When the Anxiety Narrative Becomes a Trap

Following some professional and personal updates, we embrace the energy of the coming summer by digging into a recent Publisher's Weekly Religion article highlighting how "anxious readers" are apparently buying up Bibles. It felt like a suspiciously familiar trope, so we tried to unpack that assumption a bit. 

No mention of the widely publicized decreases in church attendance, or religious disaffiliation as a whole, but we an earlier article claimed some publishers, very different ones, are "saying Amen to resistance" with books from the progressive left (and the conservative right too, of course) responding to our overheated political climate. 

But even that framing feels shoehorned. We wonder where are the truly fresh takes? Where's the deeper dives beyond the stereotypes? (Again, is "mainstream audience" even a useful term anymore?) If you're tired of the tired tropes and assumptions, we hope you'll tag along for some rousing discussion.

Specific articles mentioned can be found at publishersweekly.com, News > Religion section: "Religion Publishers Say Amen to Resistance," and "Anxious Readers Turn to God."

Publishing Disrupted is at PublishingDisrupted.substack.com

Mick Silva is at MickSilvaEditing.substack.com

David Morris is at dvdmorris.substack.com, LakeDriveBooks.com, and Hyponymous.com.

Transcript

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Hey everybody, welcome back to Publishing Disrupted. I am editor Mick Silva. And I am publisher and literary agent David Morris. And as always, we are exploring the ways in which book publishing is changing and how writers can best meet that challenge. We are looking at how the publishing marketplace has disrupted us, how it is disrupted and being disrupted, and how best to lean into that disruption, not in a way to shrink away from it, but to accept it and move and move forward with it. Yes, exactly. As two former Christian publishing industry professionals learning to navigate this massive independent book market, we have a lot to talk about. And rather than just keep it to ourselves, you know, in our little private conversations, we figured, yeah, you know, let people in on that. Yeah, we observe things and we're like, oh, that again? Yeah. Yeah. Like we're we're tired of some things, we're excited by other things. Exactly. So we just want to talk about how disruption can be a a good, a force for good, I suppose. Yeah. Uh and ultimately hopeful. Um, although we do get into the nitty-gritty and we get pretty critical and do our do our critiques of things as well. So the other thing is, it's gotta be controversial. Gotta get people's. Hey, if we want people to listen, you do. Just no rage driving people, please. No rage baiting. Let's forget all that stuff. Come on. Although I do it myself sometimes. We're further along on the stages of faith. We don't do stuff like that. Oh, there you go. Oh my gosh, yes. Absolutely. I like to think that I am, or at least working my way toward the next stage. Maybe thinking that you are is half the battle. Yeah. Do you guys know about the stages of faith? Like so it could actually be worse. If you think you're mature, it could be a sign that you're aren't. Exactly. Right? Oh, I'm so humble. Very well could be, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Once you start thinking you're humble, you're not. So, right. Um, I I think we also talk a lot about the tensions between like career and commerce, or maybe a better way to say that, like the the fact that it it is a direct tension to think of matters of spirit and culture and and commerce and uh you know career, I suppose. Maybe those are the distinctions. Like I think there's just a natural tension there. And and I've always felt it in, I mean, obviously Christian publishing, but just even as a freelancer now, I I I'm like I want to help people, I want to be able to do it. I shouldn't say this on the air, but like I want to be able to do it for I would do it for free because I love it. I love books, I love ideas, I love ideas that are expressed well. Yeah. And yet, I mean, clearly, obviously, I have a family. We have have to pay the bills. It's it's a valuable tool and and a skill that I have, so I offer it for a a price. But like And it's valuable to others who would want to pay the price, yes. Sure. I hope, I hope if I'm doing my job it is, but like, you know, and you have to make money off of the books that you're publishing. Right. But ultimately you'd love to hand them out for free because you want people to be having these conversations. Hey, we only need to make enough. Exactly. That's the issue. I guess that's what I'm coming to. Because there's enough to go around for everybody, and if we only take what we need, right is enough. Right. Um Let's have a balance rather than like we have to have the most or be the best or whatever this I don't know. That it just feels like there's an ethos, and this is Christian nationalist sort of, but like to say that we're the best and we're dominators and we're in charge and we have the most money and the best stuff, and like that's just so wrong-minded, sad and tired. Yes, exactly. That's just not where I want to be anymore. So the disruption personally to me is like talking about that direct tension, actually talking about it, not just like dismissing it and saying, Oh, well, you know, we we serve God, and the reason we make money is so we can serve God more, or we make money because we're the best. We can't help it, we're just the best. All vague and very suspicious. Like, give me a break. It's so hypocritical, saying it, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like, be suspicious of that kind of language because there is a tension, it matters how people are trying to balance commerce and culture, or or Christ and culture, in if for that matter. Um, a Nieber reference. Right? Like, I want to I want to talk about quality and excellence, and the only way to do that is to be honest about the that tension, I guess. Yeah. Um so anyway, uh I don't know why I got on that, but that that's kind of where I started. Yeah, let's let's talk about what's happening. What's news is new? Or maybe me. You want me to start? Yeah, sure. I mean, what is new with you? Well, uh, let's see, just a couple things coming to mind. Uh one is um uh we at late on the Lake Drive Books independent publishing side, we recently published Melissa Doogie Spires's amazing memoir called Holy Disobedience Sex Sin and Secrets in the Biggest Church No One Knows about her upbringing in the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the um you know, just how formative in a very restrictive way that didn't allow her or that where she didn't realize until later in life she hadn't really become her own person. And she also realized that there are sexual, there's sexual predate predation going on in that church, and it's not just a you know, bad apple, it's it's a it's a whole batch where there's a systemic issue of it, and it it struck right within her own family. Um and uh but what what's fascinating about that book, and it's very similar to the book we published a couple years ago by Krista Brown about the Baptist world, right? Where you have a lot of people buying the audiobook. I I will I will go on record saying that in the month of May, her sales on audio were um equal to combined print and ebook. Oh wow. So audio is far outselling normal proportions. I mean, people say, well, everybody's listening to audiobooks. No, you know what? That's not that much. It's right. It's not that's not that much. It's not that's really high. Where it's where it's outpacing, I mean, it's actually selling better than print in audio. It's selling better in in audio. I'm sorry, it's selling better in audio than in print. It's selling better in audio than in ebook. It's selling better in audio or the same when you combine print and ebook. That's remarkable. That is, yeah. And and I mean, what do you attribute that to? Oh, without a doubt. Without a doubt. There's, I mean, it it is, we do have the word, you know, the biggest church no one knows. That phrase is in the subtitle, and which immediately makes you go, well, what's that about? Well, it's about Seventh-day Adventist Church. So that means there's a lot of Seventh-day Adventists out there, probably mostly women, who are listening to this book without the prying eyes or ears of their family members or friends or church members or church leaders. Yeah, they want to hear this story. You can hide stuff on your phone. Yeah. Well, let's not get into that. Hey, wait a minute. That's what this book is about in the first place. I mean, no, but like, and and it's a feature, not a bug. Like we've heard that a lot, right? That phrase. This is a feature of the church. This is a feature of white, you know, uh authoritarianism, not a bug. Just not even some. Even just super tightly knit churches and super I mean, which sounds like a very benign phrase, or maybe even a nice phrase. Yeah. Being tightly knit is a good thing. But if it's too tightly knit or it it becomes, you know, too controlling too, you know, not you know, you can go all the way to authoritarianism and Christian nationalism, but there's just a lot of there's a whole spectrum in there. Yeah. And it all has you know questions we need to ask about it. Yeah. Yep. And and the fact that that's doing well kind of points to the I guess the underlying uh or the undercurrent, right, of of um defection. I mean, Christians talking about deconstruction. Uh I mean, just just recently we had some articles in Publishers Weekly. Um, you know, that we're talking there was uh as a response to anxiety. Yeah. Can I can I do one more newsy thing? Please, yeah. Yeah, okay. Um before we get into it. But that is that is our big thing we want to talk about. Oh, okay. Yeah, what what you want what you're about to get into. No, please continue with news. I didn't even share my news yet. Yes. I'm jumping the gun. Yeah. Sorry. Well, that's okay. I'm so excited. Yeah. This is not, this is this is not a Tony Robbins organized Tony Robbins. This is like organized chaos. That's what I think. Yeah, I told someone I'm kind of like the the curious monkey, curious George or something, like T your yellow man in yellow chain. Yeah, so that's really cool about uh holy disobedience, that book, and Melissa's um just really been working hard. She was on this podcast called Mormon Stories, which is just huge. Oh wow, yeah. Yeah. And it's not even a Mormon story. No, they had always wanted to feature somebody from Seventh-day Adventist Church, and now they can. And it's interesting. Yeah. And then a lot of the parallels. Along those lines, I won't go into this a lot, but we did just announce um signing Natasha Helfer, who is a sex therapist, ex-Mormon sex therapist, who, as she got into her work as a licensed and credentialed sex therapist, uh, she ran into trouble with her own faith tradition, which officially kicked her out and it made national news. And that book will be coming next year. Awesome. Um and then on the agenting side, something I'm super excited about. Um, and I just love I just love this because it just parlays with my own background and skill set and what I think our hyponymus literary agency is is at least in part about. And and that's just really partnering well with authors. It's not just about going out and getting the big book contract. Right. Um it's you know, because a publishing relationship is meant to be long term, it's meant to be authentic, it's meant to be give and take. Um, it's not about a sale. Ideally, it's not about um glamour, it's not about, you know, I mean, those things if if if good sales and a good glamour comes along attached to it, hey, that's something bonus. Maybe be a little careful of it as well. Be careful, that's right. You know, big advances and all that, which is a good idea. Don't become a jerk, which we won't say no to, but sure. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but we signed um the uh um theologian, episcopal priest, and activist, Matthew Fox, nice to hyponymus literature. Uh a gentleman with well over 40 books published over decades. Right. He's you know, he's he's further on in years than the average um author. Um but some that's something about being an author. You can keep going. You can keep going. I have another author's not I wouldn't not quite as far along, but but that author's like, I'm gonna keep going. Yeah. I've got more to say, and I'm I'm not waiting around for publishers to publish it. I'm saying it. Um and and uh so Matthew is I'm excited about he's got several new books he wants to publish in the coming years. Cool. Um really fascinating stuff. I mean, this is just like I mean, this person's Yoda. He's just he's just basically Yoda of the creation spirituality, Catholic mysticism. Yeah. Um Dominican, right? Dominican Order is that? Originally, yes, but no, but no longer when when the Vatican expelled him. Yes, exactly. For being now being somebody who thinks clearly and Episcopal priest, yeah, I believe. Yeah. And he has a number of backlist titles that have been left to languish. He has some books, okay, for example, that were published just before the ebook revolution the ebook change. Yeah. And at that time a lot of authors, a lot of publishers went into their backlists and they couldn't they converted books over to ebooks, even if they had to sign new agreements with the authors or update, you know, amend their agreements. Right. Or addend them. Um so yeah, you have a lot there. Yeah. So there's like there was like three books like, oh, hello there. That's right. That big publisher. You you know, they're still relevant. That's the that's the fun part of it, right? It's like that's not changed that much when he's talking about big, I mean generalizing about culture, but about obviously the some of the um the undercurrents. I think what I'm what I'm learning too is is, and I'm just so excited about digging into his material as time goes on, is just how um, you know, how how there is a stream within uh Catholic mysticism in the you know, I'm not even gonna be able to talk about it intelligently, but in the last millenni in the last um thousand years, where they there is a stream of creation spirituality, of environmentalism, of wholeness and and systemic uh compassion and togetherness that flies in the face of a Roman Catholic Church that's always been complicit in power. Right through through, you know, from its very beginning. Right. From Constantine onward. Exactly. Um not not everywhere, not all er not everybody, but it is. Not all churches, not all priests, but I mean, but you know, 500 years ago it was a tool of power. Yes. And it still is in many ways. Um tool of government, of state power. Um, and and I think what you know, what I'm learning about Matthew's work is that you know, that's not the whole story, and there's some amazing stuff that actually is, as you say, relevant still. In fact, I think in a way two people are, you know, there was like um there was sort of a environmentalist push or interest in like the 90s in evangelical circles, which kind of died out. Right again, I'm not the expert on this one, but um I th I feel like with some of the authors that I've been coming into contact with, there's more of this sense of you know, not dominating the world, how are we in at one with the world? Right. And that means being exploiting and yeah, how are we focusing on the here and now and not the hereafter? Yeah, how how are we not exploiting each other? I feel like that conversation is definitely maturing right now, and I think Matthew can be a great resource. Hello, everybody. Check him out. A great resource to give you grounding in that kind of thinking. Yeah, a more of a uh long view, more of a long-term view as well. Uh it's not just current, current day. Right. Yeah, give us uh context for that kind of discussion. Um so that was a bunch of newsy stuff from me. Well, that's good. Uh thank you for sticking to the topic. I like to jump around. Uh news for me, I don't really have a lot of I mean, I've been working with clients and and some really great ones. I'm excited for their books to come out. Um, most of them are uh probably not traditionally publishing, most of them are indie now. Although I do still work do some work once in a while for more traditional houses, um Chalice Press, things like uh, you know, folks who aren't necessarily in the mainstream big Christian CBA type publishers. Uh but but yeah. Um I just pitched a book to Chalice Press. Did you? Yeah, they're good people, yeah. Yeah, they do good stuff. Um let's see, what else? I I just I I feel like personally, I mean, obviously the move from uh winter into spring is well underway and we're almost to summer here. It's extraordinarily beautiful outside. Yeah, it's crazy beautiful. It's like things have really exploded. So I I think that's having an impact on my ability to focus at my desk and sit there for extended periods. So that's that's been challenging. But um also just feeling a little bit of release from that, like that we came through the winter. It was a long winter, it was very cold. It was, and I'm a California kid, so this is kind of a new experience for me to experience the seasons as kind of an internal uh adjustment, and there's phases in involved here. Like I just you know, in California you don't get a lot of seasonal stuff. There's like uh hot and fog, like that's basically the two seasons, you know. Yeah, and I guess there's morning when you wear a jacket, and then there's everything else. Yeah, exactly. And so like I'm still adjusting to that after eight years in Grand Rapids, I think, and and even having lived in Colorado and and other places, but like it just feels like uh this collective struggle of winter that all the people around you are are undergoing, and then you come out of that and it's like oh it's just life springs out of the board work. You didn't know you were in that struggle, you don't really recognize it, and then you're then the weather's nice. You're like, Oh, wait a minute, I can stop struggling now. Yeah, I'm gonna go out for a walk, man. It's nice. It kind of makes you like a internal seasons. I like that phrase. Yeah, it kind of makes you think you you all you have to allow yourself to be different. Yeah, like existentially be something different. Right. But practically speaking, it means don't work stream so much. Don't work so much. Get out and walk around, go work in the yard, enjoy yourself. Yeah, I'm thinking of like uh Catherine May's book, Wintering, and how like slowing down, winter can be a season of slowing down. I mean it's a season of death, but often just like an appreciation of the fact that like and then we've talked about this too, the loss of faith is a grieving process and and treating it as such, similar to kind of slowing down in winter and kind of appreciating, I guess, that more melancholy side, right? And I mean, as a lifelong melancholy kind of uh person, I I do enjoy winter. I mean, I wasn't really struggling uh other than having to shovel snow. But like now that we're out of the winter, I just feel like this this burst of life and energy, not focused necessarily for what I need to work on. I think you've felt this too, just the fatigue of trying to do something and and push this stone up the hill uh on your own kind of with your own energy. Yeah, definitely. That's hard. That's hard work, and that's why I feel like you know we have a rapport and and kind of try to work uh together as much as we can as we are reinventing ourselves. I think everybody has that stone they're pushing up. Yeah, do I think you're right. Hopefully it's not always feeling that way. Yeah, and and just recognize. Sometimes it does roll downhill. Right. And you don't want to be the cause of it rolling downhill. The problem with it rolling downhill is it just doesn't last very long, and then you gotta start pushing again. Pushing again. There is no choice, like you have no choice, you have to do it, right? I told Jerry recently, like as you age, I and this is part of that seasonal like understanding of your internal uh changes, like you get older and you have no choice. You must exercise, you must get out because your body will just totally decay. Yeah, there's entropy, and uh I think that's the thing we're on about too about publishing this the disruptions that are going on here, they're not necessarily just bad evil forces. Right. There's there's a positive part of this and a positive side to it. If you can embrace it, accept your stone that you have to push up the hill. See it within the with even within the political realities right now. Absolutely. Yes. There's something to be to to see there. There is something I've heard I've heard people talk about it being its own revealing or apocalypse. Do you think that's things are being revealed, yeah. Yes. But what is revealed in all that? And new groups to be identified with, like exvangelicalism. I mean, for for me personally, it's just like that's a new thing for me to at accept and acknowledge. Inasmuch as I still have a foot in the evangelical world and like that's where I come from, and I feel like I always in some ways will be evangelical. Right. Do I claim that as my identity or my label? No. Right. And yet, you know, obviously I still have a whole lot to say about the subject. Right. It's a word that still has utility. Yeah, yeah. So speaking of the the publishers weekly articles, I I see um like especially just the the recent um articles, one was going toward the anxiety that people are feeling. Uh an audience of religious readers is feeling anxiety, and so they go toward Bibles, and it was ostensibly an excuse to write about all the different Bibles that are coming out from publishing houses. Right. Well said. And that is what put PW is supposed to, that's part of that's kind of what it's expected. Like they put up the familiar trope that, like, these are anxious times. We are people are turning to Bibles, and here's all the people talking about their new Bibles coming out. So basically they're tropes can be a good thing or maybe not a good thing. Right. We need to investigate like that a little bit. But then also there was a uh article about um resistance and how certain um publishers, less mainstream, if you'll notice, publishers, are also uh publishing books toward the audience that is feeling resistance to current paradigms, current regimes. I see what you're doing there. You're c you're doing a contrast. Yeah, compare and contrast, right? Same same article writer, by the way. Oh, is it okay? You know, and so like interesting. I just think that you know it's whatever's popular. Um these are two two movements. I mean, streams, I guess. But maybe it's it it is uh significant signifying two different movements that the publishing world is a part of. Well, and think of it as personalities too. I mean, my wife and I are very different personalities. And if you think about like who's gonna be attracted to the one about anxiety, well, probably my wife. Uh-huh. And who's gonna be attracted to the one about resistance and forward movement? Well, me. You know, so now we're getting Myers Briggs-ish. Just going kind of going toward both personality types. Or something, yeah. I mean, I don't know. That's a good way to do it. William James, I think. William James, yes. Oh man. Which gets into your uh introduction uh to Freud, which I'm excited about getting to. Oh, that's getting back to news, but yeah, I don't want to like belabor it. But I'm gonna talk oh yeah, I'm I'm excited to talk about uh your introduction and maybe later. You're publishing that. Yeah. Okay. But anyway, on these two articles, I just feel like maybe uh we could kind of go down the list of like what are we thinking? Um I guess in terms of the audience. Uh huh. Audiences that that that article is kind of identifying. Yeah. Um some people are anxious and then they turn to God and they turn to religion, they turn to Bible. That's that is the theory. That is the theory. That's the trope, maybe. Yeah. Um, and then some people are feeling resistance to the type of Christianity that's being uh becoming increasingly mainstream, correct. Politicized, I suppose. And maybe that's a theory too. And feeling disrupted by that. Let's just have a Phil Shop discussion. Sure, maybe that could exist or it couldn't. Yeah. Uh but like it's it's a choice of which audience do you want to serve? Do you serve both of them, as PW seems to be doing? Because that's their job. That's their job. Yeah. Um, I mean, those are choices that you can make. Right. And and I guess increasingly we we probably need to make both of them if we want to be uh profitable. Right. Successful in the world's terms. Um that some extent that's sort of indicative of publishing in general. You it is you tend to be more um you know, you tend to be more agnostic within your own universe. Good word, yeah. You don't you don't take a big stand on try and publish broadly. Like you're gonna have authors who don't agree with each other. Yeah. That's that's what I'm getting at, I suppose. Right. And that should be okay to an extent, depending on your mission and who you are. As a former publisher, you had to navigate that discussion a lot. Yeah, yeah. Honestly, it doesn't always come up, although it it did come up. I mean you and I both know it came authors in certain ways, like certain very significant ways. Or certain agents. Yeah, where they where they weren't happy about other and I and I know it wasn't just wasn't just us. I know it happened elsewhere as well. Right. Like if you publish this person, then we can't publish with you. Yeah. Things like that. Right. And I I think and a certain agnosticism is necessary if you're going to publish broadly, right? Yeah. Yeah. And and maybe that's not compromising your values to to hold that as a primary value. Right. Say we'd like to hit both audiences. Uh, but but they are intention, and holding it intentionally, yeah. Talking about it honestly, uh is also necessary. Yeah. So I guess I'd just like to pose that question. Publishers are the peacemakers. We bring everybody into the room. I mean, is that still true? I don't know if it ever was. I was being facetious. Okay, that's good. I mean, they've always said that they are. I just I'm just Right? Yeah. I'm just not I just am one who's immediately suspicious of people who say, we all need to just come around the table to get the Genex part. It might be like whatever. It might be. It's like, all right, who tell me another fib old man? This who actually doesn't have any skin in the game. Yes. Yeah, right. The man. They're just trying to hold us down and with use their language to keep us. Yeah. No, but I think I think to some extent, like, and we can just investigate that like rationally. Is it true? Is it true that publishers can be or should be agnostic in the way that they publish? Should they publish broadly, or should they go narrow? Because certain imprints, that's what they do, like an imprint of the colour. We're talking about theology, politics, sure. Um uh social issues. But there's there's a there's a movement afoot to sort of redefine the the purposes even of publishing. And I think that that that exists even in the mainstream traditional houses that they would say that we're to publish only a certain slice of books that are uh, let's say theologically accurate, like that's some coded language, right? Or orthodox, or I mean, then that's in the Christian market, but even in the general, they would say, Well, that's outside of our audience, and we are not going to publish that. But what they really mean is that makes us too uncomfortable, yeah. And we don't wanna we don't wanna touch that. Yeah. Because that's too controversial, or that could get us in trouble with the regime or whatever, right? Right. People who are using language in a way that is uh obfuscating overlords, yes, yes. I guess that's what I'm I'm trying to drive at here. Um and as we talk about the disruption, I think we just have to increasingly recognize that that idea of having uh what is publishing for, what it's about, um I think you you have to continually reinvestigate. And maybe one way to do that, and I'm just kind of flying around here, is to try to know who you are, that you know, know know who you are as a cultural curator, a business, what have you. I like that curator. Um to know who you are that can be in conversation with and critical of the cliches about about culture and publishing and content and the typical tropes that were offered. Yeah, so for example, like I, you know, I saw the PW article and I, you know, as somebody who's been in the um, you know, has been up the ladder in a major publisher, a major religious publisher, right? When I see people quoting stats about Bible and devotional sales, I I'm my my flags start to go up. Yeah. Um well and particularly in the context in which that article is raising it, like that people are feeling anxious and they're looking for hope and comfort in trying times. Like give me a break. That's been right what they said since the early days. And maybe even has a little bit of a um subterranean uh fear fear, stoking fear um message and built in. Right. But the stat that they that was offered in the article was based on uh book scan data that said that in 2019 it was kind of a broad statement, so I I don't know where it came from exactly within book scan data or who or where um you know how that how this was parsed out, but it basically was like around 19 million and was it units or was it dollars in 2019? Yeah. Um kind of a small number compared to now. Yeah, it's units. Six sixteen, sorry, sixteen million in twenty nineteen units, sixteen point six, up to thirty point eight million in twenty twenty five. So you look at that stat and you go, wow, that really is a big increase. People really are afraid. They're really, you know. They're feeling anxious. First of all, that's from 2019 to 2025. That's six years. Right. Right. That's a pretty big, that's a pretty big um, that's a that's that's a pretty far-reaching statement. Sure. Um, it needs definition, it needs specificity. Yep. Um now now there's things that come to my mind as somebody who's been in in this business. Right. One is in 2019, Bible and devotional sales were struggling. They were down. They were down. Um, reason being that the just the digital revolution has it changed the ways Bibles get sold, the way Bibles are experienced in a purchasing environment. You can't touch them and feel them in a bookstore like you used to. Right. It's all online per purchases. That had a way of flattening the sales, and it was a struggle for quite some time. Yeah. Um, and and that, and that even to an extent goes for devotionals too. Devotionals are typically these beautiful, well-designed, you know, high highly designed books. Well, well designed as a matter of perspective. Sure. Highly, highly designed heavy. And highly packaged books, uh, glossy paper, you know, beautiful embossing, yeah, yeah, tricks on the, you know, processes on the on the cover, um, color sometimes. And um, but those two, it stands to reason when bookstores atrophied so dramatically. I mean, you know, we went, and this is also in other PW articles, if you look, we went from 8,000 Christian bookstores in the early 2000s to less than a thousand today. And and mostly indies, like independent. Well, yeah, but there was there was some very significant chain stores that all went out of business. Right, right. Except for maybe one that's not a big one, right? Um, in terms of number of stores anyway. Um and so so to to some extent, one theory is well, it was they were bound to rebound somehow. Um so that's so that's that that should that should cause us to pause on the fear, people are anxious theory a little bit there. Yes. And then there's things like um uh you know, go looking in the marketplace. Maybe something has changed. From what I've heard anecdotally, um you know, the the TikTok market finally caught on to Bibles. And there's some significant young influencers who are doing that thing. You know, this when Facebook first started, this thing happened with Facebook too, by the way. Yeah, yeah, there were people posting scripture quotes and it caught on a certain account that had a certain vibe and appeal to it, and all it was was scripture posts. And oh my goodness, we can get scripture on Facebook. I'm gonna watch this and scroll and listen, and and now I might go buy a Bible. There's a there's a big so that happened on TikTok recent, maybe only recently. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not an expert. I know somebody contradict me in the in the comments, but um so but it does stand to reason that okay, that I mean TikTok can be very volatile, well, and influential, and yeah and in terms of making something explode, watch out when it's not doing that anymore, for one thing. Yeah, even book talk is a little bit more than a lot of things. Yeah, so that could be a wayside. I think that does explain some of what's going on. Yeah, and you know, and then part of me, and this is the part, this is the third thing I think about that, but I think it's probably the flimsiest, but just the surge in authoritarianism and conservatism, even if it's not as widespread, it's widely known. Right. And it's it's taking up a lot of mind space. And those those religious folks who want to sort of circle the wagons would probably be more engaged in buying Bibles and devotionals. Yeah. Um, I don't know that that's I I feel like that's flimsy because mainly, you know, this is a world where that's that's become people are just not in church as much as they used to be. Right. Whether they're uh de-churching and exiting, whether they're just not showing up in the first place and they never were, more and more. Um you know, it just that's one thing I never hear in the reporting about um religious book sales. I never hear how you know how are publishers responding to the fact that churches, church attendance has been participation has has declined steadily. And yeah, you can look at the you can look at the pew data and um you know there's the data about affiliation, you know, the nuns were increasing, but that's leveled off recently. Ooh, there's a there's a you know, there was a whole New York, there was a New York Times podcast on the Daily Show about people are coming back later. You know, which I'm just like, okay, wait a minute, where's the context here? And there it turns out there wasn't a lot of context in that article. But um uh, you know, I'm I'm always, you know, uh I never you never hear how that's like what's how are publishers responding to the change, the fact that, oh, you know, the this whole diocese in California of the Catholic Church is just shut down all these churches. Yeah. Oh, there's whole businesses devoted to helping churches convert their real estate into apartment buildings. Oh, there's, you know, I mean, things are changing. Things like that. And how is that not affecting oh, people still pray, they still believe the Bible? No, if there's not the institutional glue there, it's gonna affect your sales. If you're a smart business person, you're gonna look at that very soberly. Yeah. And that's what makes it start an imprint. That's what you never hear the CEOs of of and leaders that you saw in this article talking about. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. And and that is what's in interesting. I I have always had the reservations, but increasingly it feels like they're just shouting at me when I read an article like that, just based on the fear-mongering. It's like they're making the assumption that enough people are watching Fox News that they're scared enough that they're going to buy Bibles or something. Uh-huh. Like that's just how that you're right. That's a flimsy even even thing to say, but like they they believe it, I think, you know? Yeah, like that'll be the new Fourth of July like ritual. People go buy Bibles. Set up a Bible store on the Washington Mall. This I mean, yeah. I'm sure someone's already thought of that. But this is well, I mean, and and to your point, sorry, now I'm really getting it. Fourth of July, what is it? It's like a bunch of bombs exploding in the air, and then we're celebrating war, basically. And I I just feel like, yeah, increasingly it's becoming difficult for me to just uh accept the premise that we're starting with here. That's like anxiety makes people go buy books. Yeah. It sure it does, yeah, I guess. But like at the same time, like books aren't even necessarily talking about that. Like they're talking about like a conversation, like evaluating things, right? Books in my mind, and I and this is like all kinds of like empirical. No one is directly taking on the topic of anxiety in books or even that I'm seeing, like not in a not in a consistent market trend. Right. That that that could be effectively addressed in a book is even a premise that I'd like to take on. Right. Right? Because like what is it, anxiety? I don't know. Like it keeps you alive, it keeps you from like running out in the street and not getting run over. Like, but and maybe we should be talking about where that anxiety is coming from and not going and reading lots of the Bible to comfort us. We need to go why is it happening in the first place? Let's let's talk about how many resistance books now. Right. How many people are feeling resistance that I'm feeling to that very premise? And saying, like, look, we do feel effectively um disabled in in many ways in this culture, in our society, and as Americans, even, because we are complicit in so much ugliness, and we don't want to continue to just go down the same primrose path and call everything wonderful and happy and go go along our merry way. Like, no, we want to investigate things, and I say that's what books are for. Books are for people who want to now investigate rationally, yeah. In somewhat in an emotive way, I suppose there's emotions as well if you're looking at fiction, but like that's the story. Um non-fiction in particular, you're trying to rationally investigate assumptions and have conversations that are broader than just here's what you should believe and why. Right. I don't want to be told why I should believe something. I want to look at like why is it that everybody is like hiding from reality? And how can I not do that so much? We don't need to go read another story about Noah and the flood. No, exactly. Yeah, like or or get a Bible that like helps us draw pictures about Noah and the Flood. Like, I just don't understand the premise of of that that argument. Like, sure, if the Bible looks pretty, they're gonna give it as a gift to somebody, but is that ever gonna be get picked up by the recipient? Probably not. Yeah, I think it's being sold by I don't even want to say this, but like it's the grandmas going into the bookstores to buy the books for their grandkids, and then they the kids don't read the book. Yeah, it's that that's been going on forever, and that's increasingly what I think yeah, those are going toward. Um now does that mean they're not getting used at all? And no, of course not, but like by and large, I just feel like there's resistance that you feel, and you could go and read about it in books if you want to. Let's get to that other article, but you just made me you're just reminding me of that old brother where art thou movie. Oh, yeah. Um I'm not gonna remember the actor's name. He's been in a million things, but there's also John Goodman. He's in this, he plays a Bible salesman. That's right. And the other salesman, the other actor goes, I got beat up by a Bible salesman. That's right. It's such a good movie. I love that. That was one of my favorite movie lines of all time. And you know, some sort of He's the snake in the story reading this. Yeah. Yeah. But okay, so the there was also another article a few weeks ago on on resistance books. On books about re resistance or publishers saying amen to resistance. Uh and and this was uh I just I feel like it's the flip side to the the anxiety uh readers, yeah. If if that audience exists. Yeah. Uh that's a good way to kind of think about it. We're living in an increasingly divided country, and right many publishers are cashing in on that fact. Well, there are a lot of them are books about Christian nationalism. They're really taking on that issue. There's a Robert Jones book, um uh Brad O'Neishi, one of your authors, uh, just talking about like defying tyrants, I think was one of the books. Uh fighting for social justice, uh recognizing that there are publishers, uh, again, not the necessarily mainstream publishers, although they are traditional houses in that they pay royalties, uh contracted royalties, they are um smaller houses. They're they're the ones kind of on the on the sides. Oh um where some are, but there's some major houses that are publishing these books too. Sure. No, St. Martin's, I'd say, is probably more of a larger house. Uh they mentioned Chalice Press and Broadleaf. Um and you know the thing is those these books have been they started coming out at least in 2020. Yes, yes. They started coming out in 2020, and it's interesting to me there. I mean, I get why. I mean, this is a con we need to keep holding things accountable. Yeah. We need to keep exposing. And there's so much that we're just asleep at the wheel about. Right, just don't see. And you don't see it, or or like you have conservative friends or family who are like, How do you know all this stuff? Well, it's there, yeah, it's kind of like there in front of you. I think as a publishing person, I'm getting kind of tired of of more like books critiquing Christian nationalism. I think it's like, well, why are why are we still doing books like that for why aren't we doing why aren't we looking at the deeper issues with this? Yes, especially the ones that are by journalists, which are great, they're well written, they're well argued, but they don't necessarily get it. They just talk about it. Like getting even getting at the trope aspect of this. You know, what what it like on like the flip side you were just saying with the other article on you know anxiety and people returning to the Bible. What's the flip side trope maybe that it it keeps us from as a culture looking at why do why are we in this Christian nationalist space in the first place? It's not just because of a few bad apples, right? Which is the the argument a lot of people. That's always the argument. A lot of the uh a lot of people levy levy against my Lake Drive authors. Oh, you know, your issue is not widespread. Right. They're just reacting to some their own personal bugaboos. Yes. Yeah, that's I think that's what I mean. I I you know, I don't have um I don't I don't know, I'm not really reading those books right now as much as I was. I'm more interested in how are we building new structure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's I think that's and I speak about that psychologically too. That's a psychological phrase for me. How do you build new structure? And so when I look at some of these books that are coming out in that article, it makes me think, you know, well, this is kind of getting back to um, you know, like progressive Christianity critiquing, yeah, you know, um, and then and we know those critiques, you know, Jesus was about wasn't about power, just about the marginalized agree, obviously. But why why is saying that not helping after five years of these books? Well, that's that's what I'm like. Even longer too, if you look at like Jim Wallace and Tony Campolo and like however many people you can have Greg Boyd and like a lot of books that came out, even like Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. That was a really old book. Right, exactly, exactly. Why does that not like totally revolutionize things? Yeah, or even go back to um the you know the 1920s when biblical criticism kicked in and it got buried, or so did fundamentalism at the same time. They all kind of like went off and into in a boxing match somewhere underground. So we keep having these same problems because we're not effectively reckoning with the conversation that's keep having these same problems, yeah. That's I think that's what's on the flip side of of the resistance books. Yeah, yeah, and I'm I you can look at it in um epic uh sort of frame, like you know, the Empire and the Rebels, right? And Star Wars or something, you could look at it. I mean, from the beginning of time, there's been these two uh factions, I suppose tribes, right? Right based in probably personality types, yeah, and life experiences too. If you get burned by something, you're gonna fight against it. Yeah. Um, but p perceiving political opponent opponents as evil, like that's been going on for a long time too in America. So we just have to recognize there's been this uh I guess these undercurrents. Yeah. That's the word I'm gonna keep coming back to. Undercurrents going for a long time. So yeah, we should wrap it up here. But I I feel like there's a lot more um to explore on that. Yeah. And certainly some Yeah, I didn't I didn't mean to cut you off. No, no, some structure that we could put around this as a conversation. I do think so. Let's let's talk about that more. There's um yeah, I mean, I think I think that it has something to do with defining the conversation religiously. Yeah. Whether you're critiquing Christian nationalism or if you're critiquing it from a religious perspective, I think there's I think that's actually a question mark right there. Yeah. Pure, I mean a purely um like a pure purely tradition specific perspective, that's where we're getting into some problems. Um now people say, well, that's where you gotta start. You gotta start from that tradition, but maybe that tradition actually has issues as well. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Anyway, let's continue next time. Thanks for being here on the case. Cliffhanger, cliffhanger, though.