An advertisement appearing in Publisher’s Weekly, a book trade journal, reads: “A bestseller you will not find listed on the opposite page.” The book—The Late Great Planet Earth, by Hal Lindsey. The list—Publisher’s Weekly’s well-known “bestsellers” list. This Zondervan advertisement succinctly summarizes a problem of religious book publishers: they have bestsellers that never reach the major bestseller lists, such as the one the New York Times or the Washington Post runs. The Late Great Planet Earth is one of the best examples of this. Since its publication in 1970 the American edition has sold over one million copies; no bestseller list picked it up.

One of the difficulties with these lists is that they consider only hardbacks. Lindsey’s book is in both a hardback and a “trade” paperback edition. The paperback edition, which costs $1.95, is outselling the hardback thirty to one. Zondervan executives point this out; they differentiate between a trade and a mass-media paperback that sells for only $.95. They complain that trade paperbacks shouldn’t be overlooked in the compiling of bestseller lists.

How are those lists compiled? Selected bookstores throughout the country are polled to determine what books are selling. The Times closely guards its store list, but publishers have been known to obtain it. An author and English professor told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that the list was based on only ten bookstores in the Manhattan area. He claims that the stores submit projection sales lists to the paper. Therefore the bestseller list not only doesn’t reflect a true sampling of stores in the country but often doesn’t even reflect sales actually made. Several large New York publishers send buyers into these stores to push books they want to sell; often the buyers ask for a book that hasn’t yet reached the general sales market, explained the professor.

He spoke from first-hand experience. The professor financed his graduate work by buying books for a Madison Avenue executive who had contracts with some New York publishers. The job, he said, was to visit six stores in the Columbus, Ohio, area and buy several copies of four different books. He read the books in a large cafeteria, where he mentioned them to people seated around him. He said book-buying jaunts were often timed to coincide with a television appearance of the author or authors.

Large publishers have the money, the time, and the desire to push books this way. Religious publishers can’t—and won’t—do it, said one Zondervan executive. The big problem for religious publishers is to get their books into general bookstores. Murray Fisher, an executive with A. J. Holman, religious subdivision of Lippincott, complained that general bookstores “don’t carry and don’t want to carry religious books.” Most stores have a nominal “religion” department, but they only carry books published by major houses, such as Doubleday, Harper & Row, or Scribner.

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Beating The Odds

Why do some urban churches “beat the odds” and rise above difficult circumstances to “make it” with thriving growth, while other churches do not? Chicago Sun-Times religion writer Roy Larson took a look and found that the successful churches have certain distinguishing traits:

1. Purity of heart and singleness of purpose;

2. Clarity of identity, standing for something, taking risks, not preoccupied with their own survival;

3. Capacity to change while remaining recognizable;

4. Intentionality—determining the future course, not led by habit;

5. Unity in diversity—fostering fellowship through small groups, allowing for a variety of life styles;

6. Communal discipline (members expect great things from God and from each other as partners accountable to one another);

7. Openness to alien influences, becoming a community for others.

Fisher said his salesmen are often told that religious books contain inferior writing; book buyers say, “When the books get good, we’ll buy them.” Fisher added that in the last two years, between fifteen and twenty religious (some strictly evangelical) books should have been on a bestseller list somewhere.

Many major religious publishers are trying to crack the secular market. And one good way, they’ve found, is to get into the American Bookseller’s Association annual convention. This year a majority of them had display booths: Zondervan, Tyndale, Concordia, Regal, Warner, John Knox, Revell, Fortress, Judson, Eerdmans, Word, Westminster, and Abingdon. There were also a few Catholic publishers represented. Moody Press and Inter-Varsity sent representatives to the convention but didn’t set up displays.

Revell’s representative cited two books, both published in 1970, that have sold well over 200,000: Woman at the Well, by Dale Evans Rogers, and Anita Bryant’s Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory. The salesman claimed that Revell doesn’t have a hard time getting books into general bookstores. “We don’t have as good advance promotion as general publishers do, but once a book starts to sell, it’s easy to get it on the shelves,” he said. He named a large Atlanta bookstore as one of Revell’s best customers.

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Zondervan, prominently placed next to Playboy Press at the ABA convention, is perhaps the largest evangelical book publisher and has had more bestsellers that haven’t made the bestseller lists than any other. Gary Wharton, Zondervan executive, disagrees with Fisher’s findings about general bookstores. He pushes special marketing campaigns to get selected Zondervan titles into them—titles that appeal to the mass market or those by well-known personalities. “We’re very selective about the books we try to sell to general stores,” he stresses. Zondervan is having success in this market with such books as The Late Great Planet Earth, The Jesus Generation, by Billy Graham, and Eugenia Price’s Woman to Woman. Graham’s book has sold over 375,000 copies since publication last year. Zondervan will have four of its titles for sale in this year’s Montgomery Ward Christmas catalogue.

Wharton explained, however, that religious books may never make general bestseller lists. “What sells well in one store, may not sell at all in another,” he said. The major bestseller lists poll only general stores. He thinks that a more reliable guide for judging bestsellers may be the print order—if, that is, publisher’s don’t issue inflated figures.

The market for religious books is increasing. Book buyers don’t understand it, said Wharton, but it’s happening and they want to get in on the act.

Religious bookstores are confused about what books to order. Many store owners have expressed interest in a religious bestseller list, said Wharton. Both Zondervan and Tyndale print their own for religious bookstores.

A new organization based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, compiles the “National Religious Bestsellers,” which is printed in The Bookstore Journal, the trade journal of the Christian Booksellers Association. This list, released monthly, includes the top ten clothbound and paperbound books; the two categories are listed separately. The organization surveys twenty-four religious bookstores across the country in such key areas as Los Angeles, New York, Grand Rapids, and Washington, D. C. The men who publish the “National Religious Bestsellers” list claim that it’s more accurate and representative than most general bestseller lists. And—in view of the hanky-panky in the secular market—they’re probably right.

Garner Ted Has Come Home

Garner Ted Armstrong has apparently returned home to his father’s Worldwide Church of God and his broadcasting empire from which he was banished as vice-president in February in an unexplained disciplinary action (see April 14 issue, page 39, and May 12 issue, page 37). The church and its Ambassador College in Pasadena, California, announced that Garner Ted would return to his television and radio speaking chores this month.

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Herbert W. Armstrong, Garner Ted’s luxury-living, jet-hopping father, had substituted for his son on radio broadcasts, but many of the TV programs on sixty-three stations had been dropped while the younger Armstrong was “in the bonds of Satan.” Whether Garner Ted had repented as the elder Armstrong demanded is unknown. Some sources close to the scene say income plummeted as much as 40 per cent after Garner Ted was ejected.

Company Policy

Several denominations and denominational agencies have declared war on a number of American companies, asking them to stop supporting colonialism in Africa and the war in Indochina.

Recently the American Baptist Convention carried its fight to the Goodyear Tire and Rubber company’s annual stockholders’ meeting. The denomination holds 3,000 shares in the firm, worth about $30 each. Represented by Paul V. Moore, treasurer of the American Baptist educational board, the ABC asked Goodyear for a full report on South African operations. The resolution, the first attempt this year by a major denomination to challenge a corporation, was defeated by 98 per cent of the vote. The next and much larger effort at stockholder pressure was no more successful.

Stamp Of Approval?

The United States Postal Service has been getting mixed reactions to two stamps it recently issued.

An eleven-cent air-mail stamp in a National Park series shows a statue of one of the Ki’i (“old gods”) in the City of Refuge National Historic Park on the southern shore of the island of Hawaii; it is the first U. S. stamp to depict an idol. Behind the idol is a pagan temple. The ancient faith, imbedded with cruelties, soon disappeared after Christian missionaries reached the islands about 1820. Sortie Hawaiians complain that the homely old god is a poor symbol belying the real beauty—and soul—of their modern state.

And some Catholics have been fuming over the now familiar Family Planning commemorative stamp. Catholic family-life spokesmen said the stamp supports a planned-parenthood position that is contrary to church policy, but the Postal Service says it issues certain stamps to “focus attention on areas of major concern.”

GLENN EVERETT

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Clergy and Laymen Concerned, ecumenical anti-war group, asked Honeywell at its annual meeting to convert current weapons production to manufacture of civilian goods instead and to report on its involvement in the Viet Nam war. The group claims that Honeywell is “the largest producer of antipersonnel weapons.”

For almost three hours Honeywell’s executives listened to the group’s arguments, which were reinforced by the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church (both denominations hold Honeywell stock).

Spokesmen for Honeywell claim that at present the company makes no antipersonnel weapons. But, they added, the corporation is “prepared to resume production should the government request us to do so.”

Representatives of Clergy and Laymen Concerned and other religious groups were booed by the 1,162 stockholders at the annual meeting of Standard Oil of New Jersey; the stockholders refused to listen to antiwar pleas.

An Episcopal-backed resolution asking General Motors for more information on its South Africa policies was overwhelmingly defeated at GM’s annual meeting. Philadelphia clergyman Leon Sullivan—GM’s only black director—abstained, calling on GM to change the system whether it chose to leave or stay.

In an anti-trend move, the Church of the Brethren voted to sell its stock in all U. S. companies that hold defense contracts. It also decided to sell its U. S. Treasury Bonds. The bonds, the church said, help finance the Viet Nam war. One Brethren executive commented, “It is time for the Church of the Brethren to take seriously its peace position.”

According to an ABC executive, making selective investments and subsequently exerting stockholder pressure “is one of the most promising fields of social action.”

Ehlen Is Out (Again)

The feud between Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod president J. A. O. Preus and the denomination’s Concordia Seminary in St. Louis has intensified again. It now looks as if Preus’s side is winning in the tug-of-war involving controversial teacher Arlis Ehlen and his alleged theologically liberal views (see April 14 issue, page 42, and May 26 issue, page 40). In a surprise move, the LCMS board of higher education dusted off an old prerogative and overruled an earlier anti-Preus decision by the seminary board to retain Ehlen. Presumably the teacher is out as of this month.

The American Association of Theological Schools (AATS) placed Concordia on a two-year academic probation because of alleged “undue outside interference in its operation. The AATS gave the school until 1974 to give more power to its board and greater freedom to faculty.

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Religion In Transit

Pastor Earl Cannon of Chicago’s Vernon Baptist Church expected 15,000 to march in his nondenominational “happy day” parade in honor of God, but he and 214 policemen assigned to the activity were the only ones who showed up, making him feel “like Noah.”

The Catholic archdiocese of Toronto, the largest in English-speaking Canada, issued the first financial report in its 130-year history; it showed a surplus of $766,000 for 1971, income of $8.6 million, debts of $11.7 million, investments of $3.2 million, and total property worth of $50.6 million.

Teen Challenge has opened an anti-drug center in Minneapolis, raising the total of such centers to forty-eight nationwide, two in Canada, and four overseas.

A number of Presbyterians attending last month’s General Assembly in Denver took time out to stage a quiet antiwar vigil during a chapel service at the U. S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Six were barred from ever again visiting the academy for “disturbing the service.”

The Episcopal Church’s special advisory committee on evangelism, citing financial and staff shortages, has recommended against denominational participation in the pan-denominational Key 73 evangelistic campaign but recommended participation at the local level.

Two official rabbinical groups in Washington, D. C., have come out with strong statements against mixed marriage, prohibiting rabbis from officiating in such ceremonies and pointing out that Jewish tradition does not recognize the validity of such marriages.

Faced with an operating deficit of $450,000 this year, New York’s Union Seminary board voted to cut up to 40 per cent of the faculty and to slice comparably the student body. Another decision: blacks and minority groups are to make up one-third and women one-half the students, staff, and directors.

The First Baptist Church of Winter Park, Florida, is attempting to mobilize Christian tourists to witness as they visit Disney World; literature packets and daily training rallies are provided.

Sixteen biblical and religious statements that were viewed as “downgrading women” were burned in services at two Unitarian churches in Maine by a women’s lib group.

Among recipients of a total of $100,000 in grants by the church-funded Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) are two African liberation groups, which got $4,000 each.

The U. S. Department of Transportation has established an Office of Alcohol Counter-measures, said to be the first official government action against alcohol since Prohibition. Heading it: university professor Robert F. Borkenstein, creator of the Breathalyzer.

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Personalia

James M. Wall has resigned as editor of the Christian Advocate, a United Methodist magazine, to become a consultant to the Christian Century Foundation. He is running as a Democrat for a suburban Chicago congressional seat; insiders say he is certain to lose and will then become editor of the Christian Century, an ecumenical weekly.

American Baptist Navy chaplain Andrew F. Jensen, acquitted recently of misconduct by adultery charges, has received a choice assignment to study toward a master of pastoral theology degree at Princeton.

Evangelical doctor Konotey-Ahulu of Nigeria was given a special U. S. government award in Philadelphia “for outstanding contribution to sickle cell research.”

J. B. Reynolds of Toronto’s Ellesmere United Church was elected president of the Evangelical Theological Society of Canada.

World Scene

It is now ten years since three missionaries were kidnapped by the Viet Cong from a leprosarium in the South Viet Nam highlands. Christian and Missionary Alliance president Nathan Bailey, who for years has without success sought information on their welfare, says they may still be alive and having a useful ministry among the wounded.

A multiracial congress on evangelism is set for March, 1973, in South Africa, sponsored by the African Enterprise evangelistic organization, the South African Council of Churches, and a number of churchmen.

Buddhism will be “protected and fostered” by Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, according to the country’s new constitution, while religious freedom is “guaranteed” for minority groups.

A letter from evangelicals in Romania to United Nations officials spoke of widespread persecution (fines, arrests, church closures, confiscation of Bibles) of church members and pastors by authorities citing a 1970 law against laziness and wasting time.

Press releases issued in the name of East European churches criticize U. S. church groups for not doing more to stop the Indochina war.

The annual convention of the Evangelical Baptist Churches of South Haiti and the West Indies Mission was attended by more than 3,000, with thousands of others following proceedings over a radio network. Evangelical leaders Byeng Kato of West Africa and Antoine Poulain of Guadeloupe joined Haitian pastors in thrilling the audience with revival reports.

Russia and Red China say they have no drug-addiction problems, therefore refuse to help finance anti-drug programs of the United Nations.

Deaths

PAUL F. LEIBOLD, 57, Catholic archbishop of Cincinnati; in Cincinnati, after a stroke.

LESMAN PURBA, 43, spiritual leader of the 105,000-member Sinalungun Protestant Christian Church of Indonesia; in Hungary, of a tropical ailment.

LEROY WATERMAN, 96, one of the thirty-one scholars who spent nineteen years producing the Revised Standard Version Bible; in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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