Drudge had an article up earlier from The Week magazine written by Jonathan Merritt titled The Rise and fall of the Christian bookstore. The article begins with this...."Back in the 1990s, it seemed that every city and town in America had a strip mall with a Christian bookstore.... But today, these Christian bookstores are a dying breed. Indeed, it seems we are fast approaching an America where this particular brand of religious retailer will be no more than a memory."
The article went on to describe the tremendous growth of Christian publishing beginning with Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970 which "rocked the marketplace." By 1983 the AP noticed this in an article titled..."Christian books sales are booming." Then came the digital age and according to The Week....major bookstores such as Borders, B. Dalton and Waldenbooks fell by the wayside, while the coup de gras was the "shuttering" of the nation's largest Christian bookstore chain, Family Christian Stores. So far so good as to the accuracy of the article but although the statistics are accurate, the accompanying analysis was not.
According to that analysis...."the demise of Christian bookstores may actually be good news for Christianity itself." Now I would like to ask you to sit down, of course you are already probably sitting down, before you read the last sentence in the article.
The Week is a secular source so we cannot expect them to see the real problems within Christianity but we often find that the secular media inadvertently informs us of where the problems are. So what the author envisioned was this....since the and mortar bookstores will go....so will the "religious kitsch" or the "trinketization of Christianity." Since you will no longer just be able to walk into a Christian bookstore and buy whatever silly book has become a bestseller.....the quality of the writing....the prose.... should improve in order for the literature to sell. Finally.....since Christian bookstores typically sold only books that held to historically accepted biblical truths....one man/one woman marriage for example....."fresh and risky reflections" of Christianity may be the books of the future. Folks, let me interpret this for you.....liberal Christianity will be there to pick up the pieces!
The following is the last sentence from the article...."These three developments - the purging of religious kitsch, better quality prose, and a greater diversity of ideas - means the loss of retailers is a gain for readers. Hallelujah." I see three different developments....no more Christian bookstores, no more walk-ins like I was in 1982 where it changed my life, and no more Christian stores where a person at least knows that the gospel of Jesus Christ is somewhere on the other side of those glass doors - means that we're in trouble. Maranatha!
The article went on to describe the tremendous growth of Christian publishing beginning with Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970 which "rocked the marketplace." By 1983 the AP noticed this in an article titled..."Christian books sales are booming." Then came the digital age and according to The Week....major bookstores such as Borders, B. Dalton and Waldenbooks fell by the wayside, while the coup de gras was the "shuttering" of the nation's largest Christian bookstore chain, Family Christian Stores. So far so good as to the accuracy of the article but although the statistics are accurate, the accompanying analysis was not.
According to that analysis...."the demise of Christian bookstores may actually be good news for Christianity itself." Now I would like to ask you to sit down, of course you are already probably sitting down, before you read the last sentence in the article.
The Week is a secular source so we cannot expect them to see the real problems within Christianity but we often find that the secular media inadvertently informs us of where the problems are. So what the author envisioned was this....since the and mortar bookstores will go....so will the "religious kitsch" or the "trinketization of Christianity." Since you will no longer just be able to walk into a Christian bookstore and buy whatever silly book has become a bestseller.....the quality of the writing....the prose.... should improve in order for the literature to sell. Finally.....since Christian bookstores typically sold only books that held to historically accepted biblical truths....one man/one woman marriage for example....."fresh and risky reflections" of Christianity may be the books of the future. Folks, let me interpret this for you.....liberal Christianity will be there to pick up the pieces!
The following is the last sentence from the article...."These three developments - the purging of religious kitsch, better quality prose, and a greater diversity of ideas - means the loss of retailers is a gain for readers. Hallelujah." I see three different developments....no more Christian bookstores, no more walk-ins like I was in 1982 where it changed my life, and no more Christian stores where a person at least knows that the gospel of Jesus Christ is somewhere on the other side of those glass doors - means that we're in trouble. Maranatha!
