While I’m happy for the interest in what promises to be a challenging book, I’m a bit flummoxed by all the fervor. Tim Keller’s newest tome, King’s Cross, on the life of Jesus, has also just come out and no one seems to care, and I guarantee that it will be the better seller in the long run. But Bell releases a video and suddenly all hell (or lack of hell) breaks loose among the Neo-Reformed twittering classes. Retweets abound, most of them falling into the “I’ll pray for Rob” or “Rob’s leading folks astray” camps.

While I could, lemming-like, plunge over the cliff of judgement with Messieurs Taylor, DeYoung, and Piper, I’d prefer to critique monographs over video scripts. No, what I’d really like to discuss is the marketing genius behind the Neo-Reformed camp that has once again proved that when it comes to using new media, the pragmatic American Evangelical brain cannot be beat.

This is not the place to rehash the many fine studies tracing Evangelical media savvy that have proceeded from the pens (typing fingers?) of scholars over the last years, but suffice it to say that the links are well established. Whether the medium was mass periodicals (A.B. Simpson, Theodore Weld), radio (Aimee Semple McPherson, Paul Rader, Charles Fuller) or television (Rex Humbard, Pat Robertson, Robert Schuller), Evangelicals were keen to get in on the ground floor. The Internets 1.0 and 2.0 have not been any different. Of course, with every new technology there are both benefits and unintended consequences for the message of the Gospel and the people of God.

Just a few short years ago, Mr. Taylor would have perhaps received a catalog from Harper One that listed Rob Bell’s new book. He might have gotten upset at the potential doctrinal flaw and mentioned around the water-cooler at Crossway. A few of his colleagues might have made mental notes to check out this book when it finally reached their local Christian bookstore (Remember those? We do.) Mr. Taylor might have even have eventually found the time to publish a lengthy, well-edited review in a real periodical.

However, this is clearly not what happened. Things were posted. Tweeted. Re-tweeted. Soon topics were trending, and before you know it, It’s on CNN.com. And of course the game of telephone has intervened and it goes from Rob Bell: Universalist? to “Charges of Heresy”. All this before anyone’s even read the book. (How, by the way, can one be really be a textbook heretic apart from the machinery of the Catholic Church? Does the Gospel Coalition hold heresy trials? If Michael Servetus had just made a video preview of his anti-Trinitarian works, would he still have been burned at the stake in Geneva?)

So, to the various and sundry folk who are standing up against perceived “Liberalism” in Evangelicalism by letting their fingers do the tweeting: Be careful. While this sort of internecine sniping might be fun, I hardly think that it’s a worthy way to “defend” the Gospel. If you look into the medium too long, the medium looks into you. Paul Rader died a bitter man in California after his radio career went off the rails. And do I really even need to bring up the Televangelists?

If Justin Taylor and the Gospel Coalition are really concerned about Bell’s “pre-heresy” I suggest that they take a page from their intellectual grandfather Carl McIntire and engage in the practice of separation. To wit: A good part of the Gospel Coalition’s site is powered by The City, a Seattle based church software company owned by – wait for it – Zondervan. Zondervan has published three of Rob’s books and is of course a sibling of his current publisher HarperCollins under Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Of course, this separation might be costly, but at least it would be consistent.

Wendell Berry says put down the iPhone

I’ve been noticing an interesting trend among students here at the PCB. They’ll read C.S. Lewis if it’s assigned. Of course they’ve seen the Narnia movies. They might even pick up Screwtape Letters for a floor Bible study. But the thinker that they really track with is not an Inkling but an Agrarian.

Wendell Berry, poet, farmer, gadfly, has captured the attention of this generation in the same way that C. S. Lewis captured the attention of the previous generation of Christian scholars.

In some ways this is not surprising. They both share some common characteristics. Their writings are myriad and cover a panoply of topics, thus there is much to keep one engaged after the first book. Both are non-Evangelicals who nevertheless seem to come to conclusions that aren’t too far away from orthodoxy. Finally both offer hope a life beyond a middle class suburban existence (Lewis in the ivory tower and Berry in the fields).

But in other ways, I’m surprised but pleased that students born in the 90′s are reading Berry.

The surprise comes from the one fact that we “know” about Millenials, namely that they want to be connected all the time. I’ve seen dozens of articles that tell Bookstores that we can hold back the digital onslaught if we just tweet coupons to our students. Or friend them on Facebook. Or harass them with any other social media that’s currently making Fast Company breathe heavily. But what if what they are really looking for is something that transcends the plastic culture that they’ve been raised in? Something more thick than thin?

And of course the pleasure for me comes when imagine what choices students will make under Berry’s influence. For while I like Lewis, emulating his Oxbridge life is not only anachronistic, but also expensive for some and impossible for everyone else. We can’t all become tenured professors at ancient universities. How much better the Berry lesson that finding one’s place in the world is first and foremost a matter of going deeper, into one’s community, into one’s family, and, quite literally sometimes, into the soil.

If we’re going to lower prices like this why do we even make the charade of the “standard 40%”? As the large chains push further and further into the margins of the average stores, publishers have no choice but to raise prices to get back to the actual amounts they need to keep the lights on.  Why not just make the books net priced and let retailers charge what they will?

I suppose publishers and Walmart are somewhat concerned about the Kindle, but have you seen the sales stats ? (or here) Of course you haven’t; Amazon is notoriously opaque. It’s all a little premature.

What will we do here at the P-mod store? Well, we’ll go further and further into the long tail, where we can at least have a chance of getting our loyal customers a shot at good prices and an authentic bookstore experience. We’ll keep pushing Wendell Berry and others who encourage Christians to resist the totalizing forces of the market and its logic. And we’ll keep re-arranging the deck chairs on our little corner of the Titanic.

Still, this phonemenon has not gone unnoticed.  John Stackhouse, an astute Christian historian and public commentator has this excellent post on why bookstores still matter here.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace from Back Bay Books (Somewhat appropriate as it features tennis prominently, a sport almost as toffee-nosed as sailing.)

Capitalism and Christianity, American Style by William Connolly from Duke University Press (Recommended by my brother in law. I’ll be quite interested if Connolly actually interacts with the real Christianity, rather than Weber’s shrinky-dink version. I have a feeling that I’ll be disappointed.)

Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation by James K. A. (Jamie) Smith from Baker/Brazos (Supposed to be the new Engaging God’s World; if anyone can pull it off, it’s Jamie. I’m looking forward to his discussion of “secular liturgies”.)

And of course, my trusty Greek-English Interlinear.

We’ll see how much I get read between swatting seagulls and being seasick.

The most intersting thing to me is Garrett’s discussion of the role that Mega-Bestsellers (Purpose Driven Life, Left Behind, Jabez) played in the industry’s attention from the mainstream during the 90′s.  She posits that these were an exception to the normal state of affairs, driven partly by the economic growth that decade, and something that hasn’t been replicated recently, Joel Osteen and The Shack notwithstanding.  Which brings me to a longstanding criticism that I’ve had of CBA, namely that it’s an industry that chases fads rather than true innovation.

I’m not bashing fads. I’ve got a bit of faddish merchandise in the store now. (Color-ku anyone?) However, it’s a little like sugar in nutrition, necessary in small amounts but ultimately not good for you if it’s all you eat. Also, the most successful store owners that I know are notorously fad-allergic, or at lease fad-averse.  Still, I wonder what will happen to an industry that is unable to find steady products for its customers in the long term.

Yet even with this consolidation and the growth of phone reps, there is so much that a good rep can do, especially for an intelligent independent store.  So many times I’ve been impressed by the precise knowledge of my reps and thankful for their gentle steering both away from bad books and towards good ones. I can achieve most of this with a catalog or an e-catalog, but the wise council that I get is missed.

Of course, this is all academic if the e-readers really live up to the hype. Or if Christian books continue in the direction that they are going and are only sold at Amazon or Walmart. At that point the road rep will join the telephone operator and the zeppelin pilot in that great big career center in the sky. In the meantime, raise a cheer with me for the underappreciated, quirky, yet wonderful CBA road rep.