The book business, like most media outlets, love trends, sequels and franchises.
The latest of these trends, was The Secret, which has and will continue to spawn, more books with similar themes and even a few books that will take aim at decrying it. About a month or so ago, I talked about those books, mostly religious based book houses, that would be de-bunking the ideas promoted with in that bestselling book.
Religion sections within book stores has grown, somewhat over the years. They’ve always carried Bibles, in what ever format you wanted. And the popularity of the TV preachers like Joel Osteen. T.D. Jakes and Joyce Meyers have kept the sections pretty filled up.
Of course, many other religions are in this section, including Judaism, Buddhism, and a getting bigger, Atheism.
And that’s where the latest trend is, as publishers look at the success of recent bestselling tomes on the subject. In a recent Los Angeles Times article on this subject, writer Rachel Zoll talked to Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena -a prominent evangelical school - and he reflected on the success of such books like Sam Harris’ The End of Faith and its hugely popular follow-up, Letter to a Christian Nation. Or past titles over the last year or so, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett and the current hit, released a month ago, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens.
“I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but it’s almost like they all had a meeting and said ‘let’s counterattack’” he told Zoll.
But Mouw seems to also believe that while these authors -in their view - say that Muslim extremist, Jewish settlers and Christian right activist are from the same mold, as in using “fairy tales posing as devine scripture to justify their lust for power;” that they also believe that actions done in the name of religion are behind the current global conflicts, he also says that conservative Christians are partly to blame. That they have invited this current crop of titles because their rhetoric has been so “strident.”
“We have done a terrible job of presenting our perspectives as a plausible world view that has implications for public life and for education, presenting that in a way that is sensitive to the concerns of people who may disagree. Whatever may be wrong with Christopher Hitchens attacks on religious leaders, we have certainly already matched it in our attacks.”
Of course, these views by Mouw may not be shared by other leaders in the religious community. And while Hitchens claims “religion kills,” others are saying that the recent spat of these titles only reflects that “contrary to what they were taught in school, faith is not dead, “ so says Rev. Douglas Wilson, who is a senior fellow in theology at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho. And that these books are merely “secular panic.”
“It sort of dawned on the secular establishment that they might lose here,” Wilson told Zoll. “All of this is happening precisely because there’s a significant force that they have to deal with.”
Oh, good, more rhetoric.
Still the success of these books has taken the leaders of religion to try counter the sales. And while believers far out number nonbelievers (a 2005 AP-Ipsos poll said only 2% of U.S. respondents claimed they did not believe in God, while other surveys claim 14% of Americans consider themselves secular -which could include believes who say they have no religion), they understand the implications.
Thus the many books that will be published to counter attack them, much the same that is happening with The Secret. And while over the last 15 years, as noted by Lynn Garret of Publishers Weekly, that religious titles (both nonfiction and the huge growth of Christian Fiction) have become the fastest growing category in publishing, the flip-side of all of it are these books.
“It was just the time,” she said, “for the atheists to take the gloves off.”
The latest of these trends, was The Secret, which has and will continue to spawn, more books with similar themes and even a few books that will take aim at decrying it. About a month or so ago, I talked about those books, mostly religious based book houses, that would be de-bunking the ideas promoted with in that bestselling book.
Religion sections within book stores has grown, somewhat over the years. They’ve always carried Bibles, in what ever format you wanted. And the popularity of the TV preachers like Joel Osteen. T.D. Jakes and Joyce Meyers have kept the sections pretty filled up.
Of course, many other religions are in this section, including Judaism, Buddhism, and a getting bigger, Atheism.
And that’s where the latest trend is, as publishers look at the success of recent bestselling tomes on the subject. In a recent Los Angeles Times article on this subject, writer Rachel Zoll talked to Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena -a prominent evangelical school - and he reflected on the success of such books like Sam Harris’ The End of Faith and its hugely popular follow-up, Letter to a Christian Nation. Or past titles over the last year or so, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett and the current hit, released a month ago, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens.
“I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but it’s almost like they all had a meeting and said ‘let’s counterattack’” he told Zoll.
But Mouw seems to also believe that while these authors -in their view - say that Muslim extremist, Jewish settlers and Christian right activist are from the same mold, as in using “fairy tales posing as devine scripture to justify their lust for power;” that they also believe that actions done in the name of religion are behind the current global conflicts, he also says that conservative Christians are partly to blame. That they have invited this current crop of titles because their rhetoric has been so “strident.”
“We have done a terrible job of presenting our perspectives as a plausible world view that has implications for public life and for education, presenting that in a way that is sensitive to the concerns of people who may disagree. Whatever may be wrong with Christopher Hitchens attacks on religious leaders, we have certainly already matched it in our attacks.”
Of course, these views by Mouw may not be shared by other leaders in the religious community. And while Hitchens claims “religion kills,” others are saying that the recent spat of these titles only reflects that “contrary to what they were taught in school, faith is not dead, “ so says Rev. Douglas Wilson, who is a senior fellow in theology at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho. And that these books are merely “secular panic.”
“It sort of dawned on the secular establishment that they might lose here,” Wilson told Zoll. “All of this is happening precisely because there’s a significant force that they have to deal with.”
Oh, good, more rhetoric.
Still the success of these books has taken the leaders of religion to try counter the sales. And while believers far out number nonbelievers (a 2005 AP-Ipsos poll said only 2% of U.S. respondents claimed they did not believe in God, while other surveys claim 14% of Americans consider themselves secular -which could include believes who say they have no religion), they understand the implications.
Thus the many books that will be published to counter attack them, much the same that is happening with The Secret. And while over the last 15 years, as noted by Lynn Garret of Publishers Weekly, that religious titles (both nonfiction and the huge growth of Christian Fiction) have become the fastest growing category in publishing, the flip-side of all of it are these books.
“It was just the time,” she said, “for the atheists to take the gloves off.”
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