But let's first establish what exactly constitutes "the Christian market." Most discussions seem to focus on the goods and services provided by publishers, artists, and assorted salespersons, but more directly speaking, the Christian market is really Christian consumers . And this is why the Christian marketplace is not so easily dismantled. It exists because there are people -- a sizable number of them, actually -- who want to buy goods and services that are in some way qualified as "Christian." With this in mind, then, it is not the maker of Testamints that is the problem (assuming you think there is a problem) but rather the person who prefers to buy mints with Bible verses on them.
I have long held that the problem of the Christian marketplace is a pulpit problem. By this I mean that if we want to be serious about encouraging greater discernment and quality in the Christian's consumption of art (and further, if we want to gradually squelch the Christian's ravenous consumerism), we have to begin nurturing this difference on the pastoral and ecclesiological levels.
But I still think the problem is often overstated. Like most everyone, I share the disdain for what Christian music pioneer Keith Green called "Jesus junk," those little toys and trinkets -- which these days range from disposable things like "Jesus fish" car emblems to nice things like Fruit of the Spirit dessert plates (both of which I have owned) -- that overpopulate the bins and shelves of your local Christian retailer. But unlike many people in my position -- those who regularly voice criticism of the Christian culture and the evangelical Church -- I do not believe the situation is all that dire. Or all that important.
One thing I relish pointing out is the latent hypocrisy in some of the critics' calls to dismantle the Christian market. One of the most influential treatises encouraging Christian artists to abandon the "Christian ghetto" and take their works to the mainstream was Roaring Lambs by the late Bob Briner. Roaring Lambs was published by Zondervan, a Christian publisher, and was sold predominantly in Christian bookstores. Its primary readership was the Christian market, of course, and this book actually had its own tie-in Contemporary Christian Music album full of songs "inspired" by it, each of which was performed by artists from the CCM scene. Only Sixpence None the Richer (or perhaps Jars of Clay) could actually qualify as having some mainstream cred.
This is nearly always the case. Any book or article written about dismantling the Christian marketplace immediately must embrace the irony of being written for the Christian marketplace and for Christian readers. One pastor-blogger I read recently rejoiced greatly at the very idea that the Christian book market may be going south, which is odd given that every single one of his books was written for Christians and was printed by a Christian publisher. This particular pastor's angle is that if Christians must compete in the mainstream, the quality of their material will increase. He doesn't know this (I don't think), but he will not like the results if he gets his wish, because he is a rather poor writer and his books have only seen print because of his supposed name recognition in Christian circles.
Likewise, another blogger whose bread and butter is the routine trashing of the Christian retail scene is a former editor of CCM Magazine and a published author whose books (every last one of them) are published by Christian publishers. If the Christian retail scene didn't exist, he'd be out of work.
As I argued in my earlier piece, the dismantling of the Christian market will not be a good thing. It's not even a realistic thing. There are legitimate appetites for "Christian products" like church resources, Bibles and Bible studies, theological texts, and other works on spirituality. Mainstream publishers have no interest in publishing these works unless there is proven marketability, and of course such marketability only comes from Christian readership. Do we really want non-Christian companies and their non-Christian editors dictating and guiding the content of Bible studies and systematic theologies? (And, yes, I realize that most of the major Christian publishers are already owned by bigger publishing conglomerates.)
I also argued before that asking Christian artists to start creating less "Christian" art can end up being just as marginalizing and ghetto-izing as creating for the Christian market is assumed to be. What if an artist wants to sing freely about Jesus and their salvation? You may think this doesn't make for good art, but creating objective categories for subjective determinations is exactly the sort of restriction the encouragements toward creative freedom mean to avoid. The truth is that the mainstream market has no room for artists with lots of Jesus in their music. By telling our artists to ditch the Jesus talk, aren't we somehow making an idol of artistic credibility?
Another criticism one often hears about the Christian market is its lack of quality.
My response is a cynical "Compared to what?"
I wonder if those complaining about the superficiality of Christian pop music have listened to mainstream pop music any time lately. It sucks. Big time.
By contrast, the stuff on your typical Christian Top 40 station is well made, well sung, well produced, well created. It may not be my cup of tea stylistically , and I may wish my local Christian radio station played more than six songs on rotation, but style and the shallow playlist of the radio station are not the same as musical quality. The truth is that the vast majority of Christian musical artists are talented musicians and vocalists, and the larger truth is, they are just as talented as their secular counterparts, with the added bonus that they are usually singing about much more edifying things.
The real issue, then, is not quality, really, but the breadth of offerings in the marketplace. My main complaint has never been that the stuff on Christian radio or on Christian bookshelves is not good. It's only that there doesn't seem to be a viable place in the Christian market for non-pop offerings. To explain: You can walk into a Borders or Barnes and Noble bookseller and buy either Danielle Steele or John Updike. You can buy Stephen King or you can buy Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Not so in the Christian bookstore. The Christian literary offerings, especially in the category of fiction/novels, are almost exclusively of the "genre fiction" variety, the Christian variations of Danielle Steele and Stephen King (and John Grisham, Tom Clancy, etc). There is essentially no such thing as Christian literary fiction.
This is not the problem of the Christian marketplace. The market sells based on demonstrative needs. As I said before, I don't think the problem of the existence of the Christian marketplace is all that dire or even all that important.
The real problem -- the one both dire and important -- is that Christian consumerism is basically as deep as the shallowest end of mainstream consumerism. And that is not the fault of Testamints or "God's Gym" T-shirts or WWJD bracelets, let alone Mercy Me or Michael W. Smith. It is the fault of a gospel-deficient Church and a discipleship culture that has been trained to be both in and of the world.
Jared Wilson is the pastor and co-founder of Element, a missional Christian community in
Nashville, Tennessee, and an award-winning writer whose articles, essays, and
short stories have appeared in numerous publications.
Jared's first book, The Unvarnished Jesus, releases Fall 2009 from Kregel.
A graduate of Middle Tennessee State University, he lives outside
Nashville with his wife and two daughters.
Encounter Jared's passion for the ongoing reformation of the evangelical church
almost daily at www.gospeldrivenchurch.com.
Hi, Jared. I enjoyed this article. My husband and I are Christians who publish books written by Christian writers. Many like me and my husband have reasons for getting into this area, which we never expected to do. It is a risky business full of temptations ethical and otherwise. Books by Christian authors used to be published by mainstream publishers like Doubleday and others. Those were better days in many ways.
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