By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

or decades, the world of Evangelical Christianity was as remote from the New York literary scene as the Bible Belt is from the canyons of Times Square. Now, as surging sales are propelling avowedly Evangelical books to the top of even the mainstream best-seller lists, the major publishing houses are getting religion, pushing for shelf space in Evangelical stores and paying blockbuster advances for their best-selling authors.

But publishers’ path to church can be a cultural minefield. Publishers like the books divisions of AOL Time Warner, the News Corporation and Bertelsmann are meeting resistance from Evangelical readers deeply suspicious of the major media companies and their many worldly products. It is an unfamiliar market where staples of secular publishing like feel-good spirituality or even fluffy-winged cherubim can trigger an angry backlash from pulpits and a wave of returned books.

Some secular publishers chuckle at Evangelical best sellers like the hot new health guide “What Would Jesus Eat?” (not much fat, plenty of whole grains)

or marriage manuals recommending wifely submission. Others, mindful of past allegations of anti-Semitism on the religious right, gulp at the popularity of books by Evangelical authors calling for the mass conversion of Jews.

It is a tough market to crack. Evangelical readers prefer to shop in specialized Evangelical stores where books are certified as spiritually correct, and those store owners in turn prefer to buy from publishers who are also like-minded believers. “If a secular publisher is trying to get in, then we have to screen their books to see if they are doctrinally what we want to carry,” said Linda Hoff, manager of the Maranatha Christian book store in Cleveland. “Every time a Christian company is bought by a secular company we cringe because you don’t know what is going to come out of them next.”

The major publishers are forging ahead nonetheless, even paying eye-popping sums like a recent $45 million advance for a series of Evangelical thrillers by the best-selling author Timothy LaHaye. Laurence Kirshbaum, chairman of the books division of AOL Time Warner, which started a new Evangelical line last fall, called it making up for past neglect.

“We are mostly liberals in publishing who have probably been publishing a lot of books which are offensive to Christians or to that audience,” he said. “Maybe this evens it out.”

In the stagnant book market, the fast-growing sales of Christian books – mainly to specifically Evangelical readers – have become too big to overlook. Christian Booksellers Association put total sales of Evangelical books at $1.77 billion last year out of an estimated $11 billion in general consumer book sales.

Last year for the first time the best-selling works of both fiction and nonfiction in the country were forthrightly Evangelical. If sales trends continue, “The Remnant,” an apocalyptic thriller by Dr. LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins to be published in July by the Christian Tyndale House Publishers, will be this year’s best-selling novel, too, surpassing even Tom Clancy’s latest. But like many Evangelical hits, “The Remnant” centers on themes that might stop conversation at a Manhattan book party: the title describes the 144,000 Jews many Evangelicals believe will convert to Christianity to usher in the Second Coming.

In this unfamiliar territory, secular publishers often misstep. Last month, for example, a new mail order catalog of Christian books from the publisher Scholastic evoked cries of blasphemy after a Christian competitor circulated an angry e-mail message to 3,500 Evangelical teachers and parents denouncing Scholastic’s catalog as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” pushing “flagrantly anti-Christian books.” Its principal sin: promoting the book “Conversations With God for Teens,” in which God smiles on lesbianism and takes a philosophical view of “right” and “wrong.” (A spokeswoman for Scholastic acknowledged it was inappropriate for the audience.)

“There are going to be some parents now that wouldn’t buy a book from Scholastic for any reason,” said Pat Marcum, director of home schooling at the Christian distributor Appalachian. Scholastic’s publication of the Harry Potter books “doesn’t help,” he said. (The possible Satanism in Harry Potter’s playful witchraft is the subject of the popular Evangelical book, “Harry Potter and the Bible: The Menace Behind the Magick,” by Richard Abanes.)

Evangelical publishers and store owners still laugh about the time two decades ago when Bantam, one of the first major houses to enter the field, threw a typical book industry cocktail party at an Evangelical convention where temperance is the rule. Such moves demonstrate “that the major trade houses just don’t have a grasp” of the Evangelical market, said Jim Walthour of JMS Sales, who handles Christian sales for the Penguin Putnam division of Pearson.

Some balk at what one buyer called “the secular invasion.” When the distributor Ingram bought its Christian competitor Spring Arbor, Christian store owners raised an uproar because Ingram distributed Madonna’s book “Sex,” too. (A spokesman for Ingram acknowledged the ruckus but said most Evangelical stores later calmed down.) Stores and distributors said secular publishers often make the mistake of offering books with references to Santa Claus, who does not appear in scripture, or Halloween, which some link to Satan.

For the last decade, many New York publishers have tried to sell Christian stores illustrated books of childlike angels with fluffy wings, hot-sellers in the general market that publishers assumed would delight devoted churchgoers. But angels are a serious matter to Evangelicals, who usually picture purposeful, muscular servants of God.

Just a few words can set off a firestorm. Two years ago, Zondervan, a Christian publisher and part of the HarperCollins division of the News Corporation, published “Paul,” a novel by Walter Wangerin in which the Apostle Paul utters the phrase “God Damn.” Barraged with complaints from Christian stores, Zondervan reissued the book without the phrase, with Mr. Wangerin’s reluctant assent.

Now Zondervan, the largest Christian house, is under fire again, for publishing a Bible translation with more gender-neutral language, and some Evangelical competitors think they see the influence of its secular parent, HarperCollins. “There is something going on there that is saying we need to turn a greater profit at a risk of compromising our beliefs as Christians,” said John Thompson, vice president of marketing for Broadman & Holman Publishing, an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. HarperCollins, he noted, also publishes books offensive to Evangelicals like “The New Joy of Gay Sex.”

But Jane Friedman, chief executive of HarperCollins, which acquired Zondervan in 1987, said it operates with complete autonomy out of a separate headquarters in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Although HarperCollins is the only major publisher to buy a large Christian house, other secular publishers have attempted to present a similar Christian face to the market, with mixed results. In 1994, Ballantine, part of Bertelsmann’s Random House division, set up a line called Moorings, staffed with Evangelicals and based in Nashville, only to close up shop after two years of disappointing sales.

Since then Doubleday Broadway, another part of Random House, has set up a division called WaterBrook Press in Colorado Springs, Colo., and AOL Time Warner has set up its Christian division in Nashville. But some of the new divisions stop short of the most extreme Evangelical books. Rolf Zettersten, former publisher of the prominent Christian house Thomas Nelson and now head of AOL Time Warner’s Evangelical line, said that he would no longer publish certain genres of Evangelical books, like books about faith-healing.

“I wouldn’t do anything to embarrass the company,” he said.

Other publishers balk at the booming genres of Evangelical “prophecy books” because of the frequent emphasis on the place of Jews in God’s plans. Prophecy books range from Bibical interpretations to historical novels, but the most famous prophecy books are the best-selling “Left Behind” series of novels by Dr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins.

Dr. LaHaye and other prophecy writers advocate aggressive proselytizing and stress the grim fates they foresee for non-Christians. Most draw on a prominent strain of Evangelical thought holding that the Bible foretold the historical persecution of Jews, the creation of modern Israel in 1948, their future suffering under the rule of the Anti-Christ, and finally the mass conversion of 144,000 “Jewish Evangelists.” The Zondervan division of HarperCollins, the book division of AOL Time Warner, and several Christian houses have published books by Dr. LaHaye related to his prophetic convictions.

David Cantor, a researcher who has studied Evangelical books for the Anti-Defamation League, said the organization frequently received complaints about the “Left Behind” series from Jewish parents whose children unknowingly pick it up. But he said Evangelical prophecy scholars fell short of true anti-Semitism because they hoped to convert, not persecute, Jews.

“They sort of see Jews as sort of cosmic curiosities,” Mr. Cantor said, “Jews are sort of less than fully human pawns that God uses in this elaborate end of time scenario.”

Stuart Applebaum, who is Jewish and now the spokesman for Random House Inc., said that as a publicist for Bantam Books in the 1970’s he once declined to help promote an ardently Evangelical book. “I did not want to work on a book that was advocating conversion of Jews to Christianity,” he said. “I just personally didn’t want to work on a book like that.”

His brother, Irwyn Applebaum, the publisher of Bantam Dell, may take a different view. Bantam Dell, another part of Random House, recently paid $45 million for a series of new novels by Dr. LaHaye. The series’ contents have not been disclosed, but Mr. Applebaum has called it “an adventure story that intertwines both his ideas and his research.”

He added, “We certainly are not in the business of precensoring our authors.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/08/books/