall correctly, that King is from a Protestant background.