Religious books: Divine popularity, heavenly sales

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From Ian Punnett

Special to CNN

 

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- The book business boomed during the '90s. New superstores opened, new publishing titans formed, new Internet sites launched, and book sales took off.

 

Now the New Economy has suffered some setbacks, and general book sales are down. But in one part of the book business, business is still good: Sales of religious books are up more than 4 percent.

 

"People are extremely hungry for experiences of God, experiences of faith, experiences of the divine," said Tom Beaudoin, a theologian and author of, with Harvey Cox, "Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X."

 

He observes that this spiritual desire comes even as church attendance has declined.

"The more suspicious people are of their local church, then the more apt they are to just assemble their own books, to assemble their own spiritual life," he explained.

 

Spiritually oriented books have been holding high places on the bestseller lists for some time. "The Mark," the eighth book in the multimillion-selling "Left Behind" fiction series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, topped the charts last fall; book number nine, "The Desecration," isn't due until the end of October but is already in Amazon.com's top 100.

 

Rev. Bruce Wilkinson's "The Prayer of Jabez," a nonfiction work about the power of a biblical prayer, has been at the top of bestseller lists for much of the spring and summer. Wilkinson ascribes his book's popularity, as well as that of other spiritual books, to the difficulty of connecting to religion through church.

 

Sales of religious and spiritual books are up more than 4 percent

"So many times, those of us in religious work make things so complicated," he said. "It's too hard or church becomes so boring or rigid that they don't even want to be a part of it."

 

It's not just Christian-oriented books that are selling. Anita Diamant, a Jewish author of books on Jewish customs, had a surprise bestseller with "The Red Tent," still selling well almost three years after it was published. The book has crossed denominational lines, notes Phyllis Trickle, a contributing editor on religion to Publisher's Weekly.

 

"It crossed out of Jewish readers into general readership," she said, "even agnostics, as far as I can tell, and I suspect some atheists!"

 

The idea of drawing from many religions is a popular one these days, said Beaudoin.

 

"Americans take very seriously their right to assemble in their shopping cart a little bit of John Paul II, a little bit of Judaism, a little bit of Hinduism, a little bit of Buddhism ... and say, 'That is my spirituality.' "

 

The flood of spiritual books shows no sign of abating. Studs Terkel's new book, due out this fall, is on the subject of death. And Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of "When Bad Things Happen to Good People," is putting out "Living a Life That Matters."

 

Meanwhile, Bruce Wilkinson's "Jabez" book has prompted a series of three so far. Soon he could take the top three spots on the "Advice/Self-Help" bestseller list. It could make him the publishing equivalent of the Beatles.

 

He's amused at the thought. "The Beat...?" he laughed. "That's something I've always wanted to be, is the equivalent of the Beatles."