Among the Christian Booksellers: a convention junkie's report - Christian Booksellers Association Convention

Christian Century, Sept 27, 1995 by John D. Spalding

Best bumpersticker: "Real Men Love Jesus."

Best trinket: Despite stiff competition from d bag of scripture fortune cookies and a camouflage pen which reads, "Jesus Wants You to Be All You Can Be," the award goes to a soccer-ball key chain inscribed with "Jesus Is My Goal."

Best Christian children's board game: "The Game of Pilgrim's Progress." Based on John Bunyan's classic, this game enables kids to relive Pilgrim's journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. An "excellent teaching and devotional tool" and "rich in spiritual applications," it features "custom pilgrim is with detachable burdens."

Best poster: An F-15 fighter jet in vertical flight, below which is written Isaiah 40:31: "They shall mount up with wings of eagles."

Best surprise celebrity appearance: Remember Willie Aames? Years ago he played Tommy Bradford in "Eight Is Enough." Today, Aames dresses in a purple superhero cape and plays Bibleman in a musical video series about a bunch of 12-year-olds who put on skits about the Bible in their garage. Dressed in his Bibleman outfit, Aames was at the booth of the video company, Sparrow, posing for Polaroids with children. I waited in line 20 minutes before finally giving up.

Best scandal of the year: No convention is complete without a good scandal, and this year's CBA did not disappoint. But poor Oxford University Press. Or rather, poor Hargis Thomas, Oxford's sales director. I've known Hargis a few years and can vouch that he's the nicest guy you could ever meet. True, I've heard he occasionally fudges the score at the annual Oxford-Guideposts CBA softball game, but that in no way excuses what happened to him.

On Friday night convention workers were supposed to install Oxford University Press's light-box displays touting its lead fall Bible titles. When Hargis and his crew arrived at the booth Saturday morning they stared in shock at their displays. Instead of transparencies for their new Scofield Special Editions and the Holy Bible with Illustrations from the Vatican Library they found posters mounted for two Oxford titles they did not bring to the CBA--Fetish, which pictured a dominatrix dressed in full-leather gear ("cinched tight," Hargis explained, "in all the right places") and With Pleasure, which showed a woman seductively biting a man s ear. Hargis also found snickerings and bemused notes left by other exhibitors.

I still can't figure out why he brought these salacious posters with him to Denver, and nobody seems to know why the convention workers mounted them in his booth. And this was the second time such a mistake was made! Last year they mounted The Oxford Companion to Wine and Monkey Wars, a book advocating the rights of animals in scientific experiments, in place of The Precise Parallel New Testament and another Scofield edition. Coincidence or conspiracy? You be the judge.

I get the impression Hargis will be sore about this for quite some time, so if you want to do a good deed, call him and order a Scofield Special Edition. They,re worth it. Better, yet, ask for Fetish and tell him you saw it at the CBA. a