Lifeway Continues to Walk Tightrope Between Principle and Profit

Love the sinner, hate the sin.

Only in the case of Lifeway Christian Resources, it goes:  Love the profit to be made from the sale of each book, hate the theology.

This time around, Christian musician Shaun Groves has brought the issue of Lifeway’s “warning” notices back to the surface.    In a must-read piece, he begins with the story of trying to purchase Donald Miller’s latest at Lifeway, seeing the consumer advisory notice, and electing instead to purchase the book across the road at Barnes and Noble.

LifeWay warns Miller’s readers to exercise discernment because it believes his books to be inconsistent with historical evangelical theology in some way, yet instead of refusing to sell them, LifeWay chooses to profit from what it alleges to be heresy(ish). That seems a bit like Nancy Regan going into the crack business. “Just say ‘No.’ First one’s free.”

But more odd is how LifeWay is defining “historically evangelical theology.” Actually, I’m not sure how they’re defining it.

What definition both condemns Donald Miller as a heretic but approves the writings of Joyce Meyer and John Hagee?

Yes!   Finally!   Someone is saying what needs to be said here.   Groves goes on to ask,

Is “historical” Christianity the stuff that happened after Constantine…or after Calvin…or is it after D.L Moody?

And what historical evangelical theology is communicated by paintings of cottages printed on mousepads, and t-shirts that print scripture pulled from context across an American flag, or keychains or romance novels minus the sex?

Again, you’re encouraged to read both the boldness of Groves’ analysis and also the humility of his conclusions, by clicking here.

Where does this leave the rest of us?

My take on this is that ultimately, we in retail either trust our publishers or we don’t.   If the name Baker, or Nelson, or Zondervan, or Harvest House appears on the spine and the title page, you need to trust that both their acquisitions department and their editorial staff believe the product is worthy of their endorsement.

But if you can’t trust those publishers, then don’t carry any of the products.   That’s right.   Don’t carry any of them.   Not one.   In fact, better to just limit yourselves to just the products in your own publishing family:  Broadman, Holman, Lifeway… and nothing else.

Though I’m not sure about the last one.    As a conservative Evangelical, the prospect of Beth Moore teaching the Bible — i.e. to a mixed audience — may be a bit un-Biblical.   Maybe they could start by reconsidering their own products.

Or consider the other possibility.

The publishers themselves tell Lifeway, “Hey, you don’t trust us, fine your account is closed.”   Yes, I know what you’re thinking, that would never happen for a dozen reasons, but mostly because it’s way too radical. To which I respond: Is it any more radical than sticking disclaimers all over your product?

Related post 8.23.08 at Thinking Out Loud

Should You Carry Books Which Tear Down Other Books You Carry?

WND Books (World Net Daily) brings to market this paperback title which is less charitible than the two Finding God in the Shack titles (the IVP one, and the Authentic Media one); so should a story sell books which attack other books we sell?   Here’s the publisher marketing on Burning Down The Shack: How The Christian Bestseller is Deceiving Millions:

Millions have bought into the theology of Paul Young, whose book, The Shack, which portrays God as a loving, black woman. Similar changes in appearance were given to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The story of pain and redemption then resonated with the public.

But is Young’s worldview important? Is his theology that big a deal?

James De Young thinks so. In fact, it’s so important that he’s written a compelling challenge to The Shack. In Burning Down the Shack, De Young manages to shed important light on the implications of Young’s pluralistic faith, and provides readers with a gripping counter-balance to the popular little volume that’s spent many weeks on the best-seller lists.

Exploring the nature and character of God, from Scripture, De Young concludes that it is necessary to proceed carefully with The Shack, lest important truths be skewed and even jettisoned. Without being confrontational, De Young makes the case that dangers can lurk under the foundation.

But is The Shack deceiving millions?   My view is that — among its true target audience — it’s done more good than anything.   It’s not a theological treatise, and I’m not sure that it was written with the intention that “insiders” would dissect its doctrinal implications.  Especially years later, after the book has passed from its position atop the sales charts. It’s actually a book written for people who have gone through a “great sadness” to know that in it all, there is still a loving God.

However, Calvinists hate the book.   They don’t just “not like” it; they hate it.  The publisher marketing softens it — the other Shack–related books also urge theological caution — but the assigned title (and subtitle) betrays the intent.  (Betrays, even to the point that the word “Christian” appears in quotation marks, so as to imply that the author rejects the notion that a book vetted by tens of thousands of Christian booksellers — like you — is actually worth of such placement.   Sigh!)  Reformers just don’t like Wm. Paul Young.

And one finally found a publisher willing to put that dislike into widespread distribution.

My personal opinion?   Pass on this title.

Tim Challies Strange Survey of Christian Readers

In the end, it’s a survey that says more about the author and the world he lives in than it does about anything else.

Still, you need to take a look at the Christian Readers Survey at Tim Challies blog at Challies.com.    And if you ever purchase Christian books for personal use outside of your store’s trade environment, you might even want to complete the survey as I did.

It’s interesting to compare the priorities of online purchasing versus what we experience on a day-to-day basis in the world of brick and mortar Christian bookstores.

Obviously, the array of available e-commerce sites permits one to choose on the basis of price, choice, shipping costs, speed of delivery (not sure he covered that one), and the type of books with which the site specializes.

That last one is the biggie.   Tim’s blog often proclaims the deal of the week at sites like Westminster Books and Monergism Books, but never enough to tempt me to make more than a superficial examination of their wares.  An early question in the suvey gives you a choice of denominational preference:  Calvinist or Non-Calivinist.   I can’t imagine living in a corner of Christianity where everything can be reduced to that one simple question.

Therefore, the value of the survey is somewhat limited.

Quite honestly, I don’t know how much weight our bookstore customers place on where we go to church.    In my part of the world, the people in Whitby were Salvation Army, the woman who owned Oshawa was Pentecostal Assemblies, the people in Bowmanville are Christian Reformed, the owner in Peterborough is Pentecostal, the couple in Belleville have Free Methodist roots, the woman in Napanee attended a Charismatic church, the manager in Kingston had either Baptist or Missionary Alliance roots.

I know all these things because I know the people personally.   I’m not sure to what extent it affects their customers, or to what extent my own denominational affiliation — somewhat varied in the past few years — would make or break a customer choice to shop in my stores.

But of course it’s the buying that matters.  My store is judged by the books that are visible when you walk in.   The survey’s wording hints that it might be the case that people would boycott a book source if it sold books that they theologically disagreed with.    That’s rather narrow.   It’s suggestive of, “If you won’t play my rules, I’ll take my ball and my bat and go home.”

First of all, the world of Christian book selling is totally dominated by companies with a reformed heritage, so Tim’s core readers have little to be concerned about.

Secondly, it’s a given that an interdenominational bookstore is going to carry a mixture of doctrinal flavors.   During the 1980s and ’90s it would be financial suicide not to carry some charismatic bestsellers, since some of those books were driving sales in many markets in the U.S. and Canada.   To this day we still have a  modest “Charismatic/Renewal” shelf in our store, but it is segregated from the larger “Christian Living” section because we don’t want people thinking that the more extreme voices in that movement represent anything close to mainstream Christian theology.  (Not that we carry those; our stock is more ‘conservative Charismatic.’)

On the other hand, Tim’s video blog a few months ago of the book sales area at the Together for the Gospel conference was, for me, not unlike visiting a Roman Catholic bookstore or a Word-of-Faith bookstore.   It was an environment most foreign, with perhaps less than 5% overlap of titles we would find stocked in the average Christian bookstore.   (But certainly available by order, any time, cheerfully, quickly and often with familiarity of the authors concerned by virtue of previous orders.)  They’re good books, they are far from ‘fluff,’ but only a handful will have ever appeared on a Christian books top 100 list.

Stocking many of those authors, however — with the exception of the few who do break out into the larger market — would simply not be viable.

The deal breakers for my customers would be if we were stocking material that was very liberal in theology.   Actually, let me pause and restate that as “stocking material which appears orthodox but is in fact liberal in its theology.”   I say that because my customers have been willing to think outside the box and read everything from Kevin Roose’s Unlikely Disciple (the atheist who embedded himself in Liberty University) to Flander’s Book of Faith (a not entirely irreverent look at Christianity by the writing staff of The Simpsons TV show.)  (Comment writers:  Please don’t seize on this last one, it’s not normative at our store.)

People would vote with their feet if I stocked Marcus Borg or Shelby Spong, but to date, we don’t know of anyone who wrote us off because we carry The Shack.  (We’ve had lots of heated Shack-based discussions, but nobody said they weren’t returning.)

It’s simply all there, like a large Christian family album:  N. T. Wright, John Piper, Henri Nouwen, Rob Bell, John Ortberg, Philip Yancey; all seated together at the table and looking at the photographer and smiling.

Actually, I thrive on environments like Family Christian or Parable stores when I’m in the U.S.  The cross-pollination that can take place when we mix books for different theological views — or more important these days, different generations — can only be healthy.

I guess my main issue with surveys like this one is that they seem to have an agenda.   It appears that the writer is not at all neutral, but intentionally or unintentionally is advancing the view that you don’t want to buy a book from an organization that doesn’t fully endorse every word on every page.  It’s a survey that I think, with some people, just puts ideas into their heads that perhaps their discernment meter should be turned up higher the next time around.

Or to put it another way, it puts ideas into peoples’ heads that there is a such a thing as retail orthodoxy.

But how far back to do you trace that?   Do the most exclusively Reformed publishers use printers who share their doctrine?   Do those printers purchase paper stock from like-minded  believers who own pulp and paper mills?  Are the books delivered by trucking companies whose owners subscribe to the five major points of Calvinism?   If so, are the individual drivers so screened?   Is the person who built or leases the offices theologically onside?

I’d rather be part of a more encompassing Christian book industry.

I’d rather do theology living a few steps closer to the real world, as I believe Jesus would have us.

And I’d rather be able to walk into a Christian bookstore using my own discernment meter to decide if something is suitable for my personal reading or for me to give as a gift.

Check out the survey, read some of the comments, and tell me what you think.

Strang Author To Release Title Through Baker

Years ago, a friend put me on to regularly reading the editorials in Charisma magazine by J. Lee Grady.    I’ve rarely met a Pentecostal or Charismatic who can argue for the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit in the 21st century, and at the same time decry the excesses that take place in those same movements.   Lee defines the term “balanced Charismatic” for me.

So I’m glad to see that “Fire In My Bones,” the title of his weekly e-mail and monthly editorial will become Fire in My Bones, the title of his April, 2010 trade paper with Chosen Books.

But I have to ask the obvious question; ‘Why Baker Book Group, and not Strang Communications, his employer and owner of the imprint that shares the name with Charisma magazine?’

Baker will certainly take his writing to a wider, more diverse audience.   Would Strang have been able to poll larger numbers from those who already recognize the author’s name?

I really hope to review this one in the new year.    Subtitle:  Recovering the Genuine Power of the Holy Spirit in an Age of Compromise.   Forward by R. T. Kendall.