Some Thoughts On Clean/ Christian Fiction And The Necessity Of Labeling

From a guy who grew up in the Southern Baptist Convention and now swears like a drunken sailor, yet also actively reads books across a wider breadth of both genres and topics than nearly anyone

TL;DR: Labels are important, should be accurate, and should NOT detailed immediately before the story begins in eReader editions of books. “Clean” is not problematic, nor is “spicy”. “Christian” should in fact be “Christ-like”.

First up, let’s dispense with one thing: Like I said in the subtitle, I swear like a fucking drunk sailor - but as a “software engineering professional” by day, I come by it honestly. I’m not going to use it in every sentence, but I’m also not going to censor my thoughts here. I understand if you choose to leave, but I think I have a perspective you may likely miss entirely if you do. Your call, and I respect it. :) Also, this article was inspired by a discussion I saw between Bowen Greenwood and Andrew Gillsmith on Twitter/ X that also reached into Substack.

I grew up, again as I noted in the subtitle, in the Southern Baptist Church. My parents had actually gotten married at an Independent Baptist Church (that I would later be a member of myself in my early 20s), and my earliest memories of “church” were at a local Church of God before we moved to the SBC church I grew up in from roughly Kindergarten through when I left it for the Independent Baptist church I mentioned a moment ago.

The SBC church for a while had a church library, and that was actually one of the main libraries I used in that era. I was reading Josh McDowell’s Under Siege and Truth Slayers at the same time that I was reading Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan books, and that would largely be the story of my reading for about 15 ish yrs. Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness/ Piercing the Darkness nearly alongside Joseph Masucci’s Code: Alpha (featuring one of the most brutal killings I ever read in fiction for *years*). Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse alongside Shanti Feldhan’s The Veritas Conflict. Bill Myers’ Eli alongside Dale Brown’s Battle Born. Tim Lehay and Jerry Jenkins’ Left Behind series (the first three I read within 48 hrs of getting them one Christmas) alongside Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs’ Aloysious Pendergast series.

Michael Crichton’s Timeline leading to Randall Ingermanson’s City of God trilogy (by way of first reading Ingermanson and John Olson’s Oxygen/ Fifth Man series) leading to Jeremy Robinson’s The Didymus Contingency.

I’ve also read romance ranging from “they barely hold hands” to “I’ve never seen porn this explicit!”. (On the subject of porn, briefly: Pastors, do not decry porn, particularly in your Sunday morning sermons, in a way that would make inquisitive pubescents (boys or girls) look it up. That was actually my introduction to it, circa 11-12yo or so. My then-pastor, who would go on years later to become a President of the Georgia Baptist Convention and even then at least acted like he was reasonably well connected within national SBC politics, literally mentioned one Sunday that “it is bad enough that we have videos of babies being born, but now we have videos of the conception too!” As a smart and inquisitive young teen - this was in the same era I was reading everything I detailed two paragraphs ago and right as the Internet was first becoming a thing - well, I had to know what he was talking about and see it for myself. That pastor died many years ago now, and I don’t think he ever even gave that line a second thought. But I remember it *to this day*, 30 ish years later.)

Also on profanity generally, my experience is to quote Eminem: “Will Smith don’t gotta cuss in his raps to sell records
Well I do. So fuck him and fuck you too.”
In other words, you do you and be real to yourself, and people will find you who are more inclined with your own position on the matter. Personally, I stride the line on the topic. I’m not going to sit here and say “God thinks” any particular thing, even if some translation of the Bible claims it. Simply put, I don’t know what God thinks here, and I don’t think we *can* know with enough specificity to guide individual actions - or judge them. My mother in law is someone that never even uses any “Christian approved substitutes” for cuss words. My dad, a former deacon in the church I grew up in, would pretty well slap my mouth off my face if I used certain words in the presence of either of my parents. Even to this day, he strongly prefers not to be around them… but he also acknowledges that two of his three sons are software engineering professionals and they’re both well into their own adulthoods and can make their own decisions. ;)

When I’m consuming a story - no matter the medium - my own experience leads to *expecting* profanity in at least certain difficult situations - even Cody Rhodes was called out for mouthing the word “fuck” during his Summerslam match with John Cena less than 36 hrs prior to me originally writing this article in August 2025. This was at a point in the match where both men had beat each other with moves that they’ve each put countless other Superstars away with, yet neither man was willing to give up. Icon For Hire was infamously cancelled by Christian Radio nearly a decade ago now for the lyric “I take the stage and before I even open my mouth
the audience assumes that they got us all figured out
"Oh your band's got a chick, must be some kinda trick
There's no way she got this far without sucking somebody's..."
Did you really think that's how it works, I'm not fucking eye candy
I'm here to do my job, I'll be the last man standing”
in the song Now You Know.

To me, these were the perfect words in those situations. To me, anything less feels less authentic and less real, based on my own life. And again, this is as someone who grew up in the church. (I should clarify here that while I maintain roughly Anabaptist type beliefs regarding faith generally, I also haven’t regularly stepped foot in a church building in nearly 20 years now.)

All of this noted, if your story is less intense/ lighter, I can absolutely see little to no profanity in it - to me, such stories don’t necessarily have the level of intensity that such words evoke. Thus, if you’re writing more relationship fiction or even adventure stories or cozy mysteries or really anything in any genre that is on the lighter side, I can see those stories as just as authentic and just as real even without the profanity.

This is one of the things about me that both allows me to read as widely as I do and indeed actively draws me to do so.

Shifting gears slightly, let’s talk more about sex scenes.

Again, I’ve read pretty well every level of “spice” you can imagine, including true erotica, and I’ve read stories featuring acts and kinks that some of y’all would faint just from hearing the names of them. (Others likely want me to name those specific stories so they can go read them. ;) ) In books where romances are a part of the story, I try to write into my reviews brief thoughts on the spiciness, and I try to compare it to either a “warm glass of milk” (light enough that you’re not going to be too worried if your kids see what you’re reading) to “ghost/ carolina reaper” hot (you’re going to want some privacy and your partner or whatever you do there). To be crystal clear, there is absolutely space within booklandia for both ends of this spectrum and everything in between. Different readers will gravitate to different ends of it, or perhaps be like me and consume it all.

I *do* think the label “clean” is perfectly appropriate, and I object to those who decry it as claiming that spicier tales are somehow “not clean”. No, to my mind it simply means that it is “safe for work”, to use a term that the anti-clean crowd is at least somewhat more comfortable with. Even if you’re a teacher, if your kids read your book over your shoulder, these books wouldn’t have such explicit sex scenes in them as to cause you issues. To my mind, this is nothing more than a marketing term to let those who prefer such tales know that this is such a tale. Similarly “spicy” doesn’t mean that a book is necessarily extremely raunchy porn, as spices don’t always actually mean “heat”. There are many other spices that produce effects that are not heat, yet are pleasant to the taste and even beneficial to the body. But again, it does serve as a good enough indicator that a book is more likely to be warmer than said warm glass of milk, and thus is an easy way to let people quickly know which direction of the scale your book tends toward without actually spoiling anything either direction.

Note that I have not discussed anything related to gender or sex so far, and that is 100% intentional. I don’t believe they are relevant to the discussion of “clean” vs “spicy” in particular, as I’ve personally read books across that scale featuring, again, pretty well every imaginable combination of sexes, genders, and number of partners - no matter how you personally choose to define those terms. Yes, it is theoretically possible (to be clear, I’ve never actually read one of these, but I’m open to the possibility of the existence of some) to have a pansexual group romance where technically everyone is sleeping with everyone, no matter the sexes or genders… and yet tell the story in such a way that it still meets what I consider a “warm glass of milk” spice level, and thus meets my own definition of “clean”.

Now let’s get *really* uncomfortable though… let’s talk about *violence*. ;)

First up, again, to be clear: words are never violence. Period.

This noted, as I mentioned above, I’ve read some truly *sick* and *depraved* and *disgusting* stuff over the years - even well outside of horror books! Stuff that would give that kid reading over your shoulder nightmares for years - and I happen to know, because I saw the TV movie form of IT in the deep backwoods of Alabama near Muscle Shoals one summer while staying with my grandmother for a week when she and new “new” husband (they married nearly a decade before I was born) were living with his family in their compound. To this day, I refuse to have anything to do with that story. FUCK no. Just. FUCK. NO. And yet I’ve read stories where a guy’s dick is chopped off by a female villain and he is forced to eat it, before she then slams her blade through the bottom of his mouth and into his brain, killing him. I’ve read stories of skin melting off due to various mechanisms. Clancy’s Without Remorse gets particularly inventive with street and naval ways of killing people, and its rape scene - mostly off screen - is still one of the more brutal ones I’ve ever encountered outside the Stone Cold Steve Austin movie The Condemned.

I’ve read books that feature one murder, and I’ve read books where the express intent of the bad guys is to murder 99%+ of humanity. (Brett Battles’ PROJECT EDEN series, to this day the best complete series I’ve ever come across.) I’ve read books featuring brutal rapes (sometimes onscreen), child abuse both sexual and otherwise, animal abuse, and nearly every other kind of violence imaginable, including one historical fiction book (Soraya M. Lane’s The Secret Midwife) that featured a Jew landing at Auswitz during WWII… *and* had the courage to go *there*.

Yet, this is one thing where God, through Jesus Christ, *directly* spoke about. Many, many times. Quite simply, violence, according to God, is most definitely explicitly wrong, no matter the situation. Christ *specifically* said to “love your enemy” and “bless those who persecute you” and actively lived these teachings by submitting to the Cross. His entire ministry was effectively telling his fellow Jews of His era and all people going forward just how twisted they had become, and while some extremely talented and knowledgeable theologians and logicians over the Millennia have made various excuses and contrivances, the “red letters” as they exist are quite explicit and crystal clear. Violence, *even in defense of self or others*, is wrong according to the standard Jesus Christ taught and lived. (For what it’s worth, this is one of the points where I am most in alignment with Anabaptist teaching.)

Now… I also own guns. Yes, plural. And yes, I’d like to own at least a few more. I also own several blades of various forms and intended uses, and again, I’d like to own many, many more. (I’ve always been more of a blade person, for a couple of reasons. One, my mom - who grew up with many, many guns in her childhood home as her dad was an avid hunter (and legit WWII hero who earned a Purple Heart and Silver Star in the Battle of the Bulge) - expressly forbid even toy guns in her home while I was a kid. Yes, even pop cap and Nerf guns. If it remotely resembled a gun, it was forbidden. Period. And yet we watched all kinds of movies and TV shows routinely featuring guns. Go figure. :D Two, more practically and my own position independent of how I was raised, guns fail - blades don’t, or at least not as frequently. A sharpened blade will be effective for what it does 100% of the time. Even the most forgiving and reliable gun *will* fail… you just *hope* it isn’t in a moment when you can’t afford it to, and that you can fix it quickly when it does.) Also, my door is locked for *your* protection, and if I see someone being attacked, I’m going to use the full force of whatever strength my 6’2”, 330 lb body can muster, along with any tools I have available to me in the moment, to stop it. That’s just who I am. Unlike some, I 100% acknowledge that even this is technically opposite of Christ’s actual teachings and life, and I know that prayers of forgiveness are as much for me in stopping the attack violently as for anyone else involved in the situation. (Here, the Mass Effect 2/3 character Thane actually has some great points, if from a far-from-Christian perspective.)

And that brings us to where I think I’ll end here: Christian fiction and labeling generally.

To me, if you’re going to label a book as “Christian”, to me it needs to adhere to the teachings of Christ. Indeed, as we know from the Book of Acts, it was this specificity - that the people specifically followed the teachings of Christ - that caused others to first describe them as “Christ-like”, or, Christian.

Thus, there shouldn’t actually be any “spice” in the book, as the closest we come within the life of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels is some form of marriage or divorce, and even then the actual act of sex is nowhere in the available text, at least not in any version I’ve ever read. Now, as marriage itself *is* something Christ Himself spoke on, to me this allows at least marriage of two people - but no more - to be included in a “Christian” book, and I personally am not enough of a historian to know with any specificity if there was any particular gender or sex specificity truly involved there. So gender/ sex may be irrelevant in a marriage in a “Christian” book, but don’t even “fade to black” in showing sex scenes. According to the Gospels, the closest we get is “this person recently had sex” (the adulteress brought before Christ), so to me that is the closest to the topic a “Christian” book should get, and I personally would avoid the topic entirely unless it is absolutely critical to the plot or characterization for some specific reason.

Furthermore, a “Christian” book… should not feature violence. At all. For any reason. Again, the teachings and life of Christ are quite clear on this particular point. Again, my own reading history noted above somewhat shows I have no problem actually reading even extreme violence. I just don’t think that books with violence should be labeled as “Christian” according to this standard.

Profanity… gets more interesting. I see rules re: “profanity” as nothing more than religious rules made by man, and I see in the life of Christ where He openly spoke about being true to your heart and that it is better to be honest about what is actually in your heart than to be a hypocrite and hide it. This was a fairly major point of His ministry, actually. Thus, to me, profanity *is* allowable in a book labeled as “Christian”, as even Simon Peter, one of Christ’s most ardent and beloved friends who was *right there* for the entire ministry, openly “cussed and swore” - as my former Pastor liked to say it - while Jesus was being put on trial. Remember, this is the very same Simon Peter that the Roman Catholic Church claims as its first Pope.

Ultimately, I do think books need to be more clearly labeled than they perhaps are at times. I do think this goes across the social, political, and religious spectrums, and if there are particular things that various groups may not want to read about - for any reason - I do think there should be easy ways to note that these are present in a given book, no matter the direction.

Yes, that means that I’m actually in favor of “content disclosures”. I don’t like the term “trigger warnings” or even “content warnings”, as I think “warning” someone that a book contains Christian themes is problematic *and* I think that “warning” someone that a book contains a [insert demographic you don’t like] character is problematic for those of that demographic.

Now, I actively oppose these disclosures in the beginning of a book. That is one area I am 100% rock solid on. I believe these disclosures can be seen as spoilers, and I actively see them as spoilers for the most part. I’m also perfectly fine with generic spoilers myself. “This book contains this thing” level vs “this is exactly how this thing is used in this book”. But some readers are more adamant in never seeing anything remotely resembling a disclosure, and I think this too is an acceptable stance. Placing the disclosure at the beginning of the book makes it impossible to fully skip without seeing at least *something* of the text when you’re flipping through a book on an eReader, and thus placing it there at the beginning of the book spoils some elements for some readers.

Instead, I believe that a link to some web page - the author’s own, in the absence of a more general book database that could contain this information for all books - where the disclosures for that book are detailed (again, to be clear, in general form) should be placed in this same “immediately before the story begins” position. Thus, those who want and/ or claim to need those disclosures can still easily access them, but they also respect the wishes of those who actively don’t want to see them ever in any form whatsoever.

And I’m going to shut up now. What do y’all think?