Beyond the CBA: Constructions of Readers in Christian Right Magazines

Although united by broadly shared conservative theological principles and conservative political ideals, the homogeneity of the Christian Right is often overstated. Conservative Protestants, the largest component of the Christian Right in the United States, have sometimes presented a united image of themselves under the banner of evangelicals to bolster their political power.1 Meanwhile, depictions of the Christian Right in non-fiction and fictional media often rely on tropes and stereotypes surrounding fundamentalists and evangelicals.2 Literary scholars who have investigated evangelical fiction have also presented evangelicals and the Christian Right as a homogenous group. This presentation goes beyond using a particular novel or set of novels as representative of Christian Right political and theological ideas. Scholars like Jan Blodgett and Lynn Neal have argued that evangelicals have a common understanding of the purpose of fiction. My previous work develops these arguments by suggesting that evangelical authors Catherine Marshall and Frank Peretti exemplify a broader evangelical understanding of writing, publishing, selling, and reading fiction as a ministry: a spiritual activity directed by God that is intended to refine the spiritual life of readers.3) The parameters and stakes of these arguments can partly be explained by the dominance of the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA), which promoted this ministerial view of fiction and enforced strict content guidelines. Daniel Silliman, a historian and news editor with Christianity Today, uses this apparent commonality to define evangelicals as "people who are part of the ongoing conversation that is represented by Christian bookstores."4 He builds on this definition in his recent book, Reading Evangelicals, by suggesting that while evangelical fiction may not adequately represent the theological or political positions of evangelicals, it does show what evangelicals talk about, and more importantly, how they talk.5 As a result, understanding evangelical fiction and its readership is a way of understanding the Christian Right as a whole.

The problem with this argument is that not all evangelicals subscribe to this understanding of the role of fiction, nor to the guidelines enforced by the CBA, raising questions about how we understand fiction from evangelical publishers in relation to the Christian Right and whether evangelicals can accurately be described as a cohesive "discourse community" Silliman.6 Two prominent evangelical magazines exemplify conflicting voices within the Christian Right. Charisma caters to Charismatic denominations (i.e., denominations that embrace ecstatic religious experiences like speaking in tongues), while Christianity Today appeals to a broader mix of evangelical denominations. Both magazines are conservative in their theology and their politics, yet the fiction readerships they construct are very different from one another. These differences became apparent when I analyzed more than 100 articles from both magazines that addressed fiction during the early 2000s. While Charisma talks about fiction in a way that aligns with the CBA, Christianity Today does not. Instead, the latter magazine emphasizes the aesthetic and intellectual value of fiction alongside a more subtle engagement with theological ideas. In fact, Christianity Today often uses fiction endorsed by the CBA as a point of contrast for the more literary and nuanced fiction that the magazine celebrates. These differences ultimately point to a diversity among evangelicals, and by extension, the Christian Right, that goes beyond the CBA.

Until very recently, if you were a novelist who wanted to sell your books in a Christian bookstore, you had to go through the CBA. Established in 1950, the association already had significant influence by the time fiction from evangelical publishers (like Zondervan, Bethany House, Waterbrook, etc.) gained popularity in the early 1980s. Evangelical publishers depended on booksellers in this association, and the association exercised its power as a gatekeeper. One of the core principles of the organization is that writing, publishing, and selling books in an evangelical context is a ministry. This principle was clearly applied to fiction. As Jan Blodgett suggests, to find favor with the CBA, fiction "cannot just be good, clean fun; it must also provide an added depth of meaning and have a positive impact on [readers'] lives."7 As a result, publishers, booksellers, and authors who worked within the CBA promoted their work as a ministry. The CBA enforced limits on how this ministry should be practiced. The association discouraged booksellers from carrying books with descriptions of sex, alcohol or drug use, and profanity.8 Although not forbidden, controversial political and theological issues that might stoke division among evangelicals were discouraged.9 Despite losing some influence as more readers began to purchase books online or from chain box stores — a contributing factor in the association's 2019 demise — the CBA's conception of what it means to be an evangelical publisher, author, bookseller, or even reader has remained pervasive.10 Lynn Neal's study of evangelical fiction and its audiences found that many evangelical readers, especially women, understood evangelical fiction as a ministry.11

In order to understand how evangelical magazines construct a readership that complements or rejects the principles of the CBA, I use methods pioneered by Janice Radway in A Feeling for Books. Radway suggests the "general aesthetic position" of a magazine can be identified by looking at the kinds of novels it reviews or profiles and, more importantly, which aspects of the novels it critiques or celebrates.12 On one hand, these aesthetic positions reveal the way the magazines respond to the desires of potential readers; on the other hand, aesthetic positions show the way the magazines try to influence the tastes of readers. In the early twentieth century, these aesthetic positions focused on the emergence of middlebrow fiction. While some magazines embraced middlebrow fiction as providing entertaining reading material for the middle class, other magazines tried to reinforce the intellectual and aesthetic value of more literary fiction. Imbedded in these aesthetic positions, argues Radway, are very different understandings of the purpose and value of reading fiction.13 In other words, different magazines constructed different readerships in relation to middlebrow fiction. Charisma and Christianity Today do something similar: they both construct evangelical fiction readerships based on a conservative theology, yet they take different aesthetic positions in relation to CBA fiction.

The way Charisma covers fiction echoes the CBA's principles about what fiction is for and how it should be assessed. It publishes numerous, brief reviews of fiction from evangelical publishers, often limited to one or two sentences of plot summary with no critical content. Occasionally, there is an interview article on an author, including Mike Delloso, Frank Peretti, and Graham Taylor.14 In each case, the focus is the vocational role of a novelist and the ministerial effect of the fiction itself. For example, a profile of Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind series, incorporates stories of readers who have received spiritual benefits from reading the novels. One notable case is a thirteen-year-old boy referred to only as "Robbie" who says he "used to want to be a warlock," read "books on witchcraft," and "almost started praying to Satan."15 After reading the Left Behind series he "decided to change his life and accept Christ" and "ever since [he] has been so happy."16 There is little discussion of aesthetics or style, and any discussion of popularity is framed within the context of a novel's ability to reach a multitude of people with a spiritual message. This priority is also evident in articles that cover controversial fiction. A story on William P. Young's The Shack demonstrates a divided reception to the novel, weighing critiques of its theological problems against acclamations of the overall positive spiritual effect it has had on readers. Notably, everyone quoted in the article is either a pastor or involved in church leadership.17  A critical review of the Harry Potter series is less divided. The article, titled "Teaching Third Graders to Be Wizards" suggests that J. K. Rowling's books "encourage kids to explore sorcery," raising concerns about the use of the novels in schools.18 Again, the article includes quotes exclusively from pastors and evangelical leaders. When Charisma dedicates serious discussion to fiction, it is in terms of its ministerial value.

Christianity Today differs radically from Charisma in its treatment of fiction. Reviews of fiction typically exhibit much greater depth than those found in Charisma. In most cases, they include an examination of the theology of the novel in question alongside a critical evaluation of its aesthetics, often using classic American authors as a point of comparison. An article on Bret Lott, for example, quotes an editor comparing him favourably to Flannery O'Connor because of the way he subtly combines theological ideas with quality writing.19  Likewise, a profile of John Updike compares the author to O'Connor and suggests he is the "literary heir to Nathaniel Hawthorne" because of the nuanced way both authors portray characters engaging theological ideas.20 Updike is a notable inclusion in the magazine because his work often includes explicit language and descriptions of sex. The profile admits that these scenes are "hard to stomach" but celebrates the author anyway.21 A more direct comparison with Charisma might be the way Christianity Today covers the Harry Potter novels. Instead of critiquing the novels for the damaging, spiritual impact they might have on children, literary critic John Granger celebrates Rowling as a "literary genius" and draws on traditional academic scholars like F. R Leavis and Mircea Eliade to understand her role in the literary tradition and her representation of a spiritual hunger in the contemporary world.22 While the scholarly work Granger draws on may be outdated in an academic setting, it is still a marked difference from the pastors cited in Charisma's article on Harry Potter. Christianity Today does reference the spiritual impact of fiction, but that impact is not the singular focus, nor it is discussed in the same ways. There are no testimonials from readers who have had their lives changed and novelists rarely discuss their work in the same vocational terms as authors in Charisma.

Perhaps the most notable difference between the magazines, however, is in what the magazines cover. Christianity Today frequently examines mainstream authors who have theological preoccupations (like Updike and Lott mentioned earlier) while it rarely covers fiction from evangelical publishers. In fact, when fiction from evangelical publishers is referenced, it is often as an inferior other against which quality, literary fiction is compared. For example, a review of City of Tranquil Light celebrates the way Bo Caldwell "carefully crafts a narrative," a trait that distinguishes it from "inspirational fiction, a genre plagued with didactic tomes that serve more as evangelistic tracts than literary works."23 One article suggests that the problem with fiction from evangelical publishers is underdeveloped "craft . . . The publishers serving the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) desperately need capable and experienced fiction editors."24 Another article celebrates Vinita Hampton Wright, who is with an evangelical publisher, as leading a literary turn in Christian fiction specifically because she "doesn't serve up the predictable, feel-good Christian story of conversion and happily-ever-after. [ . . . ] Her novels disturb as much as comfort."25 Wright stands out as a favourable exception from typical CBA fiction because her work has a higher aesthetic quality. The magazine also critiques the CBA's strict content guidelines. Susan Bauer suggests that while quality fiction will include "frank . . . non-titillating" descriptions of sex and characters who may swear or commit violent acts, novels with this content will not "find much shelf space at the local Christian bookstore," where shoppers "still want a certain predictable level of comfort in their reading — an expectation symbolized by a complete lack of tolerance for profanity."26 For Christianity Today, CBA fiction is didactic, predictable, and safe: the antithesis of what the magazine celebrates as quality fiction.

The contrast in the ways that Charisma and Christianity Today talk about fiction is only one notable difference between the magazines and the readerships they construct. Another is the way the magazines treat the issues of race and racism. Charisma celebrates the efforts of evangelicals to address racism, presents Christianity as the antidote to racism in the rest of the world, dismisses any discussion of systemic racism and critical race theory, and condemns government policies meant to combat racism.27 As a result, Charisma perpetuates many of the problems identified by academic critiques of the larger evangelical Racial Reconciliation project.28 Christianity Today, meanwhile, engages with those academic critiques, not only recognizing the work that church leaders still need to do to address racism within evangelicalism, but suggesting that Evangelicals should acknowledge and combat systemic racism.29 It is not simply that the two magazines present different opinions about race and racism, but that they talk about those issues in very different ways. This division is also clearly visible in how the two magazines address Donald Trump: while Charisma has offered full throated support of Donald Trump, Christianity Today called for Trump to be removed from office.30

Christianity Today may not fully represent the dominant views of white, lay evangelicals, but the positions it takes, and more importantly, the way it talks about fiction, race and racism, and politics more generally, suggests that the Christian Right is not a unified "discourse community" in the way Silliman and others, including myself, have suggested.31 Instead, what we have previously identified may be a smaller, subgroup of conservative evangelicals, and by extension, of the Christian Right. For literary critics this means that fiction from evangelical publishers may not be the touchstone of the evangelical imagination, as some have suggested. Christianity Today, a prominent voice among evangelicals and the Christian Right, actively and explicitly distances itself from that fiction, and the accompanying aesthetic position of the CBA, while encouraging Christian Right readers to seek out more complex, literary novels that are not from evangelical publishers. Fully recognizing these differences leads to the realization that the Christian Right may be more diverse than we have previously thought.

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Andrew Connolly (@AndrewConnollyX) is a Lecturer in the department of Journalism, Writing, and Media at the University of British Columbia. His work examines religion and print culture from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

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