The Evangelical Industrial Book Publishing Complex
I wonder about why Josh Butler's book has been so controversial, and other things.
I’m nearly done with Josh Butler’s Beautiful Union—racing through as fast as I can to minimize all my feelings of embarrassment—and, well actually, I guess I could just pause here and say what I think so far.
I do think he is jumbling together some categories that should not be jumbled together. The first few chapters, in which he lays the groundwork for why “everything” is about sex and how that’s basically fine (that’s much too simple a way of saying it—I have to go back to those sections again) are where I think (so far) the problems, such as they are, come in.
When he gets down to the subject of sex itself, and the various disorders that make the sexual union not at all beautiful, I feel like he hits his stride. I particularly liked the chapter on divorce. I thought he expressed very well why divorce is so contrary to the character of God and why it is so hurtful for us. And, let me say again, mad props to Butler for even writing this book. He is brave, for real, in a way most of us hope we will never ever have to be.
I should say, also, I gave up reading and started listening because my house is a wreck my children are so loud and so numerous. Every time I cracked it open some practically grown, and yet childishly demanding person came and started trying to tell me something. Two more hours of listening and my house will be clean and all will be right with the world.
Setting aside the actual substance of Butler’s argument, which will be a post for another time, the thing that has been clattering around in the back of my mind as I’ve “engaged” with his “content”—isn’t that how we’re supposed to say it now?—is the big wondering question of why the evangelical book publishing world has become what it is. Why do we have the kind of books we have? Why, in particular, did Josh Butler write this book and put it on the market believing—as he should have done—that it would be no big deal? Because his book is of the same being and substance as all the other evangelical books I’ve read over the last ten years.
To say it another way, Butler’s book is unobjectionable. It is both surprising that everyone freaked out so much, and also, not surprising. Surprising, because he’s saying what a lot of evangelicals have said and are saying (especially when he actually starts talking about marriage and all its attendant degradations). And yet not surprising because, of course, the part that TGC put on its website as a tease was hair-raising. The category errors, as it were, reared their heads off the page and started bellowing.
One thing one might cautiously observe is that the medium “is” the message, and evangelicals have basically liked both. The style of these books, their content, the feel of the paper, the font, the business of having one clear thought that’s supposed to change your life or blow your mind. The “I bet you haven't thought of this yet” tone. Every kind of book pretty easily falls into this genre from Of Mess and Moxie (gag), Girl Wash Your Face (double gag), to all the orthodox versions some of which are pretty nice, like Made for More and others. A middle-of-the-road example might be Horton’s Recovering Our Sanity, which, in the same genre as Butler, is basically completely unobjectionable. There’s basically nothing wrong with it, except…what?
I think one explanation for the je ne sais quoi that I’m trying to find words to describe is that doing the same thing over and over again is the nature of being human. It’s the Marvel Movie approach to life and book publishing. You do something successful one time, you’re amazed and elated, so you do it again. Everyone still likes it. And then, fifty years later, it’s the Only Thing you can do. You have to do it again and again and again and again because the studio producers have invested their entire emotional lives in that one thing always making the money roll down like water. You can’t do another kind of thing because it’s too much of a gamble. This Is The Way We Do It Now, they say. It’s the same in the church. You do the same thing every time because it’s always worked before and it’s the safest and most reasonable option.
Until suddenly, as Butler discovered, everyone recoils in horror because they are faced with the thing for what it is.
In other words, the way that evangelicals think about sex is just slightly off—not doctrinally or biblically, but aesthetically and culturally—and the way they think about books is similarly, ever so slightly, off. Not because providing clear, helpful material is at all wrong or bad, but because the form is so aesthetically fixed, and because there is only one solid, well-worn grove down which to travel. Evangelical theology about sex and evangelical expectations about book publishing haven’t been wrong or wicked, per se. But neither have they been deeply true. That is, the shallow theology and the big fonts go together.
This is why, I think, so very few ordinary people have had to face, until now, how unusual and strange the gospel is and how contrary Christian obedience is to human nature. As the tide of cultural Christianity recedes back into the ocean of pagan secularism, the few beleaguered Christians left standing on the shore are exposed and helpless, turning over the pages of twenty years of oversimplified faith, clutching at empowerment memes and cliches.
Incidentally, this is why I react so strongly against people who come bashing in from the “outside,” trying to vilify and demonize people like Josh Butler and all “white evangelical men” like they are literally Hitler. Ya’ll were part of the “machine” until it became embarrassing. You built your lucrative platforms inside the building. You are, not to be a jerk or anything, part of the problem.
I would also like to pause and say that there are a whole lot of good evangelical books that are worth reading, produced by this same Industrial Complex. As I’ve said many times, I loved Alisa Childer’s Another Gospel. Childers uses the form brilliantly to articulate her message, thereby subverting, I think, the exvangelical trope and the expectation that these kinds of books have to be “safe.”
Also, obviously, I haven’t read every single Christian book published in the last ten years, so if there is something I’ve missed that will prove my theory wrong, please let me know.
And now, if you will excuse me, I have to go clean some more. Have a nice day!
What I love about this essay, Anne, is that you don't get mired in the specific examples, but give us a high-elevation look at the big-picture problem.
"That is, the shallow theology and the big fonts go together."
So right. I agree with your theory.
I think that if there is a silver lining to the fact of "cultural Christianity reced(ing) back into the ocean of pagan secularism" it is that we will have the opportunity to see Christianity more clearly for what it is, and perhaps to write deeper books.
You have managed to put into words for me what is "off" with modern Christian living books. Very well written. IMHO, if everyone would just read That Hideous Strength over and over, we'd all be much better off and see things more clearly.