When I was moderating the noir panel at the Left Coast Crime conference in Denver, a person in the audience asked something like, “Doesn’t all the slicing of noir up into sub-genres like sci-fi noir, east coast noir, future noir, cowboy noir or whatever dilute the essence of what noir is?”

That question stuck with me. I wondered if defining stories as Christian noir was snatching some of the guts out something vital. Co-opting art, like marketers do.

Here’s the answer that came to me. Christian noir, in my mind, is not a sub-genre, because ‘Christian’ in this context isn’t part of a compound noun. It’s an adjective. It’s describing an attitude or thematic stance taken by certain stories that can also legitimately be called ‘noir.’ In fact, I prefer to think of ‘noir’ as an adjective, a description rather than a thing. And adjectives are both useful and inevitable.

So I’ll carry on, and throw out a tentative definition of this descriptive compound adjective Christian noir. I’ll call it applicable to stories that feature characters who consider themselves Christian, who are developed in more complexity than just being good or bad, and who by their own inclination, or weakness, or by their inability to effectively contend with events and/or circumstances, descend into a situation that approximates hell, and who at least have a chance for redemption.