1) They often use more of their floor space selling non-books than books. Christian bookstores are filled with greeting cards, religious “artwork,” stuffed animals, and all manner of tchotchkes like W.W.J.D. bracelets, cross necklaces made out of nails, keychains that say “never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly,” magnets of teddy bears that say “I can’t BEAR to be without Jesus,” and TestaMINTS (candy with Bible verses on the wrapper so you can give them out as a way of evangelizing or just be reminded that Jesus loves you in spite of your halitosis).
2) Most of these non-book items are total kitsch as you can see from the descriptions of some of them. You’ll notice I put artwork in quotations. I know this might make me unpopular with some people, but I hate Thomas Kincaid. His stuff is not art. Neither is anything else you’d buy in these stores. It is mass produced for profit. Do Christians need a $9 keychain with a cross on it to show others that they are Christian or to remind themselves who their Lord is? I’m not saying there’s something inherently wrong with having a religious keychain or any other “Christian” thing, but when crosses and Bible verses are slapped onto everything from flashlights to rubber ducks (I’m not joking) just to make a buck, we’re talking about capitalism not ministry.
A lot of these items feature angels, and that’s a sub-problem within this one. Angels are usually depicted as gentle, female, blond beauties who smile down on young children, or worse, as rosy cheeked cartoon characters who supposedly watch over your garden or office cubicle. In reality, when angels present themselves to humans in the Bible they always have to comfort the human by saying “be not afraid.” If angels are always reassuring humans that way, doesn’t that seem to indicate that angels are frightening in appearance? Furthermore their work in the Bible more often includes delivering messages than watching over people. While Matthew 18:10 seems to suggest we do have guardian angels, over-interest in angels can lead to some slippery theology, as we do not need them to intercede for us in prayer, nor do we need them for protection unless that is how God chooses to work. Our comfort should come from knowing that God’s eye is on the sparrow and also on us.
3) The selection of books can be bleak. Sometimes the bleakness comes from a lack of variety, as is the case in the fiction section. If you take out genre works of Amish/frontier romance, Left Behind-type apocalypse stuff, and what appears to be a Christian attempt at suspense/terror, there’s little else to choose from. Take out the writings of the Inklings (C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien) who have been dead for half a century and you’re sometimes left with nothing else. I am waiting for contemporary Christian literature, singular pieces of good writing that do not fit neatly into a genre to be consumed by people who want a “Christian” version of something secular. There are “Christian” Danielle Steeles and there are “Christian” Stephen Kings, but there has yet to be (from a recent generation) a “Christian” who just writes good literature that is sold in Christian bookstores. Truth be told, the best “Christian” books to come out in recent years were the Harry Potter series, which, of course, are secular. The books contain Christian themes, but because they deal with magic and don’t explicitly quote Scripture throughout (it is present on Harry’s parents’ graves), not only will you never see them in a Christian bookstore, you will see books that “expose the dangers” of Harry Potter. Sometimes you can still find materials about how The DaVinci Code is false. Well, no kidding, it is fiction. What kind of discipleship do we have in our churches when believers can be so easily misled in their theology by a beach read? Every time something like The DaVinci Code comes around, multiple materials are produced by Christian publishers in order to explain what’s wrong with it.
This leads me to another bleak aspect of Christian bookstores. Apparently there’s a large market within Christian circles that plays into people’s paranoia and need for an enemy besides their own personal sin. There are books that warn of the evils of Halloween, of movies, of evolution, and the occult’s influence on your children. There is even a book titled The Global Warming Deception: How a Secret Elite Plans to Bankrupt America and Steal Your Freedom. I really, really wish I had made that up.
4) Often the selection is politically biased. There is definitely a Republican lean in most Christian bookstores. They feature biographies of people like Sarah Palin and George W. Bush, which have no place in a religious bookstore. What’s interesting is that were Sarah Palin a Democrat, these bookstores wouldn’t touch her. The same people who praise her now would undoubtedly make snide comments about the fact that she can’t even keep her kids under control, having a daughter who got pregnant out of wedlock. Biographies of Mother Teresa or Jimmy Carter would be more appropriate. (Some better bookstores, do, indeed, have biographies of both.) Recently I visited two different Christian bookstores that carried the anti-Obama movie, 2016: Obama’s America. While they delight in bad-mouthing a President who is a Christian and a devoted husband and father, (but God-forbid, a Democrat and black), they ignore the fact that the man responsible for making the 2016 Obama movie, Dinesh D’Souza, was recently embroiled in scandal for cheating on his wife.
5) There doesn’t appear to be any standard by which books are judged for theological content. Certainly, I would hope there would be room for differing views on things like predestination or eschatology, etc. But there are some books in these stores that border on heresy, or are void of any spiritual merit. There’s a whole series of diet books supposedly based on the Bible for fighting all manner of ailments. There’s the Bible Cure for Asthma and the Bible Cure for Cancer and the Bible Cure for Skin Disorders and more. My guess is that either these books are complete quackery or they are similar to materials you might find at a natural health store but with references to God thrown in so that less discerning Christians know they’re “safe” theologically. There are cookbooks and gardening books and crafting books. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these, they’re just not necessary in a Christian bookstore. There’s no reason to believe there’s a Christian way to cook or garden, except to be environmentally responsible, and those materials can be found in secular bookstores. Maybe that’s part of the problem. There are undoubtedly Christians out there who wouldn’t think of shopping in a secular bookstore, maybe because they don’t want to do business with heathens, but more likely because they don’t want to have to think about what they’re purchasing. They don’t want to have to look at a few books and discern which would be the best resource for what they’re after. They don’t want to have to filter out the good from a secular book while recognizing the bad. If that’s the case, there’s a systemic problem with the way we’re doing discipleship. And unfortunately, the reality is that that process still needs to take place with books purchased at a Christian bookstore, but often doesn’t.
6) There is too much focus on dividing people into demographics. Every Christian bookstore has a men’s section, a women’s section, a singles section, and a family section of books. There may be other sections as well, depending on the store. There are some issues that warrant books aimed at each of those demographics. I can see the merit to parenting books for example. But, unfortunately, many books in these sections are unnecessary and play to stereotypes. The singles section is filled exclusively with books about sexual purity and how to find the spouse of your dreams. The women’s section often contains several books about how to make your husband better. Or how to be a better wife. Or worse, how to be a “better” woman by being demure and submissive. And the covers are all pink or have flowers on them. Themes in the men’s section include “not looking at porn” and “manliness.” Some of these books may have merit. But there doesn’t need to be so many of them, and our focus should be on how Christ unifies us, not on our differences. Does there really need to be a women’s devotional Bible or a teenager Bible? Are women’s problems so different from men’s? There are really very few issues that are unique to a certain demographic. We all struggle with pride, envy, lust, anger, disappointment, illness, grief, etc. It would be better to divide sections that way so that a person struggling with the death of their child can easily find a helpful book regardless of whether it is a father or mother.
Here are a few doozy-of-a-title books I discovered in my research for this post and some of my snarky comments.
For guys:
“Does This Dress Make Me Look Fat?": A Man's Guide to the Loaded Questions Women Ask (I have never asked this question, nor do I foresee myself ever asking it of a husband.)
If Only He Knew: What No Woman Can Resist
For gals:
Becoming the Woman of His Dreams: Seven Qualities Every Man Longs for
Get Married: What Women Can Do to Help It Happen
Good Girls Don't Have to Dress Bad: A Style Guide for Every Woman (perhaps more upsetting than the fluff of the subject matter is that it should be “badly.”)
Secrets of an Irresistible Woman: Smart Rules for Capturing His Heart (There are rules? Is it a game?)
Finding Mr. Right: And How to Know When You Have (There are exponentially more books for women than for men, both in general and on the specific topic of finding a mate.)
For teens:
Bloom: A Girl's Guide to Growing Up (yes, girls are flowers…)
Boom: A Guy's Guide to Growing Up (…and guys are explosives?)
Every Teen Girl's Little Pink Book of Prayers (I already knew about the theme of pink book covers, imagine my chagrin when I found a book with ‘pink’ actually in the title for no apparent reason.)
The Complete Creation Museum Adventure [With Cards and Teacher's Guide] (see my “Science and Religion” post)
Some Unnecessary Niche Bibles:
Couples' Devotional Bible-NIV
Engaged Couples Bible-NIV (um, this Bible would only be applicable for about six months to a year in the owners’ lives)
Aspire: The New Women of Color Study Bible (not only does it separate by gender, but also by race)
Mom's Devotional Bible (there is no Dad’s Devotional Bible)
NIV Busy Mom's Bible (this is for women who are better moms than the ones who read Mom’s Devotional Bible)
New Men's Devotional Bible-NIV
New Women's Devotional Bible-NIV
NIV Boys' Bible
NIV faithGirlz! Bible: Revised Edition (because spelling it with a ‘z’ makes it radical)
NIV CoffeeHouse Bible (for when you’re sipping a $4 coffee made from beans harvested via child labor)
NIV Extreme Sports Bible (Is walking on water an extreme sport? Maybe collecting 200 Philistine foreskins?)
NIV Teen Study Bible
NIV True Images: Girl's Teen Bible (there’s no Boy’s Teen Bible)
Peace for the Military Family-NIV: A New Testament (there’s no Peace for the Pacifist Family New Testament)
The Grandmother's Bible (there’s no Grandfather’s Bible)
Fun miscellany:
Best Friends Forever: Me and My Cat: What I've Learned about Life, Love, and Faith from My Cat (There’s a dog version too. I’m going to buy a hamster. I’m sure there are life, love, and faith lessons I can learn from it and write a book about .)
There are other things that bother me about Christian bookstores, but they would be better dealt with in separate posts. In the meantime, there are great Christian resources out there, you just might have to shop at Baker’s or a secular store to find them. One example is the works of Anne Lamott. She’s a Christian writer, but because she sometimes swears in her works, they’re not carried in Christian bookstores. Another example would be the works of Peter Kreeft, who is a professor of religion at Boston College. You’d have to go to a bigger place like Baker’s to find his works because they’re a little more intellectual than most of the offerings in smaller places. Out of principal, I will not shop at my local Christian bookstore because they sell the Obama 2016 film as well as some other political works including one with a foreword by none other than “legitimate rape” Todd Akin himself. Do I shop at secular stores that carry those things? Certainly, and secular stores also sell equally offensive books from the left. But secular stores are a product of capitalism. I have higher standards for Christian stores which should function on higher principles than just making money.