Faith fuels spiritual capitalism with a little help from Mad Ave

Insight on the News, Sept 8, 1997 by Julia Duin

Perhaps the wackiest items at this year's midsummer convention of Christian booksellers were the almond-roca "covenant candy bars." Conceived by Covenant Candies of Newport Beach, Calif., boxes of almond-roca candy were packaged with audiocassettes of the King James Bible. The company's slogan: "Now, for the first time, your customers can have the `most listened to' book in history and their favorite candy, too!"

Covenant Candies may have been the tastiest exhibit among the 1,537 others set up at the recent Christian Booksellers Association's convention in Atlanta, but there was no shortage of inspiring displays of spiritual capitalism. James West Watch Creations of Los Angeles offered "money frames," for example. Some 13,000 conventioneers had the opportunity to purchase shredded dollar bills enclosed in a glass frame bearing slogans such as "God's love is priceless" and "Only faith in the Lord pays off."

But culinary Christianity remains the trend du jour, a continuation of a marketing theme introduced at the 1995 CBA meeting in Denver. There, booksellers offered cappuccino coffee bars for browsers. This year, one merchandiser set up a booth for "Testamints: The New Breath Mints With a Powerful Message!" Each mint (spearmint, wintergreen, peppermint and various fruit flavors) came with a Bible verse. Even the normally serious Multnomah Press got into the act with its "gold-and-honey" Bible, which proclaimed "God's Word is more precious than gold and sweeter than honey," and its "fruit-loops" books, or books shaped like pieces of fruit.

"Some things they line up for make you want to crawl under a rock," muttered another exhibitor while observing the crowd at the Testamints booth. But the selection of food-related products indicates the Christian merchandising world is willing to go to great lengths to capture a piece of the $3 billion Christian retailing industry

"We tell publishers to be biblically accurate but culturally relevant"' says CBA President Bill Anderson. "We challenge publishers to ask, `Would Jesus write the foreword to this book?'"

Sales of spiritual books are booming. In 1996, 34 publishers mounted displays in the "religious, inspirational, spiritual" category at the American Booksellers Association trade show. This year, 78 booksellers set up booths at the ABA meeting in Chicago. Sales of all religious books, including new age and inspirational, increased 92 percent between 1991 and 1994, compared to 31 percent for retail books, according to the ABA.

Some of the biggest sellers are books about prayer, which hints that America may be in for a religious revival. "We're seeing some beginning signs of revival," says Anderson. "Some of the folks I've talked with in

The good book on tape: Bible cassettes packaged with candy nourish the soul and sate the sweet tooth. the Billy Graham organization are convinced of this."

Prophetic-fantasy titles, in which an author ruminates on end times, also are popular, including The Final Quest by Rick Joyner of Charlotte, N.C. The book chronicles his visit to heaven where he allegedly spoke with Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul and others.

Of course, publishers are hawking more earthly books meant to help baby boomers raise their children and teach them virtues. "People are recognizing that character is not innate; it has to be developed," says Anderson. "So they are coming to the stores and looking for help."

Christian readers are buying up "devotionals" -- books that analyze a chapter of the Bible or offer spiritual insights for a given day -- as well. The perfect product for the 1990s offers "revelation in byte-sized chunks," according to one author.

"We're a nation of people who believe in God, but we are biblically illiterate," explains Anderson. "What the Christian bookstore does is supplement what people should be getting from the pulpit and Sunday-school classes."

Various publishers at the Atlanta convention had displays informing browsers how to encounter a broad range of life in a Christian fashion. Broadman and Holman, a Southern Baptist publisher, featured a business imprint on "spirituality in the marketplace," for example. Crossway Books, a Chicago publisher, has issued books on sexual purity for men and on porn addiction, as well as The Christian Woman's Guide to Sexuality -- for married women only.

Although Christian self-help books are slightly down in popularity, a few variations on the theme for children are available, including The Boy Who Cried Abba: A Parable of Trust and Acceptance by ex-Catholic priest Brennan Manning. For animal lovers, Honor Books has published What My Cat Has Taught Me About Life: Meditations for Cat Lovers, which includes entries titled "God's Word Fur Me" and "Paws for Prayer."

And Christian game lovers might look for Bibleopoly, a board game patterned after Monopoly. Instead of squares named after sites in Atlantic City and New York, they bear New Testament place names such as Ephesus, Capernaum and Smyrna. Cards carrying instructions such as, "You have been swallowed by a great fish. Lose three turns."