the Nashville-based Protestant publisher has been going through some changes lately. First, a few months ago, they discontinued the use of separate imprints within the company. And then, Publishers’ Weekly reported that Nelson was going to start working in adherence to the Nicene Creed and affirmation of a Scripture verse (Philippians 4:8) into their contracts.

Apparently, this set off a little firestorm and CEO Mike Wyatt responded to the reports and criticism a couple of days ago in his blog.

(And yes – isn’t it interesting thatThomas Nelson actually encourages its employees to blog. That’s different, eh?…Different in a good way, of course.)

Hyatt says that the reports are untrue. That the credal affirmations are not in the contracts. He does seem to say, however, that they are a part of the editorial standards expected of an author. His explanation is interesting for all of us involved in publishing, basically stating that they are a Christian publisher, but still intend to publish works dealing with all kinds of issues and topics, so with that in mind it is best to focus on the author:

All of this really goes back to our focus on the Thomas Nelson brand. We want this brand—our name—to mean something. We want our customers to be able to trust it. We want people to have confidence that our books will be written from a Christian worldview, by people who profess to be Christians and are striving to walk the talk, regardless of the subject matter they may be addressing.

We want to supply great Christian content to our traditional Christian sales channels. Most of this content will be explicitly Christian. However, we also want to reach beyond these sales channels and penetrate deeply into the general market with implicitly Christian content. We are already doing this, of course. In fact, more than half of our sales now come from the general market. But we are not satisfied. We want to go further. We want readers to discover our books on every shelf, of every outlet, in every part of the world.

But to do that, we must be aligned with authors who share our vision, our mission, and our values. That’s why we have invested the time and energy to clarify our editorial standards. We believe that clarity will produce unity and unity will produce collaboration. And together, with God’s help, we will fulfill our mission “to inspire the world.”

Intense discussion in the comments section, partly fueled by people who say they are Christians, but non-credal (which is a reality, of course), partly by those who say that the judgment should ultimately be on the work, not the author’s life.

I think it’s fascinating to tease this apart from the business standpoint myself. Wyatt states outright that they want to grow – which you can also see as evangelization, of course. But in essence, what he’s saying, it seems, is that if I’m an affirmer of the Nicene Creed and write an avocado cookbook (hey, we made guacamole tonight – it’s on my mind. Or, as Michael remarked when he got home from work, "You do know it’s "Our Lady of Guadalupe," not "Our Lady of Guacamole," right?) – okay, so I write the avocado cookbook that turns out to be a monster seller, they’re good with that because, you know, God made avocados.

Is there anything wrong with that? I don’t think so. It’s a private business, they can do what they want. It’s just intriguing to watch. And props to the blogging publishers, too.