Neon gospel: Why Christians should read Nelson Algren
Photograph by Andrzej Mucka via Pexels
Nathan Perrin
I’m a notorious Chicago history snob. I like to pretend I’m from there, but really, I live in a suburb twenty miles away. Nevertheless, I’ve deep dived into the city’s history as if it’s my own. One of the treasures that I’ve found was Nelson Algren and his prophetic work.
Nelson Algren (1909-1981) was a writer who emerged on the tail-edge of the Chicago literary renaissance. He was once hailed by Ernest Hemingway as one of two of America’s best writers (William Faulkner being the other.) His work centered on the downtrodden and people stuck in cycles of addiction and poverty, often in Chicago itself.
Algren often would go to the Pacific Garden Mission to be around houseless folks to learn research for his fiction. It was never in an exploitive way, but in a way to draw attention to the social injustices of his time. He wanted to give hope and life to a group of marginalized folks who were otherwise ignored. “The Neon Wilderness” is my favorite work of his, followed closely by “Chicago: City on the Make.”
I always encourage Christians, whether it’s my congregants or those in the void of social media, to read fiction. One of the reasons for this is because studies show that reading fiction helps grow empathy, a spiritual value within our faith. When we read fiction, we’re invited into the different perspectives and viewpoints of another person and another world. We’re forced to see the reasoning, logic, and motives each character brings to the table. Most of all, we’re able to see an underlying narrative of redemption and resurrection.
What I love about Algren’s work is that it accomplishes the above and more. I feel his pastoral care for the characters and stories. Coming from the rich Chicago tradition of literature, his work blends in his own socialist sympathies and activism. This is seen most in how he continually points to the impoverished and downtrodden. He demands people to not only view their humanity, but to also see beauty in their struggles. In one famous photograph, a man is showing Algren how he shoots up heroin. Algren, at the time, was doing research for his novel “The Man with the Golden Arm” – a book which won the first-ever National Book Award for fiction.
I often think of Jesus being among the outcasts of his day when I encounter Algren’s work, except this time it’s not in first-century Palestine but rather in the streets and alleys of the city I love dearly.
When I read Algren and other Chicago-based writers from this era, Upton Sinclair comes to mind. He broke the nation’s heart, and simultaneously made it nauseous, by writing about the meat industry in the city in his famous novel “The Jungle.” His work was so gross and effective that the FDA was essentially formed in response to it. This frustrated Sinclair because he intended to explore the poverty of immigrant communities in the city. He said about the founding of the FDA that, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”
This is not a challenge in Algren’s work. The reader has no choice but to look at the impoverished and ask deep existential questions about the way the world is. Algren wrote in a manual on writing that the writer’s chief vocation is to give hope in an otherwise hopeless environment.[i]
In many ways, reading Algren has opened my eyes and widened my heart on how to minister in the recovery community. As a twelve-stepper myself, I have the unfortunate luxury of having lived some of Algren’s stories firsthand – but I still find myself in that classic stance of religious judgmentalism that all Christians are tempted to have. Reading Algren’s work gives me spiritual sobriety in that I no longer see addicts and the vulnerable as people I serve, but rather as living images of God in front of me.
Algren has an almost-silent plea underneath his fiction that he wants his readers to know: the world can be better if we choose to see the beauty in hardship and see people as they are – not who we demand them to be. I often think of Jesus being among the outcasts of his day when I encounter Algren’s work, except this time it’s not in first-century Palestine but rather in the streets and alleys of the city I love dearly. His work encourages me to see the humanity in the people begging for money and food at traffic lights. The stories help me see the drunk or high person yelling in the street as someone God uniquely loves. We need these reminders time and time again – that we are all six inches from oblivion in one way or another, so we need to be gentle. We don’t choose hardship. It chooses us. As someone wisely said to me in recovery circles, “At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to walk each other home.”
Have the courage to sit with these stories that Algren wrote and let the Holy Spirit minister to you and convict you. I guarantee you will see beauty in new places. Then, you will see resurrection from death.
Nathan Perrin (he/him/his) is a writer and Anabaptist pastor in Chicagoland. He holds an MA in Quaker Studies and is a doctoral student studying Christian Community Development at Northern Seminary. His doctorate work centers on creating a writing program for nonprofits and churches to use to help under-resourced communities process trauma. His work has been published in the Dillydoun Review, Bangalore Review, Collateral Journal, Esoterica Magazine, etc. His forthcoming novella Memories of Green Rivers will be released in winter 2026 by Running Wild Press. He is also a screenwriter. For more information, visit www.nathanperrinwriter.com
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
[i] Algren, Nelson. Nonconformity: Writing on Writing. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1996.
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