Hi Margo,
Lordy, lordy. The way the ink and the airwaves have been spent on Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ," you'd think that it was the first time anyone ever heard of Jesus. This comes as news to all the journalists who have been covering Christianity for years, lamenting how little space and energy the media normally gives to religion of any stripe, much less the faith that eight out of 10 Americans identify with. For their own part, book publishers are laughing -- in many cases, all the way to the bank.
The market for books with Christian themes has been a continuing motif in publishing for the past 10 years. Now they're elbowing their way onto The New York Times bestseller list faster than I can find my way to chocolate. Which is no small accomplishment, given that Christian booksellers are generally excluded from the surveys that build the mainstream lists, and for obvious reasons these specialty bookstores account for a hefty percentage of Christian book sales.
What's it all about, Alfie? Why this sudden run on Jesus? It seems like an appropriate question to ask during Holy Week, moving toward Easter Sunday, the most important day in the Christian calendar. (If you thought it was Christmas, try one more swing through the New Testament.) In the essay that we wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, which will run on Easter, we juxtapose two of the biggest entertainment stories of the year, "The Passion" and "The Da Vinci Code," which is now up to 6.8 million copies in print. Jesus is showing up in all sorts of places -- in this case, as an artifact of culture, and pop culture at that. Which suggests his omnipresence if not his omnipotence. This is a trend in society and bookselling that is definitely -- and when better to use these words -- on the rise.
In bookseller terms, the conservative Christian movement is strong and getting stronger, as indicated by the $4.2 billion in sales that the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) clocked last year. (This includes music and some other items, but that's trivia; what's important is that the CBA represents the evangelical end of the faith, and that's the biggest growth segment.) Second, Christians of more mainstream bent may be down, but they're not out. The crowd that read "The Da Vinci Code," which tinkers with the Jesus story, to say the least, may have been looking only for entertainment when they picked up the book.
But an audience has developed for not only liberal Christian theologians but also cultural histories such as Richard Wightman Fox's "Jesus in America" and Stephen Prothero's "American Jesus," and the burgeoning historical Jesus scholarship, including Bart Ehrman's "Lost Christianities" and Marcus Borg's "The Heart of Christianity." Churches like mine, Trinity Cathedral in Portland, have their own bookstores to cater to the convictions of their parishioners. Believers are voting with their wallets.
Currently, this group is swimming uphill, according to Prothero. The Boston University prof is no fan of "The Passion of the Christ" -- he calls the movie "very hard on Jews," and "the most generous movie in American history to Pilate." But, by bringing together conservative Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants -- two groups who previously didn't have much to do with each other -- he predicts that the film will have an enduring impact. "Religious liberals have been on the run, and they ought to be running faster after Mel Gibson's movie."
So, Margo, what's your take on the current state of the religious book market? Thumbs up for Jesus? And, if so, which version?
Dear Ellen,
I've never been convinced that the people who flocked to "The Passion" or those who devoured "The Da Vinci Code" were all religiously motivated. "The Passion" enjoyed the most publicity I have ever seen for a movie (yes, mostly negative). Certainly some went to the film simply out of curiosity. And "The Da Vinci Code" is such a page-turner. Certainly some readers just wanted to find out what all that business about the Holy Grail was. But, yes, symbols of popular culture can reveal some deeper faultlines.
It is tempting to conclude that the current interest in things spiritual, and Jesus in particular, is a sign that people in America are turning away from crass materialism and finally searching for meaning in their lives. Jerry Jenkins, author of the mega-popular "Left Behind" series, deliciously calls it "God hunger." But I think Jenkins was closer to the truth when he told a group of journalists in a teleconference during his book tour that the popularity of his series also stems from fear.
The millennium, 9/11, and the war in Iraq have all fueled people's interest in books about prophecy and the afterlife -- and the secrets hidden in Da Vinci's painting of The Last Supper. It's the Nostradamus syndrome. Whenever there's a war, or a threat of war, his books fly off the shelves.
What is interesting, though, about the divide between liberal Christians and conservative Christians is its political implications. In order to clarify the alliances in such culture war issues as gay marriage and abortion, journalists must be careful not to lump all people of the same faith together. Same for politicians.
Personally, I like Karen Armstrong's approach to religion: compassion. A former nun and author of "The History of God," she has just published her memoirs, "The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness." In an interview that appeared in The New York Times magazine, she was asked if she believed in an afterlife. Her answer: "I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum conditions." Ego does seem to be at the heart of all these religious debates: My God is right. Yours is wrong. It seems to me the height of presumption to be able to say that.
The last religious book I read was "The Gospel According to Harry Potter: Spirituality in the Stories of the World's Most Famous Seeker" by Connie Neal. She finds amazing parallels between Harry Potter and the New Testament. Neal got the idea for the book from the Orlando Sentinel's Mark Pinsky, who wrote "The Gospel According to The Simpsons." Both books are part of a series that began with "The Gospel According to Peanuts," published by Westminister John Knox Press, which examines the intersection of pop culture and religion.
Neal, by the way, is a Christian, but she has spoken out against Christians who denounce Harry Potter as a book of witchcraft. "Is our own faith so fragile," she asks, "that we dare not know what those of a different sect of Chrstianity, or those of undisclosed religious persuasions, or those of different religious backgrounds are thinking?"
So, thumbs up or thumbs down? I guess I'd have to say when it comes to Jesus, I'm all thumbs.
Margo,
I appreciate your feeling of hamhandedness: As a journalist, I squirm at the subjective nature of religion. But I am attracted to its mystery, as well. Often, people who are bothered with the idea of faith -- like Christopher Hitchens, they think themselves too smart to be hooked on the opiate of the masses -- are fascinated by its citified cousins, philosophy and ethics. But even if the inner mystery of faith is out of the average journalist's realm, the sociopolitical impact of religion is too important to discount.
Just as Iraq's national aspirations can't be separated from Islam, Christianity is woven into the fabric here -- and that's not an egocentric view, but one that's traced eloquently in George Marsden's new biography of the Puritan preacher and intellectual Jonathan Edwards. Marsden argues that, while Benjamin Franklin represents one strain of our history (the secular and public one), Edwards stands for the spiritual and moral values that have seeped into our collective bones. We may keep the Ten Commandments out of the courthouse, but we can't take its influence out of our hearts.
This is not an excuse for a Christian-centric view, just a recognition of our historical and cultural legacy. There is no state religion, but rather a legal and society-sanctioned respect for people of faiths other than our own. Educator and philosopher Huston Smith has made a career out of exploring the relationships between the world's great religions, of thinking about how they work and what they provide their practitioners, and of working to find the commonalities between them. Like "The Gospel According to Peanuts," -- but, ahem, with a bit more intellectual depth -- Smith shows us what can happen when skepticism is combined with a willingness to receive. A pretty amazing package.
This brings me back to "The Passion of the Christ" and "The Da Vinci Code," and their contribution to all of us who are celebrating our faiths this week, whether with Passover or Easter. I spoke to Rose Marie Berger, a Catholic peace activist and poet who is also an associate editor and columnist at Sojourners magazine, which examines Christianity as it works in society and politics.
She acknowledges that the contrasting images of the macho Jesus in the film and the gentle Jesus in the book get people talking, and that's important. "As any good artist will do, they each explore a theme that resonates in our cuIture," she says. But then she puts the media buzz in its proper perspective: "I don't see these things as having a lot to do with the living faith of Christians, but they are a point of conversation."
CORRECTION: The phrase "God hunger" was attributed to the wrong source in an earlier version of this column.
Books that claim to reveal the future are one of...
