Religion sells

Lillian Miao, CEO and publisher of Paraclete Press, credits evangelical fiction with building interest in the whole genre and making it possible for her small independent firm to publish such titles as Unveiling, by Suzanne Wolfe, a novel about an art restorer who experiences spiritual restoration in her own life.

"I personally find it fascinating that we can talk about these religious things in such interesting and beautiful ways," Miao says.

Though the National Endowment for the Arts has noted a decline in Americans" reading of fiction, some religion publishers are opening fiction lines or adding to them. The Catholic house Loyola Press, for example, early next year will launch Loyola Classics, reprint editions of titles of Catholic interest from the mid-20th century, among them In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden, and Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?, by John R. Powers. Fiction's ability to use story and mobilize imagination to faith is hardly new; it was a popular vehicle in the 1950s, Tickle notes. "It's due to have its say again," she says.

Tickle and others detect a post-modern pendulum swing toward conservatism or traditionalism, or what postmoderns believe a safe and desirable past might have looked like. Tickle links the interest in The DaVinci Code to the interest in The Lord of the Rings' and television's Joan of Arcadia. She characterizes it as pseudo-medievalism, a post-Enlightenment reaction that is reaching far back in Western history" "to try to find the mystery again."

Religion publishers say they are also selling books that help readers discover or recover religious traditions, and which give structure to an otherwise amorphous spirituality. At Eerdmans Publishing, editor-in-chief Jon Pott says the firm now sells less in specialized Christian avenues and more in general outlets. This publishing house with Dutch Calvinist roots reaches a wide range of Christiain readers, and even Catholic authors approach it with manuscripts. Dwelling in the Light: Icons in Christian Observance, by Anglican primate Rowan Williams, exemplifies a mainline reexamination of tradition. "Rowan Williams is a great conservator of the tradition and a first-rate theologian," Port says.

Academic presses are less likely to be affected by swings of the commercial market. At Yale University Press, which does not publish religions studies as such, religious biography and religious history are strong areas, says senior editor John Kulka. He cites the success of the press's biography of a 17th-century New England theologian, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, by George Marsden, as a sign of the wider culture's interest in reexamining tradition.

Mainline publishers have plenty of opportunities in the current religion scene, as well as some fundamental assurance: religious belief isn't going away. It requires detectives to spot expressions of it in culture, and historians, theologians, spiritual guides and creative artists who can provide substance and sustenance to those ready for spiritual formation. Clear, authoritative and distinctive primers also find an audience. Publishers are urging their best minds to speak to larger audiences, to write accessibly on fundamentals of Christian faith, producing such series as Westminster John Knox's New Testament for Everyone (see review, p. 44) by Anglican theologian Tom Wright and Augsburg Fortress's Lutheran Voices on basic Lutheran teachings.