As the Preacher said, "Of the making of bestseller lists there is no end." Friends: please welcome Laura Turner in her PARSE debut, with a nifty little piece riffing on the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association's recently announced top sellers. – Paul
We want to know what heaven is like. We need help handling money, losing weight, and figuring out just exactly when to prepare for the apocalypse. We love the family behind Duck Dynasty and will buy almost any Jesus Calling spinoff—especially if it's bound in pink leather. All of this—based on the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association May 2014 list of bestselling books—may hold the key to understanding the state of evangelical church at the moment. Then again, maybe not. It would be nice to assume that we could get to a place of clear cultural insight so easily, but I don't want to draw too-broad conclusions about "the church," as if "the church" were a monolithic entity represented by the book-buying habits we see here. But one thing's clear—the church, as it stands, isn't terribly different from the culture at large. The Amazon bestsellers in the "religion and spirituality" category address questions about heaven, intuition, love languages, and willpower; as do The New York Times' bestselling books in their "Advice, How To, & Miscellaneous" section. So perhaps the only conclusion we can draw here is that it turns out "the church" isn't so different from the rest of the world, after all. Is that a bad thing? It's tempting to say a quick "Yes." "Be in the world but not of it," and all that. But may I humbly suggest another conclusion?
The imaginations of mortals
Perhaps it's a good thing that this year's Christian bestseller list mirrors the themes of its secular counterpart—an opportunity for us to remember what we have in common with the world outside of the church.
Perhaps it's a good thing that this year's Christian bestseller list mirrors the themes of its secular counterpart—an opportunity for us to remember what we have in common with the world outside of the church. We Christians are often known for defining ourselves by what we are against—but perhaps this point of connection with the rest of the world can be a touchpoint for our common interests. Paul, talking to the Athenians in the Areopagus in Acts 17, didn't rush to point out the differences between their philosophy and his own. Instead, he talked about the things these really different groups of people had in common: "For we too are his offspring. Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals." We read books like the ones on these lists in order to orient ourselves in the world. We read Jesus Calling to imagine ourselves in conversation with the person at the center of our faith, to know where we stand with him. We read Heaven is For Real to affirm (or question) what we think heaven to be. We read The Duck Commander Devotional because even Christians fall prey to shlocky marketing. We, like every other person in the entire world, have questions. And we turn to books for answers. We turn to the Bible, of course—making it the best-selling nonfiction book of all time—but we also trust others as our guides along the way. And we're not above entrusting our souls to the ghostwriters of reality TV stars, as much as we may like to think so.
The books that didn't make it
It strikes me that there are no real discipleship books on this list; nothing that talks about how to be an apprentice to Jesus or live in close attentiveness to God's will in our daily lives. Apparently we are as interested in self-help as our non-Christian counterparts.
But looking at the list, we have to wonder what books didn't make it. In many ways, that is just as telling as the books that are here. It strikes me that there are no real discipleship books on this list; nothing that talks about how to be an apprentice to Jesus or live in close attentiveness to God's will in our daily lives. Apparently we are as interested in self-help as our non-Christian counterparts. (Again, that isn't a bad thing, per se, but it is an opportunity to check our communal blind spots.) We may well be looking for quick answers to complicated questions, seeking to run to the sea when God has us, for one reason or another, in the desert. Total Money Makeover and The Daniel Plan and You Can Begin Again are very good and important books for some people to be reading, but it would be a joy to see them accompanied by books that look holistically, with depth, at the Christian person and her life. Perhaps most telling is the fact that these titles are, without exception, books intended to change the life or habits or thoughts of the individual reader. Again, this isn't inherently bad, but it's a bias we should be aware of in a culture that also reinforces the notion that we should simply follow our hearts, do what we love, and pursue our dreams. Those things are all well and good, but they also need to be placed in the context of a God who tells us that the greatest commandment is to love him with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Not one book of these twenty-five deals adequately with how to serve our neighbors, how to care for those in need, how to tend to those struggling with mental or physical illness. Our theology must go beyond heaven and hell (and the Blood Moons) to be worth its salt, but to look at this list, one wouldn't come to that conclusion.
Laura Turner is a writer, speaker, and church culture enthusiast living in the Bay Area. Laura blogs at www.loturner.com about issues of faith, theology, gender roles, and Oscar fashion.
