A Christian novel is any novel that expounds and illustrates a Christian world view in its plot, its characters, or both, or which deals with Christian themes in a positive way. Christian novels – or at least, novels by Christians – have a rich tradition in Europe, going back several centuries, and drawing on past Christian allegorical literature, such as Dante Alighieri 's Divine Comedy and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. Twentieth century proponents of the Christian novel in English might include J.R.R. Tolkien, G. K.

Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and Madeleine L'Engle. Aslan in Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe allegorically represents Christ, for example, while L'Engle's A Live Coal in the Sea explicitly references the medieval allegorical poem Piers Plowman. However, the wide popularity of these authors among people of all faiths, together with the fact that in some conservative evangelical American Christian circles their novels were frowned upon, would lead many to class works by these authors as mainstream literature, and not to place them in a specifically Christian category.

Many novels with Christian themes clearly fall into specific mainstream fiction genres. For example, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is viewed as mainstream fantasy, while Julian May's Galactic Milieu Series is viewed as mainstream science fiction, in spite of the references to the work of Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Similarly, G. K.

Chesterton's Father Brown stories are mainstream detective fiction, even though the main character is a Catholic priest.

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