How should we---or, rather, how do you---handle sermons in fiction? I don't mean sermons directed at the reader, since it should go without saying that our fiction is nearly always better when we avoid "preaching at the reader," but rather when the story needs to include a character listening to and possibly being changed by a sermon.

I ask because one of my WIPs has just run into this very problem (I have a draft of the scene, but I'm not entirely happy with it; I'll explain in a bit more detail in a moment), and in my read-through of Peter's Angel, this morning I noticed that Miss Hansen has a scene start as the characters are leaving the church discussing the sermon. In the fiction I've read, that seems to be the most common pattern, but the coincidence made me think to post here.

In this WIP, the main character, Persephone Royal, after watching disaster after disaster befall her homeland and coming to the awful realization that it's all her fault (or at least that she could have prevented it, was prompted to at the time, and deliberately chose to ignore that), has been granted the unprecedented boon of living (most of) her life over again with the knowledge of what was to come. (And that's the prologue and the first lines of the first chapter.) She's at the Imperial Academy, and chapel her first day goes rather differently from what she remembered from "the first time around"---the sermon text is different, and then the Dean of the Chapel rather than the Chaplain gets up to give the sermon ... and the sermon is (she realizes, not that the Dean knows this) essentially aimed right at her ...

In my current draft of the scene, I essentially summarize the different parts of the sermon and give Persephone's reactions, but I'm not satisfied with the scene yet. So I'd like to hear how you handle the problem of sermons in fiction.

I haven't encountered this difficulty yet, but if I do, I would probably examine classic sermons of a time period that is comparable to that in which the story takes place, to help with crafting a believable sermon.

As for how to weave the sermon into the story without necessarily having all of it there, I wonder if condensing the sermon might be an effective method, with character reaction carefully placed in the midst of the sermon. If that worked, it would be made to "feel" lengthy but not boring to the reader, giving a similar effect as it is meant to have upon the character. While it would be a complete sermon, it would only take around five to ten minutes to read, rather than the thirty to forty five minutes of a normal sermon, even with the character reactions in the midst of it.

Part of the trouble with my particular example is that in addition to being distinctly fantasy (elves, dwarves, "applied metaphysics," etc.), it's also distinctly (by this point in the story) fairly far-future science fiction ... and with inter-universal communication, and (highly expensive, but available) time travel, they can read books from the first to the thirtieth century A.D. ... so what's a comparable time period?


That's basically what I've done in my present draft: condensed the twenty-minute sermon to about six pargraphs, most of which are either how it's being delivered (think Stephen right before he was stoned) or my POV character's reaction to it.

In my scene, it's a "chapel" sermon, so only about twenty minutes or so ... but I think part of why I'm not feeling so happy with it is that it's so short, and while I know the general direction it's supposed to go, and a few of the more memorable moments (e.g. his closing paragraph ends by quoting a line from the Epistle in the original Greek), I don't know very many details.

I guess I need to read more sermons.

In that case, reading any favorite sermons from any time periods should be equally helpful, since there are no similar historical examples to compare it with. Sermons on a similar subject to the one you are addressing might be particularly helpful.

While thinking about sermons in another world, it also occurred to me that the minister would likely use some sermon illustrations that were unique to the world.