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  May 21, 2008
 
• BEHIND THE NEWS
  • Baker Posts Record Gains
• SHORT TAKES
  • Xulon Shuts Down Editorial Department; Ryan and Jacobs Read Tonight; Guideposts Hires Head of Consumer Marketing
• Q&A
  • Andy Crouch: Creating Culture
• BOOKS BRIEFLY
  • Journalist Explores Washington’s Fundamentalist Fraternity
• RELIGION IN REVIEW
  • Three Reviews Coming in Publishers Weekly on Monday, May 26
  • Two Original Starred RBL Reviews
  • A Web Exclusive Review from Publishersweekly.com, May 19
  • Four Starred Reviews Coming in PW on Monday, May 26
• BESTSELLER BYTES
• PW RELIGION BESTSELLERS: May
• COMING ATTRACTIONS
• HOW TO SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE
BEHIND THE NEWS
Baker Posts Record Gains
by Lynn Garrett
Baker Publishing Group reported record results for its fiscal year ending April 30, 2008, with publishing sales up 16%, to $57.9 million. President Dwight Baker emphasized that although sales of its bestselling 90 Minutes in Heaven helped the company achieve the gain, "this is much more comprehensive, with growth in all divisions." Revell was up 26 %; Chosen, 25 %; Baker Books, 15 %; Baker Academic, 13 %; Brazos, 10 %, and Bethany House, 9 %. "In just about all channels and all categories we are up," Baker said.

Baker noted that "last year trended slightly downward, so this is coming off a year that was not our best. But it was still up substantially over our previous best year, which was fiscal 2006." He said the dip in 2007 was due to "an adjustment in the general merchandise area—the big boxes and mass merchants. When sales of The Purpose-Driven Life started to slow, they retreated from the whole inspirational category and then rebuilt it. That shift created for us a lackluster year in '07."

In the coming fiscal year, in the midst of a tough economy, "We have a solid list, and I believe we'll be able to hold ground," Baker said. "But the costs of transportation and packaging are going to be eating into margin for everyone."

Baker Publishing Group publishes 300 new titles a year and has 200 employees at its Grand Rapids and Minneapolis offices. In addition to its six imprints, Baker is the exclusive North American distributor for Cambridge Bibles.

SHORT TAKES
Xulon Shuts Down Editorial Department; Ryan and Jacobs Read Tonight; Guideposts Hires Head of Consumer Marketing
by Lynn Garrett
Christian POD publisher Xulon Press has closed down its editorial department effective May 8. Launched in February 2005 and headed by veteran CBA author and editor Angie Kiesling, the department offered editing and agenting services to Xulon clients whose manuscripts met certain quality criteria. Now Xulon clients are directed on its Web site to a list of recommended freelance editors, including Kiesling. Xulon and its parent company, Salem Communications, did not respond to requests for comment on the move.

Read the full story...
 
 
Q&A
Andy Crouch: Creating Culture
by Lori Smith

A writer and cultural critic encourages Christians not only to embrace culture, but to create more of it.

RBL: What motivated you to write Culture Making?

Crouch: One of the things that initially motivated me was thinking about how cultures change. As I read the work of academic sociologists like Peter Berger I became really convinced that the only way that cultures change is when people make more culture—which called into question a lot of the strategies that Christians think they ought to use to change culture, such as protest. There's lots that's worth protesting, in our culture and in every culture, but protest alone doesn't change culture, and analysis doesn't change culture, and withdrawal, which has been sometimes a strategy that Christians have adopted, doesn't change it. It only changes when you create something.

Read the full story...
BOOKS BRIEFLY
Journalist Explores Washington’s Fundamentalist Fraternity
by Jana Riess

It sounds like the stuff of a potboiler beach read: an affluent religious network based in Washington, D.C., engineers political appointments and grooms its members to scale the heights of government and industry. But according to journalist Jeff Sharlet (co-author of Killing the Buddha), it's not the stuff of fiction. In The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (reviewed in this issue and on Publishersweekly.com), published yesterday by HarperCollins, Sharlet exposes the most prominent fundamentalist organization you've never heard of. 

Called the Family (not to be confused with the "flirty fishing" cult known as The Family), this organization controls tens of millions of dollars and promotes the careers of men who espouse its economic and political ideology. President George W. Bush and Watergate alumnus Charles Colson both became Christians through Family small groups. John Ashcroft and Sam Brownback have been supporters. Although it's known for establishing and sponsoring some highly visible initiatives like the National Prayer Breakfast, for the most part the Family labors behind the scenes, leaving media theatrics to others. 

Read the full story...
RELIGION IN REVIEW
Three Reviews Coming in Publishers Weekly on Monday, May 26
Christian Martyrs for a Muslim People
Martin McGee. Paulist, $16.95 paper (224p) ISBN 978-0-8091-4539-3
McGee is an English Benedictine monk on a mission. A lifelong Francophile, he first learned of the deaths of 19 French Catholic nuns, brothers and priests in Algeria during the mid-1990s from an article in a Catholic journal.
READ FULL REVIEW
Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace
Cathleen Falsani. Zondervan, $19.99 (224p) ISBN 978-0-310-27947-1
Ranging from Chicago to Kenya, New Orleans to Maine, Big Sky to Graceland, Falsani dons her investigative cap and scouts for grace.
READ FULL REVIEW
Into the Dark: Seeing the Sacred in the Top Films of the 21st Century
Craig Detweiler. Baker Academic, $18.99 (288p) ISBN 978-0-8010-3592-0
Detweiler delivers one of the more successful and substantial theological interpretations of contemporary movies, mining film for spiritual meaning.
READ FULL REVIEW
Two Original Starred RBL Reviews
Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats
Michael Sean Winters. Basic, $26 (256p) ISBN 978-0-465-09166-9
Political commentator and blogger Winters has, in a non-polemic and intelligent way, achieved what most newscasters and Washington insiders have failed to do for a long time. Starting with Roosevelt's New Deal, the author illuminates how Catholic social teaching and politics once cooperated for the good of the country but then fell out of favor, ironically with the advent of popular Catholic President John F. Kennedy, who drew a sharp line between his faith and his politics. This religio-political schizophrenia has survived ever since and has alienated many Catholics from the party to which they once flocked. With a note of hope, Winters offers cogent and practical advice for how Democrats can begin to extend an olive branch to Catholics. It is possible, he believes, to discuss issues like abortion and immigration in a way that does not cause more polarization. The author holds an impressive knowledge of both Catholicism and politics, which he presents with crisp and fluid writing throughout. This work is an important prescription to combat election year spin-doctoring. (July 7)
Why Is God Laughing? The Path to Joy and Spiritual Optimism
Deepak Chopra. Harmony, $21.95 (192p) ISBN 978-0-307-40888-4
What a relief that a book should not only advocate laughter as a spiritual practice, but contain some jokes to get you started chuckling. The jokes are an integral part of the fable this book spins, a tale of a successful but lonely Hollywood comedian who loses his father and ultimately finds transcendence. The story is cute, slim and clever. For anyone who doesn't get the joke that the fable represents, the path to joy is laid out in 10 principles stated and explained at the end of the book. ("There is always a reason to be grateful.") Like a cameo appearance in print, a short foreword by actor-comedian Mike Myers buttresses Chopra's comedic street cred. While happiness is a much-published topic in books these days, so little attention is paid to joy as an aspiration and as liberation—the moksha state that Hindus strive toward. Laughter, joy, optimism: just what the holistic, and prolific, Doctor Chopra ordered for what ails these cynical times. (June)
A Web Exclusive Review from Publishersweekly.com, May 19
The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
Jeff Sharlet. Harper, $25.95 (464p) ISBN 9780060559793
Checking in on a friend's brother at Ivanwald, a Washington-based fundamentalist group living communally in Arlington, Va., religion and journalism scholar Sharlet finds a sect whose members refer to Manhattan's Ground Zero as "the ruins of secularism"; intrigued, Sharlet accepts on a whim an invitation to stay at Ivanwald. He's shocked to find himself in the stronghold of a widespread "invisible" network, organized into cells much like Ivanwald, and populated by elite, politically ambitious fundamentalists; Sharlet is present when a leader tells a dozen men living there, "You guys are here to learn how to rule the world." As it turns out, the Family was established in 1935 to oppose FDR's New Deal and the spread of trade unions; since then, it has organized well-attended weekly prayer meetings for members of Congress and annual National Prayer Breakfasts attended by every president since Eisenhower. Further, the Family's international reach ("almost impossible to overstate") has "forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most oppressive regimes in the world." In the years since his first encounter, Sharlet has done extensive research, and his thorough account of the Family's life and times is a chilling expose. (May)
Four Starred Reviews Coming in PW on Monday, May 26
Mustard Seeds: Thoughts on the Nature of God and Faith
Lynn Coulter. B&H, $14.99 paper (192p) ISBN 978-0-8054-4678-4
Coulter, a magazine journalist, takes the familiar biblical story of faith the size of a mustard seed to illustrate how God can use even the most horrendous "lifequakes" as faith-builders. Coulter opens her compilation of life essays with a personal story from her childhood, when the concept of mustard seed faith was first planted after a teacher offered the class mustard seed charms as an attendance reward. Though Coulter eventually lost the charm, she never forgot its message. Years later, after the death of her parents, her husband's job loss, financial setbacks, and her own shattered shoulder, the author's faith was in pieces. She wrestled long and hard to regain closeness with God. In each of these tender topical chapters, Coulter uses everyday happenings from nature, parenting, work, illnesses, and church to reaffirm a single lesson: God is intimately involved in every aspect of life and he cares with a watchful affection. Readers will find strength from Coulter's story and solace in God's promises regarding faith and grace. (Sept.)
Beloved Disciple: The Misunderstood Legacy of Mary Magdalene, the Woman Closest to Jesus
Robin Griffith-Jones. HarperOne, $25.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-119199-2
Beloved disciple or whore? Was Mary of Magdala married to Jesus? Was she a leader of the early church? Why did Jesus appear to Mary first and instruct her to tell the other disciples about his resurrection? In a brilliant and beautifully written book, Griffith-Jones, Master of the Temple Church in London, explores these and other questions. He cannily reads the canonical Gospels side-by-side and then introduces the Gnostic Gospels of Thomas and Mary, among others, in search of a portrait of the historical Mary Magdalene. Griffith-Jones traces Mary's reputation in the medieval world, using medieval paintings and other artistic images, as well as the writings of mystics such as Bernard of Clairvaux, to show how Mary became an object of veneration during the Middle Ages. He concludes this elegant study by observing that Mary Magdalene stands in for the reader of John's gospel, who must go through the whole drama of the gospel in order finally to see what Mary sees in the garden on Easter Day. (Sept.)
Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling
Andy Crouch. IVP, $20 (288p) ISBN 978-0-8308-3394-8
Crouch, editorial director of the Christian Vision Project at Christianity Today International and a member of the editorial board for Books & Culture, gives readers a sweeping new theology of culture. Crouch blends academic research on the nature of culture with extensive theological study and years of experience as a cultural critic; his conclusions will be fresh and challenging for Christian readers. For Crouch, culture is a good and intentional part of God's creation. It encompasses not simply the arts but everything we do—from making meals to balancing work with life. Traditional Christian responses to culture—condemnation, critique and copying—are not enough to change it (although all at times are valid); instead, culture must be both cultivated (the good must be preserved) and created. Crouch argues that it is impossible for any of us to change the world, but that each of us can create culture within our own sphere of influence, and while that may feel small, God specializes in using small and seemingly unimportant things. Those who have struggled with the sacred-secular dichotomy will find this book life-giving; every Christian interested in changing culture should read it. (Aug.)
Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire
Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker. Beacon, $34.95 (592p) ISBN 978-0-8070-6750-5
Why are images of the crucified Jesus absent from early Christian art? When Brock and Parker, theologians and co-authors of Proverbs of Ashes, investigated representations of Christ in Italy and Turkey's first millennium of public art, they found pictured not death but earthly joy. Descriptions of this art (with sparse b&w photographs), quotes from early Christian writers, and strong analyses reveal a powerful "genealogy of paradise" in this life focusing on the "ethical grace" at the heart of Jesus' message. Explorations of baptism, the Eucharist, beauty, martyrdom, and human divinity (theosis) show an early Christian world where the resurrection had more hold on the imagination than the crucifixion. Brock and Parker locate the paradigmatic shift toward suffering, judgment and atonement in the bloody forced conversion of the Northern European Saxons by Charlemagne. The book's second half describes the harrowing adoption of "redemptive violence" in medieval Europe and the New World's Eden, built on genocide and slavery. This humane and often beautiful study of faith, loss, and hope straddles the boundary between historical discovery and spiritual writing. (July)
BESTSELLER BYTES
Chart Topper Commentary
by Daisy Maryles
Dead Heat marks the first time Tyndale used a laydown date—March 18—for Joel Rosenberg. It is now up to 203,000 copies after seven printings. Rosenberg has earned a reputation for writing stories "ripped from tomorrow's headlines." His latest portrays a U.S. so distracted by a hotly contested presidential campaign that it is blindsided by a terrorist attack.

Read the full story...
PW RELIGION BESTSELLERS: May
Hardcover
  1. Mistaken Identity.
    Don & Susie Van Ryn and Newell, Colleen & Whitney Cerak.. Howard Books, $21.99
    ISBN 978-1-4165-6735-6
  2. Dead Heat.
    Joel C. Rosenberg.. Tyndale House, $24.99
    ISBN 978-1-4143-1161-6
  3. The Promise: God's Purpose and Plan for When Life Hurts.
    Jonathan Morris.. HarperOne, $24.95
    ISBN 978-0-06-135341-3
  4. The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.
    Pico Iyer. Knopf, $24
    ISBN 978-0-307-26760-3
  5. A Civilization of Love: What Every Catholic Can Do to Transform the World.
    Carl Anderson.. HarperOne, $19.95
    ISBN 978-0-06-133531-0
  6. The Third Jesus
    Deepak Chopra. Harmony, $24
    ISBN 978-0-307-33831-0
  7. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
    Timothy Keller. Dutton, $24.95
    ISBN 978-0-525-95049-3
  8. Become a Better You
    Joel Osteen. Free Press, $25
    ISBN 978-0-7432-9688-5
  9. Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires, the Respect he Desperately Needs.
    Emerson Eggerichs. Thomas Nelson, $21.99
    ISBN 978-1-5914-5187-7
  10. Walking with God: Talk to Him. Hear from Him. Really.
    John Eldredge. Thomas Nelson, $22.99
    ISBN 978-0-7852-0696-5

Paperback

  1. The Shack.
    William P. Young. Windblown Media, $14.99
    ISBN 978-0-964729230
  2. 90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death and Life
    Don Piper with Cecil Murphey. Baker/Revell, $24.99
    ISBN 0-8007-5949-4
  3. The God Delusion
    Richard Dawkins. . Mariner Books, $15.95
    ISBN 978-0-618-91824-9
  4. The Forbidden.
    Beverly Lewis . Bethany House, $13.99
    ISBN 978-0-7642-0311-4
  5. The Five Love Languages
    Gary Chapman. Moody/Northfield, $12.99
    ISBN 1-881273-15-6
  6. Mere Christianity
    C.S. Lewis.. HarperOne, $11.95
    ISBN 978-0-06-065292-0
  7. Battlefield of the Mind.
    Joyce Meyer. FaithWords, $14.99
    ISBN 978-0-446-69109-3
  8. The Purpose-Driven Life
    Rick Warren. Zondervan, $14.99
    ISBN 978-0-310-27699-9
  9. Someday (Sunrise Series, Baxter 3).
    Karen Kingsbury. Tyndale, $13.99
    ISBN 978-0-8423-8749-1
  10. Dawn's Light.
    Terri Blackstock. Zondervan, $14.99
    ISBN 978-0-310-25770-7
 
 
COMING ATTRACTIONS
In the next issue of Religion BookLine (June 4) look for our coverage of religion books and publishing from BookExpo America (in Los Angeles May 29-June 1) and the Religious Booksellers Trade Exhibit (in St. Charles, Ill., May 28-30).
 

PW Religion BookLine from Publishers Weekly
Editors: Lynn Garrett (lgarrett@reedbusiness.com);
Daisy Maryles (dmaryles@reedbusiness.com)
Contributing Editor: Jana Riess

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