An interesting article from Breakpoint

Two worlds. Two cultures. Two markets. Two mainstreams. This is what has become of Christian enterprise in America: a $4.2 billion industry committed to putting out records, books and entertainment with a message that according to Bill Anderson, president of the CBA, formerly known as the Christian Booksellers Association, “aligns with Scripture.”

One has to wonder, however, how all of that $4.2 billion in merchandise could possibly be scripturally sound. Is scriptural integrity the primary motivation for this market or is it something else? My limited understanding of economics is that the primary motivation for any market is usually profit. Secondarily might be the spread of the gospel or the dissemination of the word of God, but I don’t think either of these can account for $4.2 billion of success. There’s something bigger here driving this machine, and I would suggest that it is primarily the fear factor, and the resulting protection that a Christian industry provides a worried and nervous clientele

There was an article in the 12/27 NYTimes..

Which isn’t online but for a price, so there’s no link, but I’ll share some of it with you here:

Michelle Rapkin, director of religious publishing at Doubleday, had made plans to publish “Circle of Grace,” a new novel by Penelope Stokes, next summer under two imprints: Doubleday and Waterbrook, the religious imprint of Random House. But a few weeks ago, Ms. Rapkin said, Doubleday decided to publish “Circle of Grace” alone. There were two problems with the novel for a Christian imprint, she said. One of the characters, a young woman, becomes an Episcopal priest. Another character, a middle-aged woman who undergoes therapy and discovers she has submerged her personality her entire life, unleashes her fury in salty language.

“It probably wouldn’t shock you or me or very many people, but there are those who don’t want to see it on the page if it has the Christian stamp of approval,” Ms. Rapkin said, calling the necessary line “a tightrope.”

Two years ago Doubleday tried to capitalize on the success of Philip Yancy — who has sold five million books in the Christian market — with “Soul Survivor,” his 15th book, as a mainstream title. While it was hardly a disaster at 110,000 copies, the publisher was disappointed. In paperback it will appear under both the Doubleday and Waterbrook imprints.

Still, many Christian book and music titles have become huge successes in the mainstream world, available also at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. Some classics, like “Lord of the Rings,” find a warm reception in the Christian market, and many writers and musicians, like the novelist Jan Karon or the singer Amy Grant, cross over to the secular side.

Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church, in Orange County, Calif., a megachurch on a 120-acre campus where about 19,000 people attend services every week, is author of “The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?” It has been on The New York Times’s advice and how-to best-seller list for 11 months, having sold more than 11 million copies.

Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard, examined the Saddleback Church for “Better Together: Restoring the American Community,” a book he wrote with Lewis Feldstein. On a book tour, Mr. Putnam said, he was struck by the audience’s reaction when he spoke about Saddleback. “My audiences,” he said, “are largely NPR-type audiences: intellectual, a little left of center and for the most part uneasy about the potential political influence of these groups.”

He said he was “shocked at how allergic much of my audience was to the idea that there is something of interest in this religious group.”

Despite the immense popularity of Christian authors, who are superstars in some parts of the country, they have been largely ignored by much of the mainstream news media, including this newspaper, further encouraging dual marketing.

Sharon Farnell, managing director of the “faith division” of Planned Television Arts, owned by Ruder Finn, has found it difficult to get bookings for her authors. “Those books sold at the level of a John Grisham book or J. K. Rowling book, but it was so hard to get coverage,” she said of the best-selling “Left Behind” series of apocalyptic novels by Tim LeHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.

The ninth in the “Left Behind” series, “Desecration” (Tyndale), sold nearly three million copies.

By comparison, Mr. Grisham’s legal thrillers are routinely published with a first print run of 2.8 million copies, while “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” fifth in the Harry Potter series, sold five million copies in its first 24 hours. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel “The Namesake” climbed onto The New York Times best-seller list for eight weeks this fall; Houghton Mifflin, has put 200,000 hard-cover copies in print.

The evangelical link is a source of frustration for authors and musicians who are Christian but who do not consider their works as proselytizing. “It’s easy to get pigeonholed, to have readers expect conservative religious perspectives and predictable outcomes,” said Ms. Stokes, the novelist, whose previous nine books were sold through the CBA market.

There are those who feel that those spiritual issues and Christianity itself — no matter what denomination — have become suspect. “I do notice how people are very comfortable talking about Buddhism and Eastern religions and taking them very seriously,” said Carolyn Carlson, executive editor at Viking Penguin. “But if you were talking about the same religious experience in a Christian context, I think people would be uncomfortable talking about it.”

Ms. Karon, one of Ms. Carlson’s authors, is a superstar among those who began with a Christian imprint. Her Mitford novels feature the life of an Episcopal rector. Her books have sold 15 million copies; the latest, “Shepherds Abiding,” quickly made The New York Times best-seller list after it was published in October. Yet Ms. Karon’s work is rarely reviewed in the mainstream media — outside of People magazine — and when it is, critics can be snide.

Voicing an often repeated complaint, Ms. Carlson said: “A distance has grown between cultural czars and people who like to read. I went to Harvard, I am a minister’s daughter, I’ve read all the great books that are out there, and I love these books, too.”

Yet for believers, maybe that dissonance is a good thing. There are those who argue that the very success of Christian marketers puts the purity of the faith at risk.

“The market and capitalism just do not respect a lot of the things religion traditionally has respected,” said Alan Wolfe, a professor at Boston College and author of “The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith” (Free Press).

“Money is very powerful, and God is very powerful, and I think money usually wins,” he said. “At least in this world.”