@hingehead,
It makes sense, and your anti-religious sentiments are glaringly obvious. I've not read any of the "Left Behind" type of literature, and don't intend to, but that does not mean that i'm not familiar with Christian themes in literature. Apparently, you are not. When John Wesley stood on a hill in southern England and preached to a crowd of thousands, strong men, ignorant men (although not necessarily unintelligent men), who worked hard and lead hard lives, wept openly at the vision of redemption he painted for them. Their "betters" considered them peasants, but that didn't alter that they were aware of the essential injustices in their lives, and Wesley's vision gave them hope of a better place to which they might aspire, without reference to those "betters" who profited from their lives of unrelenting toil.
The evangelical dissenters (dissenters in that they did not participate the established church) made up a large part of the population of England in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and for all that i know, still do today. Mary Ann Evans came from such a family, deeply loved her older brother, and suffered a life-long estrangement from him when she abandoned her family's religious values. She went on to become one of the great authors of English literature, and a "best-seller" in her own day--she wrote under the pen name George Eliot. Religious themes, especially that of personal redemption, figure prominently in her novels. The most famous is
Silas Marner. The titular character is falsely accused of theft, loses his fiancee and is driven from his religious community. He moves from the urban slum where he has lived to a cottage in the countryside far away, where his work as a weaver is his only focus in life, and he hoards his money to repay the funds which he did not in fact steal. Those scant savings are stolen from him, and he sinks into despair. One winter's night a woman with her toddler is stumbling through the snow (she is an opium addict) and lays down. Her daughter wanders off toward the light she sees, which comes from Silas' cottage. He takes her in, then follows her tracks back to find her mother, now dead.
I'm not going to attempt to summarize the novel, but the child, whom he calls Hephzibah, his mother's name, completely changes his grim life. Whatever other melodrama is in the novel, the kinds of themes popular in Victorian England, the central story is how the presence of Eppie (as she calls herself) in his life fosters his personal redemption. He regains his self-respect, and enters into the life of his community.
The Mill on the Floos is a turgid melodrama of the kind which sold well in Victorian England, despite its many shortcomings. It's interest is in its almost autobiographic character as it recounts the lives of a sister and brother who are both deeply involved in religion.
Adam Bede is the story of one of those ignorant peasant men, hard working and living a hard life, who is an evangelical, and loves a thoughtless young woman who is seduced by a local, aristocratic rake. It is also a tale of personal redemption, and the struggle between love and sectarian dogma.
Middlemarch, generally acclaimed by academics as her best novel, is entirely devoted to the theme of personal redemption, and its central character is a young woman who marries an evangelical scholar, and is quickly disillusioned. When he dies, she becomes very wealthy, and she struggles to both make a good life for herself, and to remain true to her evangelical values.
I doubt that contemporary Christian bookstore push the novels of George Eliot. Nevertheless, that one author alone gives the lie to the fling you made about "art mandated by decree."
