Almost Paradise Summer 2000

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For lots of American booksellers, July 8 will go down in history as the day Harry Potter Four hit the shelves. But retailers in the Christian booksellers Association will remember July 8 for a different reason: it was the first day of the CBA's annual international expo. Thirteen thousand book-peddlers, reporters, and all manner of Christian trinket-sellers gathered in New Orleans to hawk their wares. Among the 1,712 exhibition booths, there were books by Henri Nouwen and Bodie Thoene, crucifixes made from balloons, stuffed peanuts sporting "Nuts for Jesus" T-shirts, hundreds of decorative wall crosses, Precious Moments figurines, and

Scripture candies.

It's easy enough to poke fun at the cba: to wonder, as commentators invariably do, where Jesus is among all the kitsch. Every year, variations on this theme issue forth from Christian magazines. Last year, Diana S. Frazier, writing in Modern Reformation, caustically inquired where, amid the wwjd jewelry, the pag wear ("Put on the Armor of God"), the frog line ("Fully Rely On God"), and the "lightweight, say-nothing book[s]," was anything about Christianity—"you know, books on Christianity at a Christian booksellers' convention." Her criticisms are not unwarranted, but they are not entirely accurate either. There are always at least a few Christian books at the Christian Booksellers Association. This July, the surprise was that they were mostly on the fiction shelves.

There has always been great Christian Fiction. Readers can browse through the shelves at Barnes & Noble and pick up Walker Percy, or Flannery O'Connor, or Tolstoy. What one is hard pressed to find is great fiction published by evangelical houses. Non-fiction has historically dominated the Christian publishing ...

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