Will There Be a Resurrection of Christian Bookstores?

Guest post by Larry Willard – This article appeared last week by permission of the author in our affiliate blog, Christian Book Shop Talk; but we thought it should also be seen by readers here. Larry Willard is an owner of Toronto’s largest Christian bookstore, Faith Family Books; and Castle Quay Books, one of Canada’s largest publishing companies.

For the past five years I have been speaking about the great Christian bookstore Tsunami and how you and I unintentionally helped the demise of hundreds of loyal, well-established Christian bookstores in Canada and the USA without even trying. You have heard how bricks and mortar bookstores were just another example of the 8 track tape whose time had passed and death was inevitable. But many are beginning to doubt that is accurate and I hear more confessions that people miss the whole array of products and services that they offered and wish they could help to bring them back. And though I am not a prophet, I want to risk saying that I still see a need for some of those lost services and I believe the brick and mortar bookstore is in the midst of going through a metamorphosis and some will soon come out of their cocoon resurrected as “a better creature than ever.”

I always insisted that my contribution (and no doubt yours) was unintended and so we are innocent of their death. I always went to local bookstore but like you, all I wanted was a “good deal” for my hard-earned dollars so I increasingly went to the lowest bidder. As my mother used to remind me, “A penny saved is a penny earned! (Oh dear…seeing what has happened to the penny, I guess we’ll have to modernize that adage as well). So I was following her wise counsel” I didn’t expect there would be such a consequence to my saving “a few cents here” and “a few dollars there!” But it happened. And that “lowest-cost” mindset eventually killed the local Christian establishment.

There is nothing sinful about being frugal and trying to get the best deal whenever we buy something but there is a “bigger picture” we need to be aware of as we make our choices. The personal benefits of “always getting the best deal,” regardless of the overall impact, leads people to unwittingly cooperate in the decimation of local establishments, what ever their services, and in the end, what does it profit us if we gain a few dollars and lose our jobs and institutions as a result. What if my own job were next as a result of this mindset?

We Christians are different than a worldly community or local burger joint. We are a family with a particular mission and a unified focus that has an eternal outcome. We need to support each other above “just making a profit.” Christian institutions need our support if they are to continue to offer the full array of resources and services that our community has benefited from over the years. They just can not survive the continuous erosion of sales diverted to “on-line” or “big box” lowest price-discount retailers. The bookstores and other providers need those sales to sustain their models. They offer more than just books that someone can get anywhere. They offer a specialty that could be lost if we are not thoughtful.

Now, people are beginning to notice the value of their local Christian store as they try buying a good Christian book at one of the large secular bookstores of our country. Except for a few top titles there is scant selection and little depth. These are bookstores that place the Bible, the Koran and a number of new-age titles in the same section and label it “Spiritual Enlightenment.” Try finding a good “serious” book at these stores. Try sending a new Christian there to pick up a book to help them in their spiritual development. Nothing replaces the vast selection of the traditional dedicated Christian bookstore or the staff that use years of knowledge and wisdom to suggest just “the right title.”

And, on-line shopping can not replace taking a book in your hand and running through the pages before you buy it. Looking at several titles on a topic and deciding if the content is solid before buying it. It’s harder to do that on-line. It’s hard to even see what the selection options are on-line. And most good books are not even available at the larger secular chains and finding them on-line requires you to know what the title is when you start.

Do you now own a lot of books that turned out not to be what they looked like in the on-line photo? Were the real costs of online purchases, with the hefty freight costs, and foreign exchange rates not a great deal after all?

Yes, local Christian bookstores needed to go through a metamorphosis. I think they will have to look more like a Christian Chapters with their gifts, books, music café and more. They must make the customer experience exciting and as inexpensive as possible. Our new stores must be more like communities where people come to have coffee with friends and then do some quick shopping. The selection of gifts, cards, movies, music and books must be better than ever. They need a lot more Canadian authors and artists and they need to be changing to meet a customer’s newest needs all the time. So it is not for the faint-hearted.

But above all…they need Christians to help them survive. How terrible if one day there wasn’t a place to browse for the latest releases without scanning mounds of web pages for an hour. Everyone wants a good deal. We shop for the best price and shake down a sales rep if we think we can. I am not recommending that you forget about getting a good or fair deal and just pay anything to keep your Christian retailer in business. I just ask that you give them a chance or the next tsunami for that industry is just around the corner.

Sometimes there is a greater “good” we serve when we pay a few cents more and sustain the service of the “touch and feel” local Christian retailer. If all of us practice the “best deal” model in everything we purchase, one day we also may find ourselves out of a job because someone wanted to save a dime or dollar. I still have high hopes that there will be the resurrection of the Christian Bookstore to become a new, exciting and sustainable entity. I hope that is true of many Christian service providers.

Larry Willard

To My Fellow Bloggers: What Your Amazon Links Support

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought -  Gay marriage donations?

This week we were asked by a Christian bookstore manager, “How many people know that the founder of Amazon is the largest single donor to the cause of gay marriage?” Honestly, I didn’t know myself, and the amount, $2.5 M (US) is staggering. He told me, “Tell your local churches that are buying from Amazon just to type ‘Jeff Bezos’ and ‘gay marriage’ into a search engine for themselves.”  A week later, I did this myself. There were many, many articles, but this one describes a behind-the-scenes look at the donation:

Thank Lesbian Jennifer Cast for Jeff Bezos’ Huge Gay Marriage Support

Like most of us, Jennifer Cast said she figured her former boss, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, was well aware of the threat to gay marriage in Washington State by the upcoming the ballot iniative and wrote to him, “I figured that if you felt the desire to support marriage equality, you would do it.” But, unlike many of us, this time she spoke up with a direct ask, and for the first time in twelve years working on the issue, Cast, 50, partners of 20+ years with Liffy Franklin, 63, emailed Bezos, “I beg you not to sit on the sidelines and hope the vote goes our way. Help us make it so.” She wrote, “We need help from straight people. To be very frank, we need help from wealthy straight people who care about us and who want to help us win.” She asked the billionaire for a contribution of $100,000 to $200,000. Within thirty-six hours he replied, “Jen, this is right for so many reasons. We’re in for $2.5 million. Jeff & MacKenzie”

This is the largest ever donation in support of marriage equality and it only happened because a lesbian spoke up and asked for it. Learn from her. The announcement also inspired other gifts, according to the Seattle Times, which reports, “Cast said she has received hundreds of emails since news of Bezos’ gift broke early Friday from well-wishers and those who suddenly wanted to give. One donor pledged $25,000.”

Jeff Bezos is worth $18.4 billion. Although William Lynch, the CEO of Barnes & Noble, isn’t a billionaire, his compensation last year was $10 million, going up to $15.3 million this year. He doesn’t have a connection to Washington State, but some of the Amazon haters need to ask Lynch for a significant donation. He can give to Maryland’s or to Maine’s campaign…

A link for this and what follows is available if you wish. The perspective below was actually from a gay website. The first line really sums up what’s happening even as you’re reading this.

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought…gay marriage donations?: The founder of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos, and his wife, MacKenzie, just donated 2.5 million to help pass Washington state’s Referendum 74, which would legalize gay marriage. The donation from Bezos, the 15th wealthiest man in America, has been called a “game changer” by Washington gay marriage campaigners.

I do not see how any Christian blogger or media outlet possessing this information can continue to remain an Amazon affiliate or referrer. To everyone else, if you or your church purchases from Amazon, I think you need to take a long, prayerful second look at that situation.

The Voice Bible: The Rest of the Story

I have to admit here that while The Voice Bible translation has been something I’ve been aware of for a decade, it has largely been flying under my radar. For that I apologize, because The Voice is exactly the type of thing I like to celebrate here at Thinking Out Loud. This is a translation, but one that involved a mix of theologians and academics with the likes of poets, playwrights and music composers.

What has sparked a change in my perspective is twofold. First, the announcement from BibleGateway.com that they would be including The Voice among their list of online translations. If nothing else, this establishes a certain legitimacy. But then, an offer to review The Story of The Voice, a behind-the-scenes insider peek at the making of this new Bible.

Such books are often propagandist. Leland Ryken’s little booklet, Choosing a Bible is basically an unabashed self-promotional tool for the ESV. The book equivalent of paid programming, with all the hyperbole you would expect. But others, like How to Choose a Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon Fee and Mark Strauss are like a crash course in translation, allowing you to peer over the shoulder of translators as they wrestle with difficult passages, sentences, phrases and even single words. The Story of The Voice fits into that latter, more balanced and informative category.

Again here, I have to say I’m sorry for arriving late to this party. This translation is due all the expectancy we had a decade earlier when The Message came to print. It’s a milestone in Bible translation and possibly the first translation dedicated wholly to meeting the needs of a generation that is not Bible-literate. In many ways The Message paved the way for a Bible like The Voice.

But the companion book also shows that the translators did not exactly treat the King James Version with disdain; often referring back to how its phrasing reverberates even in a contemporary culture. There are frequent references to the NIV as the currently most popular, to the NASB for its status the most ‘literal,’ but also to the KJV for being perhaps the most pervasive of any Bible in the last five hundred years or more.

Ironically, like the KJV, the aims of The Voice translators were literary as well as theological, but The Voice team felt that similarities in style in previous Bibles has robbed them of the unique style with which each Bible book speaks; the background and intent of each author. So in the case of the gospels, to provide an authenticity to each writer, translators were chosen with backgrounds complementary to the Biblical book they were assigned.

In addition, The Voice has added some words and phrases — in italics, as did the KJV — to make passages clear to people unfamiliar with the story. In many cases, these insertions are quite liberal in terms of length. But even more surprising to some is the use of embedded commentary; notes that are placed in indented boxes within the core text, rather than at the bottom of the page.

In my excitement over all this translation brings, my task at hand is reviewing the companion book, and I must say that it is a story unto itself, which defines Chris Seay’s original vision and the ups and downs of the process by which The Voice came to market. Containing chapters which focus on particular aspects of the project, The Story of The Voice is available now in a 150-page paperback from Thomas Nelson at $9.99 US. The Bible itself is what you really want to get your hands on, especially if there is someone in your sphere of contacts who has had no previous exposure to church or scriptures.

Read an excerpt from The Voice: Click here.

Wednesday Link List

Who needs LinkedIn when you’re linked in here?  The picture, Gasoline Gospel is from Shorpy.com; captioned “August 1937. ‘Gas station and gospel mission in Cleveland, Ohio.’ In addition to Koolmotor ‘Gasolene,’ a long-defunct Cities Service brand, we also seem to have at least a couple of the major food groups represented here, as well as two verses from the New Testament. Photo by John Vachon.” Click the image to see the entire picture full size along with more glimpses into history.

• Start with this one: 33 Ways to Know You Were a Youth Group Kid.
• Nick Vujicic, born without arms and legs, is the father of a newborn baby boy! 
• Got 19 minutes? Meet Atheism 2.0, an atheism for people who are attracted to the ritualistic side, the moralistic side, but can’t stand the doctrine.
  
• First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas is just days away from the opening of its new $130 million facility. And don’t miss the three videos which rationalize that expense.
• A sixteen-year old in Texas is suing her parents who are trying to coerce her to have an abortion she does not want. (See update in comments section.)
  
• Rick Warren has shied away from TV and radio, but is launching a 30-minute daily radio show to air in the top 25 U.S. markets.
• Early artwork has surfaced for the new Left Behind movie; which is actually a remake of the original (book one) story; this one with Nicolas Cage.
  
• Also at Todd Rhoades’ blog: Should churches have Tweet seats? 
• When a U.S. Lutheran pastor attended an interfaith prayer event following the Sandy Hook shooting, he violated denominational rules against ‘joint worship’ with people of other faiths. Now the LC-MS denomination is embarrassed by the reaction on social media.
  
• Veteran Christian music artist Carman reveals to his Facebook followers that he has an incurable cancer.
• Here’s info on an upcoming conference (April 11-13) in Virginia that I would love to be able to attend; presented by Missio Alliance, it’s titled The Future of the Gospel. 
• Home-schooling is banned in Germany, so a family there fled to the U.S. for asylum which was granted in 2010. But now, the Department of Homeland Security is seeking the family’s deportation, which would lead to persecution back home.
• There are some new posts at The Elephant’s Debt, a website devoted to issues of alleged financial improprieties involving James MacDonald and Harvest Bible Chapel.
  
• An alternative wording to The Lord’s Prayer — the Kiwi version, perhaps — you never know what you’ll find in used bookstores. 
• Here’s what I wrote to my colleagues in the Christian book trade about the dwindling relationship between bloggers and publishers seeking book reviews.
• And since we’re ending on a book theme, here’s the chart — including one title error, if you can spot it — of what people in my part of the world purchased in 2012:
  

Honoring The Sport of Theology

Baseball players have them so it was only a matter of time. I love it that a company like Zondervan is able to indulge creative types and bring a wild and crazy idea from the conceptual stage to store shelves. An idea like a box containing 288 Theologian Trading Cards. (My wife, a little more skeptical, believes they are the result of someone getting drunk at a pastors’ conference.) The ‘author’ credit for this goes to Norman Jeune III who is the Lead Hospital Chaplain for a children’s hospital in Orange, California.

This is not an “everything you always wanted to know” product. You’ll get far more info at Wikipedia. And it’s not a deck — 14 or 15 decks actually (see footnote) — of “heroes of the faith.” A great biography doesn’t automatically merit inclusion, but rather a contribution to the various branches of theology.

This is an ideal product for a graduate or current student from a Master’s program at a school of divinity, seminary or Bible college; for anyone else who wants to satisfy their inner church history nerd, or for the pastor who has everything. I’m sure publishers at other companies looked at this and asked, “Whatever were they thinking?” Still, it stands to do better than Zondervan’s direct-to-remainder “Chunky” NIV Bible.

The decks represent different streams of thought, types of approach or in some cases, eras in theological history. From the Munich Monks and Athens Metaphysicians to the St. Pius Cardinals, Geneva Sovereigns and Constantinople Hesychasts one gets a good idea where different figures from ecclesiastical history fit either into the larger time line, or doctrinal groupings. (Did you click that link? See, you’re learning stuff already!)

For the serious student, these serve as a reminder. For the uninitiated, they serve to whet the appetite for reading classic authors. For the critic, your best bet is to consider who was and wasn’t included. For the doctrinally obsessed, you can carry your Ulrich Zwingli card in your wallet or purse. For the person in your house who refuses to read an actual book, this just might work!

The problem will be finding someone else to ‘trade’ with.

---

A review copy of the package was sent to me from Zondervan and HarperCollins. Full disclosure: For whatever reason, I ended up receiving two copies of this. Each one was missing one of the decks, but I combined them to make up a single complete set. One also contained a duplicate of one of the decks. What is now my ‘lesser’ set was also sent minus N. T. Wright and Karl Barth and one other theologian who doesn’t come to mind right now.The box retails for $26.99 and you should make sure you have 15 different decks before you leave the store.

Cards are not shown actual size.

Concordia Decides Enough is Enough with VBS Entertainment

VBS (Vacation Bible School) is a major industry. Let me be clear, VBS is big business. In North America, nearly two dozen publishers compete — in every sense of the word — for your church’s summer Christian Education dollars to be spent on their program. Each year the programs get more and more elaborate and involve an increasing number of ancillary products which help vindicate what each publisher spends on marketing.

And according to one publisher, each year it gets, from a Biblical viewpoint, more and more silly. Concordia Publishing has decided to swim against the current. Good for them.

On another blog that I write, I deal with issues confronting the world of Christian publishing in general and Christian bookstores in particular. Sometimes I link to articles at a Strang Publishing website called Christian Retailing, but usually I don’t need to because bookstore owners and managers already have that information covered and are regular readers there.

So normally, I wouldn’t reblog anything from Christian Retailing there, let alone here, but this is something every Kid Min director, every Children’s pastor, every Christian Education department head needs to be aware of. As always, reading at source is encouraged, click here.

Concordia Takes Stand Against VBS Entertainment Machine

Concordia Publishing House is calling on Vacation Bible School (VBS) publishers to make the gospel—not entertainment—central to their VBS programs.

“Our stand is against Vacation Bible School programs that confuse children with images and characters that are unrealistic and too similar to cartoons on TV and in the movies—where is the Christian focus?” said Emily Barlean, senior public relations specialist.

Acknowledging that VBS themes may use cartoonish figures or themes to “hook” children and get them interested in participating in a church VBS program, a company statement observed that “the steady transformation of VBS programs into full-on entertainment machines has created a rather distressing situation.

“Instead of being used to share the Word of the Lord, VBS is being used to babysit and cure boredom—and many children are leaving VBS more confused than ever as to who and what is real and who and what are just characters and stories.”

Laying the blame at the feet of publishers, parents and churches alike, Concordia, publisher for The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), has spent three years refocusing its VBS brand and creating programming that remains faithful to the gospel message and the Scriptures as a whole. The publisher calls this renewed focus “VBS with Purpose.”

“After many years of trying to mold our VBS programs after what was considered fun and popular, we decided that we’d had enough,” said Pam Nummela, Concordia’s VBS editor, who is also a director of Christian education and a 30-year veteran leader of VBS programs.

Concordia’s VBS curricula will be changing significantly as a result. Stores and churches will see the publisher’s VBS programs will no longer be set in locations that cannot be found in the Bible, stories will no longer feature characters outside of the Bible, all artwork will be realistic, and “wise-cracking animals” will not be the spokesmen for Concordia VBS themes.

“Kids love all kinds of art, but that does not mean all art is best for presenting Bible stories,” said Gail Pawlitz, a childhood education expert. “During the early childhood years when children sort out for themselves what is real from what is not real, realistic images for Bible stories trump others because they communicate the idea that if ‘it looks real, it is real.’ “

…[T]o learn more about Concordia’s 2013 program, click Tell It on the Mountain.

Weekend Link List

Weekend List Lynx – Do Not Feed

Because the internet never takes a day off…

• Some of you still haven’t seen the book or movie, The Vow.  Here’s a chance to catch up with the astounding story of  Kim and Krickett Carpenter.  (Seriously, click this; it’s an amazing story to at least know a little about.)
• Christian rapper LeCrae has a new album and it’s available online for free! (Doubt Christian bookstores are thrilled with this, though.) And here’s a link to CT’s article about LeCrae’s Man Up Campaign dealing with “father absence” in the inner city. (Be sure to read all three pages.)
  
• Yes, you saw the disturbing picture below already, didn’t you.  Those are Jesus Popsicles.  I guess you need to read the story.  (This could only come from either Los Angeles or New York, click to find out which.)
• Brian McLaren has released three little fiction ebooks for only $2.99 each.  Probably atypical text sample: For God so loved the church that he gave to himself his only Son, as a penal substitutionary sacrifice, so that those elect few who believe in this atoning doctrine would not suffer eternal, conscious torment in hell as a result of original sin, but would live forever in heaven after death.  For God did not send his Son into the world to save the world, but to condemn it, and save only the church.  (Not John 3:16-17)  (Obviously, not for everyone!)
• And now for the question everyone in the northern hemisphere is asking now that spring/summer is here: Would the Apostle Paul permit women to wear bikinis? (I guess a lot of people were wondering.) 
• Sometimes the voice on the other end of a smart phone seems so real that it’s not surprising that Christian kids are concerned about his/her eternal destiny. (Apologies for where the younger kid screams about halfway through; not responsible for speaker damage.)
• A book industry guy decides it’s time to finally try reading an eBook, though he ends up less than impressed.  (Nobody even edited the code for special symbols, you might as well be reading in HTML.)
• Speaking of the book industry, Thomas Nelson is managing to get an entire book out of Bonhoeffer author Eric Metaxas’ speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. (I enjoyed watching the original, though; it is available online.)

Christian Bands and Artists: Think Twice About Selling Your Soul

This post appeared yesterday at Christian Book Shop Talk

All music products follow a natural cycle from top sellers to the delete bin. In the book industry, we call them remainders, with CDs their deletes. Not sure which is worse: Being ‘leftovers’ or ‘write offs.’ The end result is the same.

There are two surefire ways to make sure your songs don’t die after the album sales die: One is to make a comeback every five years; the other is to make sure the songs are remembered and perhaps even rediscovered years later to be covered by other artists.

If you’re an upcoming band or solo artist, you want to get signed to a label, and you want to get signed to a good label, and a good label is one that will work hard to aggressively promote your music and aggressively protect your copyrights, right?

Well, maybe not. Those royalties will certainly buy a lot of groceries and nobody wants to see their music blatantly ripped off. But I don’t think any musician lying on their deathbed is preoccupied with performance royalties or mechanical royalties.

They would much rather see their music outlive their lives.

I’m returning of course to the issue raised the other day concerning EMI-CMG, the Christian music group of EMI. Is getting signed with this label the top prize, or might you do better, in the long run, to sign with a more ministry-focused organization?

Today I decided to listen online to the song “More” by Mylon LeFevre. Classic Christian rock. “More of Jesus, less of me…” Beautiful harmonies.

But instead, I got the far too recurring black screen telling me the song is not available in my country. Apparently people in Canada are tripping over themselves trying to profit from Mylon’s material. (If I wrote this on one of my mainstream blogs, I would get back, “Mylon who?”) It’s a shame really, because the song is most worthy of a cover version.

I’m sure somebody at EMI thinks they are just doing their job; bowing to whatever copyright oddities permit the song in the U.S., but ban it in Canada, Japan, Serbia and three other countries you’ve never heard of. And in fairness, the notice also implicates Warner Music Group, who aren’t so much of a player on the Christian music scene, but probably own a song or two that you and I would want to recall.

The bottom line is this:

• Christian music exists for a different purpose
• Christian songs ultimately belong to the body of Christ
• Christian artists answer to a higher boss

For years, the CCM industry yearned for “crossover,” we wanted to see our products rack up the numbers in K-Mart and Target and be equal players in the larger industry. So independent record companies like Sparrow sold out to the majors.

Perhaps it’s time to stop chasing success and start crossing over in the other direction; time to take back our music. And if you are a music artist on the cusp of signing with a ‘major,’ think twice about where you want your music to be long after the songs are deleted and the band breaks up. Available or locked in a vault somewhere?

Mark Driscoll Can Be Blunt, Rachel Held Evans Can’t

Warning: Today’s post uses a word that is that a heart of this week’s major Evangelical controversy.

So anyway, there’s my wife, sitting in church a couple of weeks ago, and the speaker is doing a two-week series on Song of Solomon and he explains that a particular phrase is referring to “her lady bits.”

I was attending another church, where the pastor was pursuing a much safer study of Matthew 5, a particular teaching of Jesus which doesn’t contain any need to use the phrase, “her lady bits;” nor the V-word which my wife informs me showed up in the sermon also.

“I’m so glad I was not there for that;” I told my wife.

“Are you kidding;” she replied; “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world!”

I guess you had to be there. Or maybe not.

The V-word, which, we might as well be clear, is ‘vagina,’ also comes up in the manuscript for Rachel Held Evans new book, My Year of Biblical Womanhood; to be published, in theory anyway, by Thomas Nelson.

It actually appears twice in the text, and I’ve read both occurrences from a fringe website that claimed to be authoritative on this matter.

The publisher, Thomas Nelson, still intoxicated by the success of recent hits like Jesus Calling and Heaven is For Real, is now enjoying some additional press from this, and is hedging on the direction that Rachel should go. She can leave the words in, but have that adversely affect sales, or she can take out the offending (but not exactly slang) terms.

Earlier in the month she wrote:

They won’t let me use the word “vagina” in my book because we have to sell it to Christian bookstores, which apparently have a thing against vaginas. I make a big scene about it and say that if Christian bookstores stuck to their own ridiculous standards, they wouldn’t be able carry the freaking Bible. I tell everyone that I’m going to fight it out of principle, but I cave within a few days because I want Christian bookstores to carry the sanitized version of my book because I want to make a lot of money, because we’ve needed a new roof on our house for four years now, and because I really want a Mac so I can fit in at the mega-churches. I feel like such a fraud.

Then, last week, this:

I want to make it clear that it is not my editors at Thomas Nelson who are insisting that I take out the word “vagina.” I can stick to my guns, keep “vagina” in, and I suspect Thomas Nelson will still publish the book. The problem, as I understand it, is that Christian bookstores probably won’t carry it, and Thomas Nelson sells a lot of books to Christian bookstores.

So, as sad as it is, we have a business decision to make. Do we risk losing a bunch of potential sales in order to keep the word “vagina” in this context? Or do we decide to choose our battles and let it go?  And do I risk alienating myself from the Thomas Nelson team—which has been great so far—because I refuse to cooperate with Christian retailing, their area of expertise?

Blogger Tony Jones weighed in:

The problems with this are too numerous to enumerate. Among them:

1. Many Christian (read, conservative evangelical) bookstores won’t stock her book anyway, because they’ll consider it “feminist.”
2. Even if they do, they won’t sell many copies.
3. Wait, there are still Christian bookstores?
4. Wait, there are still bookstores?

Ha ha! Tony! Funny guy! But I agree with point #1, RHE is probably already too edgy for the conservative stores at issue.

But as I wrote at Christian Book Shop Talk, I’m not sure that its right for Thomas Nelson or Rachel or anyone else to presume on what bookstores are or are not going to carry.

…[I]t’s nice to think that the brick-and-mortar retail side of Christian book distribution still carries some weight. Guess we’re not dead yet.

But I also think they’ve been extremely presumptuous as to how prudish we really are.

Because the truth of the matter, is that this isn’t about you and me, the owners of independent bookstores and small chains; this is about LifeWay, because it’s LifeWay — or perhaps even more accurately, Baptists — who are going to raise the roof over this word.

Again, I’m not sure that this is about “Christian bookstores” as opposed to “a Christian bookstore chain.”

And as Rachel herself pointed out, this isn’t the first time:

In Ian Cron’s fantastic book, Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me, which was also published by Thomas Nelson, he writes this: “Did I mention that it’s cold? You have no idea how far a man’s testicles can recede into his body until you have jumped into the Dorset Qarry…My testicles were very, very angry.”

And in To Own a Dragon, the ever-talented Donald Miller writes, “I felt as though all the men in the world secretly met in some warehouse late at night to talk about man things, to have secret handshakes, to discuss how great it was to have a penis and what an easy thing it was to operate…”

Which brings us to Chaplain Mike at Internet Monk, who really puts this in perspective reminding us of that other rather blunt book which came out just a few weeks ago, Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll.

Why is this an issue, especially with all the triumphalistic chest-thumping lately in the Christian industrial complex about how courageous Mark and Grace Driscoll were to answer questions about various sexual practices with graphic detail in their book?

Oh sorry, I forgot. Mark is a man’s man, and the LEADER™ of a megachurch. He and his church are controversial. He swears for effect because he’s CUTTING EDGE™ and trying to reach hard core unbelievers. Driscoll is ANOINTED™. He’s MISSIONAL™ and he’s got satellite campuses and he goes on shows like The View and stands up for THE FAITH™ by saying that homosexuals need to REPENT™ and that sex is only for married heterosexuals and that wives should SUBMIT™ to their husband’s leadership in the bedroom and every other area of life.

Mark Driscoll is the Christian bookseller’s dream… There’s not an ounce of thoughtfulness, nuance, or mystery about him. It’s either blackest black or whitest white, expressed in monosyllabic, in your face, turn or burn PREACHIN’™. He can say vagina or penis or oral sex or anal sex or any word or phrase he likes because he is a Reformission Rev in pagan freakin’ Seattle and he is REACHING THE LOST™.

But Rachel, well, she has a vagina and it would be shameful for her to talk about it or even use the word in public. She’s not a pastor or LEADER™ (God forbid!).

140 people have signed a petition at Am*zon to have the word put back into the manuscript.  

Karen Spears Zacharias writes:

I suppose when they signed contract with Rachel it never occurred to the publisher that she would have the balls to talk about her vagina in a book about womanhood, heh? But then I suppose Thomas Nelson wouldn’t use the word balls either, heh?…

…And theologians argue over why people today don’t find the Church relevant to their lives. Perhaps the answer to that question could be found in the books Christians refuse to print, sell, buy and read.

Sometimes it seems that all Christians publishers really want us “good Christian” women to write about are Amish Vampires.

Suzannah at the blog So Much Shouting writes:

Yes, this is a ridiculous conversation to be having in 2012.  But I believe that it is symptomatic of a fear within the church of bodies and sexuality–especially female sexuality.

Are we not a people who worship an Incarnate God and believe that our own bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made?

Blogger Allison Buzard writes:

The big question I’m getting at is this: Church, are we willing to redeem our culture’s view on sex and sexuality?

It’s possible, but we have to get over our own awkwardness.  And it’s critical that we do because here’s the reality: There are lots of folks sitting in our church pews every week who are having sex.  Some of them attend your junior high youth group.  Some of them are in your college ministry.  Some of them are in your senior ministry.  Some of them are married.  Some of them are single.  But trust you me, sex is happening amongst your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and we out to be talking about it.

And then — if you haven’t had your fill of this already — there’s the Nazarene discussion forum, Naznet, which, if you really want to consider this further, has a number of comments which reflect the variety of views on this subject.  (Note to self: Visit this site again sometime soon.) 

Conclusion:

We live in a time when battle lines are being drawn between conservative Christians and progressive Christians.  I usually find myself standing somewhere in between, trying to build a bridge between both groups; trying to maintain doctrinal orthodoxy while at the same time recognizing that this ain’t 1949 or 1953 or 1961. It’s 2012 already.The world changed in-between; the world changed last year; the world changed last week.

We need to be mindful of the duality as we interact with the broader culture; as we live between two worlds; as we exist as aliens and strangers, having citizenship in another country; but having to live, eat, breathe, work and play in a world that’s not our permanent home. (See graphic below.)

To that end, we need authors and publishers who will translate our message into the vernacular of the day, or even the hour. We need books and book distribution networks that will illustrate Christian worldview in a way that people can understand. 

In the end, the books we create should, at times, make us uncomfortable.

UPDATE: MAY 10, 2012:

Another author, Karen Spears Zacharias faced similar resistance to explicit content and released her true story highlighting the impact of child abuse, A Silence of Mockingbirds through MacAdam Cage Publishing — in hardcover at US$ 25 — your local store can order it through Ingram using 9781596923751

Does Corporate Ownership of Christian Publisher Matter?

Monday’s announcement that Christian publishing giant Thomas Nelson was going to be acquired by mainstream publishing giant HarperCollins caught some people off guard.  It shouldn’t.  Thomas Nelson (TNI) had actually been owned by an investment company for several years.  But given parent company News Corp’s penchant for headline-making this year, it was a hard story to ignore, especially with TNI sitting atop the New York Times Bestseller List with Heaven is for Real by Todd and Colton Burpo for most of the summer.

The spin that got put on this story was that News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch would now “own the Bible;” given that HarperCollins already owns Zondervan (ZDV).  And it’s no lie; ZDV and TNI command half of the Bible sales market, with the former being the primary (but not sole) publisher of the NIV, and also having NASB, GNT and KJV editions; and TNI being the almost-exclusive publisher of the NKJV and NCV (New Century Version) and also having KJV editions.

But nobody owns the Bible.  It’s God’s book, and what centuries of attempted destruction have failed to do is not going to be accomplished by changes in corporate ownership of a few publishers; though the advocates of some versions — I’m guessing ESV especially — will have a field day with the Murdoch angle to the story.

Do people really notice who owns what?  Many don’t even bother to read the publisher imprint on the spine or title page of their favorite books; let alone know that Publisher “A” is owned by a particular denomination and Publisher “B” is owned by a giant media conglomerate.  They listen to Switchfoot, Chris Tomlin or Steven Curtis Chapman completely unaware that parent company EMI also releases the many artists that Christian music exists as an alternative for. 

Furthermore, if it was explained to them, they would probably agree that Faithwords’ book titles, as part of the giant Hachette Book Group, can probably get into more places  around the world than might be possible with homegrown publishers like Tyndale, Baker Book Group, or Harvest House.  And the financial might of a company like HarperCollins makes it possible for Zondervan to release a vast array of updated NIV-2011 Bibles almost overnight.

But where it gets insidious is when someone comes along with an axe to grind; with something they are against; and seeks to play the ownership trump card — not a reference to Donald Trump who hasn’t entered Christian publishing yet — suggesting that to buy a NKJV or NIV is to support the company that also publishes Tarot cards.    And religious-interest imprint HarperOne does in fact publish Tarot Games: 45 Playful Ways to Explore Tarot Cards Together; A New Vision for the Circle of Community. 

But then they will purchase some ultra-conservative book by an ultra-conservative publishing company, but purchase it through online sellers like Am*zon, who also distribute erotic literature and photography titles.  Or perhaps through a Christian bookstore that is so heavily second and third mortgaged that it’s truly owned by the bank; a bank which may have other investments of which they would not approve.  All I’m saying here is that I don’t know if you ever win this battle in a multi-tiered, inter-connected economy. 

So yes, TNI is about to be acquired by HarperCollins which also owns ZDV and publishes Tarot Games.  If you want to only support those publishers that are 100% owned by Christian individuals or ministry organizations, that still leaves you a lot of possibilities.  But sadly, it also eliminates many others, the fruit of authors who desire to take their message to the widest possible audience using whatever plane, train, truck or book distribution network to do so. 

And most are good authors, worthy of your support, worthy of your trust, worthy of your taking the time to listen to their stories, their wisdom or their Biblical exposition.