Remember Christian Bookstores?

Where were the books?

For the last two weeks I have been recovering from back surgery. Oh, the stories I could tell you. I’ll save those for another time. During my convalescence, once the fog of anesthetic and painkillers began to clear, I picked up a number of books.

I have read James K.A. Smith’s Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark, which is a wonderful, engaging book about the limits of knowledge in life and faith. It draws heavily on the tradition of Christian mysticism which Smith outlines well, even if you are new to the rich history.

I have started a book on wisdom by the American philosopher Ryan Holiday, Wisdom Takes Work. It is lovely to see important virtues discussed and presented in ways that can reach beyond an academic or religious audience.

Since I am unable to ride my bike, which I have done pretty much every day for years, I have borrowed a book from a friend on the current superstar of the cycling world, Tadej Pogačar, Tadej Pogačar: Unstoppable. It’s good if you like the world of cycling and a kind of hagiography of sport. There is not a lot of tension in the book, pretty much just - “This guy is almost superhuman!”

From reading a newspaper column, I heard of a book that sounded interesting to me so I downloaded an audio version. The book is called, Making a Career in Dictatorship. My interest is not aspirational. That is, I don’t intend to learn how to make a career in dictatorship for myself. Rather, the big idea in the book, from extensive historical research by the authors, is that authoritarian regimes often depend on pressure exerted over mid-level officers/employees to hold on to power. It is not necessarily some grand, well-thought out ideological plan that maintains power, but rather pressure exercised over mid-level (even mediocre) masses of people who wind up “detouring” from expected or expressed values and practices in order to protect their own immediate well-being.

Finally, and most significantly for the context of Evangelically Departed, I have been reading Kristin Kobes du Mez’ new book, Live, Laugh, Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made. It is fantastic. It is fascinating and enlightening and upsetting. Kobes du Mez is an historian. You may have heard of her very well received book Jesus and John Wayne: How Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, published in 2021. As that book looked largely at concepts of masculinity and their impact on evangelicalism and society, Live, Laugh, Love takes a similar historical lens to concepts of femininity. I received an advanced copy of the book, which comes out in September. I highly recommend pre-ordering it.

The word “secret” in the subtitle is important. The book reads like something of an exposé. As someone who was a pastor for decades in an evangelical church, I knew something of the history described, but did not know of many of the connections that Kobes du Mez brings out. The revelation of the secret shows that what became accepted and assumed in evangelical circles. For example what it meant (or means) to be Christian, what God wants of us, what we are to think about power, authority, gender, and culture, were never inherently biblical or godly. Instead, the stances and moral perspectives of all of the above were highly curated by politics and by empire building and money making.

Do you remember Christian bookstores?

I am Canadian. If you are American and you are reading this, let me say that our Christian bookstores were generally not as bad as yours. Ours had books. As a young Christian serious about my faith, I frequented Christian bookstores. I think that my first point of contact was in order to buy contemporary Christian music (CDs and cassettes). As I grew in faith, I became interested in the books. Even early on I noticed that many Christian bookstores did not have a lot of books and often featured a few very popular titles. Usually I found that the more popular also meant the less thoughtful. Books that were featured in display tended to be ones along the lines of those that Kobes du Mez highlights; new packaging of principles of spiritual or moral success or a novel or series from a well-known Christian publisher.

In the American Christian bookstores I saw more figurines and flag trinkets than I did books. Was it possible to find a commentary on a book of the Bible in such a store? Likely not, but there would be Precious Moments figurines.

There was a Christian bookstore in my neighourhood, North Vancouver.

Even here, in godless, secular (I can’t stand either of those terms) North Vancouver, there was a store called Sign of the Fish. For those who know the city it was in the lowest block of Lonsdale (now a high end neighbourhood). I loved visiting the store and spent a lot of money there. They sold some of the trinkets as well, but they also sold books—and not just Christian self-help books, but actual commentaries and thoughtful books by qualified, educated authors. As it turns out, the woman who owned the store for quite a number of years was a member of the church that I would eventually pastor.

Oh, the good old days!

Little did I know that the time in which I frequented Sign of the Fish was the setting of the sun of an era. Sign of the Fish has not been around for decades.

Kobes du Mez mentions that there were, largely in the Mid-west, Deep South, and Sunbelt of the United States, roughly 3500 Christian bookstores. These stores were a vital part of disseminating a particular view of faith and culture that presented itself as the only truly Christian way.

I have been thinking about this in regards to the book on dictatorship that I have been reading. The authors present an argument that is compelling, both in description and by data, that any totalizing or authoritarian system depends on masses of people feeling pressured to maintain its power.

What were those masses of people in evangelicalism?

As a pastor, I observed that the places where some ultra-conservative, moralistic, theologically questionable views of Christian faith were propagated were in, the often gender specific, Bible Study meetings led largely by laypeople. The people who led such studies tended not to be theologically educated, other than in the tradition and bubble of their context. Their knowledge was supported and largely made up of ideas from the ecosystem that Kobes du Mez describes. The lay leaders were often caring and generous, giving of their time and energy, and they could pretty much be counted on to tow the evangelical party line. In my experience, the presentation of differing ways of seeing or believing either did not happen at all or happened only in order to set up a way of refuting difference. This was often true all the way up the theological ladder to places like Regent College in Vancouver, which I very much liked and appreciated.

Kobes du Mez, in her book, mentions totalistic or totalizing worldviews. There is no doubt in my mind that evangelicalism was and remains a totalizing way of seeing. Kobes du Mez quotes Robert Jay Lifton who, in the 1950’s described “how absolute purity, rigourous obedience, and ritual confession created one of the most powerful efforts at human manipulation ever created.” Lifton was describing totalistic political regimes but later pointed to fundamentalist Christianity as another example. He did this because he saw that fundamentalist (evangelical) Christianity functioned as a closed system that explained to its adherents how to evaluate everything in the world. It functioned as a closed system, “perpetuating a division of the world into insiders and outsiders. Participants were recruited through evangelism, bound through mutual confession and accountability, and controlled through self-monitoring and hierarchical lines of authority.”

As I have said already, I highly recommend pre-ordering a copy of Live, Laugh, Love. I am grateful for the book and for Kobes du Mez work from a place of faith. That is, I have somehow also sensed that Christian faith is better and more open and compassionate, less fearful and more hopeful than many of its evangelical presentations.

Did you know that what was presented to you as “Christian” may have been largely about politics and marketing? Did you attend some of those Bible Studies in which perhaps well meaning foot soldiers of the movement dutifully presented the party line? Did you suspect that they might not be telling you the whole truth? If you attended such Bible studies, did you internalize a kind of enforcement system, giving responses and answers according to what was expected more than according to what you actually felt or thought?

The way I see it is that books like Kobes du Mez’ do not tear down Christianity. Rather, they expose a shoddy, but highly popular, theologically thin scaffolding that has hijacked a good deal of Christian expression in order to promote one political and social view while making a ton of money for those leading the charge.

As you read books like Live, Laugh, Love may you not only appreciate how the work of a good historian can reveal to you things about your own history, but may you be inspired to move forward in hope.