Brave New Genre—Spiritual Living 2006

Have you noticed your books looking a bit… reshuffled lately? Does it seem as if someone has swept through and rearranged the “furniture”?

In apparently no time at all, the distance between the once doggedly segregated religion and self-help shelves has shortened, and the two genres are fraternizing openly. Just as psychology and self-improvement titles melded with Eastern religion three decades ago, so in the last several years has Western religion become increasingly amenable to secular affiliation.

Librarians have noticed an influx of books that cannot be definitively classified as religion or self-help, a development that has complicated LJ's artful task of assigning books to reviewers, many of whom specify preferences on one side of the divide.

A SKYWARD TRAJECTORY

It's a phenomenal time for this breed of books we've dubbed “spiritual living,” a genre that combines elements of self-help and devotional literature. The aim is to help readers incorporate faith into their everyday activities—parenting, business, healthcare, work, and relationships. Any religion can be thrown into the mix, though Christianity is the most prevalent. Take John Rubin's The Maker's Diet: The 40-Day Health Experience That Will Change Your Life Forever (Siloam, 2004), which spent 15 weeks on the New York Times advice/how-to best sellers list. Rick Warren's Christian living devotional, The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? (Zondervan, 2002), has sold more than 25 million copies and was No. 3 on that same list in early April.

On its heels at No. 4 was pastor Joel Osteen's tract on self-improvement, Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential (Warner Faith, 2004), which also earned the No. 4 spot on LJ's list of nonfiction best sellers of 2005. And Eckhart Tolle's road map toward spiritual regeneration, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (New World Library), has sold more than two million copies worldwide since it hit the ground running in 1999.

SPIRITUAL GROWTH

These are just four books that have broken out of the Christian sector, but they herald a new category that shows no sign of waning. According to the Book Industry Study Group, spiritual book sales are expected to shoot up 50 percent in the next five years.

Old industry hands have ascribed the rise to everything from the statistic-skewing success of a few blockbusters to the mushrooming of spiritual content–friendly outlets like Wal-Mart and Target to the sobering second–half century considerations of aging baby boomers. Then there's postmodernism and the emerging church movement, a post-9/11 openness to spiritual healing (Oprah credited Tolle's Power of Now with helping her “get through” the terrorist attacks), and President Bush's very public fusing of faith with his daily life.

Indeed, it would be difficult to ignore the role politics is playing. “In this faith-based Bush society,” says James Overbeck, Atlanta–Fulton County Public Library, “any reference to religion seems to sell and circulate books.”

But politics also oversimplifies the market for these titles. “Unfortunately, their demographic is being politicized,” says Mark Kuyper, president of the Evangelical Christian Publishing Association. “We're seeing everybody being lumped together as a political group. So instead of understanding the fundamentals of the faith, there's this perspective that everybody within that demographic is Christian in one, very distinct way, which makes it easier for nonbelievers to be dismissive. From the political perspective, you miss out on understanding that within the Christian faith, there's diversity.”

A 2003 Spiritual State of the Union survey conducted by the Gallup Organization and University of Pennsylvania found that faith and spirituality “guide the lives” of three out of four American adults. The report attributed this to post-9/11 threats of terrorism at home, the economic recession, and, not least of all, the war in Iraq. This conclusion was bolstered by an Association of American Publishers study that found that religious book sales hit an all-time high—1.3 million, up 50 percent from the previous year—in 2003, when America invaded Iraq. It might also help explain why 2003 was the year Random House began publishing conservative titles under Crown Forum, and Penguin launched its right-leaning Sentinel imprint.

According to a 2005 poll that Newsweek conducted with Beliefnet (a “multi-faith e-community designed to help you meet your own religious and spiritual needs”), 57 percent of Americans consider spirituality an important part of their daily lives. When it comes to defining spirituality, however, while most (55 percent) say they are religious, a significant number—24 percent—say they consider themselves not “religious” but “spiritual.”

It's a complicated world, that much is clear, and people are looking for answers. As Gary Gillum (religion, philosophy, and ancient studies librarian, Brigham Young Univ., Provo, UT) believes, spiritual living was born out of “the need people have for an integration of the many elements of their lives so that they can make better sense of joy, suffering, service, and the many changes they are constrained to make in their lives.”

THEORY OF EVOLUTION

It wouldn't be stretching it to say that the sexual revolution of the Sixties dampened any prospect of a shared secular and Christian agenda. With the social activism of the era giving way to self-interest and the peak of psychoanalysis in the Seventies, the self-help movement was born and continued into the Eighties in the guise of New Age. Nothing could have been less compatible with conventional Christian sensibilities than the mystical interests of New Age. Somewhere in the mid-Nineties, however, with self-help (e.g., John Gray's Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus) and motivation/inspiration (e.g., Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen's Chicken Soup for the Soul) on strong footing and a growing fascination with and openness to religion, religion merged with the hands-on, self-service approach. As Joel Fotinos, now religious publishing director, Penguin Group, predicted in 1997, spirituality has traveled down a “buffet-style” path.

Spiritual writing has changed, too. Tiffany McCord, VP of McCord & Pedalino Literary Consulting, has worked with religious and secular publishers alike. “With more people choosing to explore religion and spirituality outside of the church,” she says, “we are seeing greater interest in books that examine the implications of religion on the individual [in] society and our culture.” McCord's comment validates spiritual living's staying power. Books that “blur the lines” between spirituality and secular subjects have been around for years, but only recently have they appealed to a mass audience by refining their focus and approach.

WHO'S ASKING?

The proof is on the shelves. Anthony Elia, indexer-analyst, American Theological Library Association, says, “You even see Christian cookbooks or Christian health and wealth books.” Reference librarian John Jaeger, Dallas Baptist University Library, has noticed an especially strong spiritual presence in the business and health fields. “There are a number of leadership books that seek insight from biblical figures such as Moses, David, and Jesus,” Jaeger says. “In the healthcare field, there has been a greater appreciation of the role spirituality plays in patient recovery.” (A new study, however, shows that confidence may be misplaced.)

Are publishers determining the nature of the market, or are consumers/library patrons generating the demand? A cursory look suggests the latter. Among the top ten most requested nonfiction books at the Naperville Public Library, IL, during February was Andrew Weil's Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Physical and Spiritual Well-Being (Knopf). Healthy Aging also made it onto the East Lansing Public Library's, MI, top ten list and the Los Angeles Public Library's top 20, with Your Best Life Now at No. 22. Osteen's and Warren's books each spent 13 weeks on LJ's own best sellers list, which surveys books most borrowed from U.S. libraries.

It stands to reason that patrons could just be demanding more of whatever it is that publishers choose to market. Christian Library Journal publisher Nancy Hesch doesn't buy it. Based on her own years of public library experience and interaction with and feedback from countless secular and Christian librarians, she believes that “Christian publishing has matured from a literary standpoint and expanded in both content and numbers of titles to meet the demands of readers.”

BIG BUSINESS

In the beginning, there was Christian publishing. That is to say, religious titles were the sole bailiwick of Midwestern, Western, and Southern publishers—Zondervan (MI), Thomas Nelson (TN), Tyndale (IL), Multnomah (OR), and Llewellyn (MN). When their books began to break out into the general trade through nontraditional outlets like the big chains, New York houses swooped in on the action.

The past several years have seen an incursion of new religious and spiritual imprints from the likes of Random House, whose WaterBrook Press launched in 1996 and focuses on “Christian living and spiritual growth.” Three years later, as an offshoot of the Ballantine Publishing Group, Wellspring joined the fold, specializing in Eastern religions, meditation and prayer, holistic health, and psychology. The Time Warner Group forged its own path to salvation in 2001 with Warner Faith and, in 2004, with its “values-oriented” Center Street imprint, focusing on self-help, health and fitness, and motivational literature.

In January, home and family publisher Meredith Books formed Jordan House to address parenting, marriage, and Christian living. And in February, Simon & Schuster acquired Los Angeles–based Howard Publishing, known for its inspirational and Christian living orientation. In March, the Free Press, a notably secular imprint of Simon & Schuster, announced that it had signed Osteen to write the follow-up to Your Best Life Now for the rumored record sum of $10 million for a nonfiction author.

Osteen's jump from a spiritual to a general trade imprint does not suggest that Christian publishers are waning; nor does the attrition plaguing smaller Christian Booksellers Association stores in the face of expanded retail channels. These events only reinforce their power and influence. Zondervan and Tyndale have reported impressive growth thanks to their spiritual/secular hits, as has Thomas Nelson, which was acquired by InterMedia Partners VII directly following the Lagardère/Time Warner buyout ($537.5 million) and, notably, for nearly the same amount ($473 million).

The influence of these spiritual living originators can even be traced to the major consumer magazine market. Just this year, religious magazine publisher Guidepost, based in New York, launched GuidepostsBooks, which will produce “faith-based, inspirational books helping people in all walks of life achieve their maximum personal and spiritual potential.”

The magazine world is a complementary barometer of just how big spiritual living is getting. Brigham Young's Gillum says that what he notices most of all when reading Christianity Today is that “not only the articles but the book ads reflect this blurred line between the spiritual and the secular.” That might have something to do with the 2005 partnership of the Evangelical Christian Publishing Association with Christianity Today to target book-buying consumers.

THE POWER OF THE WORD

Just as mainline publishers hope to appeal to the widest possible audience by calling their arguably religious books by names like mind/body/spirit and motivational, certain publishers that have long served the religious community are rethinking their marketing as well. Christian house InterVarsity Press, based in Westmont, IL, made news recently for its launch of new imprints/subimprints, specifically Formatio, whose territory is “spiritual formation.”

Publisher Bob Fryling describes the books in this new line as speaking primarily to “internal and relational 'soul' issues rather than the external expressions of faith.” Similarly, last year, Eastern spirituality publisher Mandala launched its Earth Aware Editions imprint, which aims to publish works “reflecting the universal values and the traditional wisdom of indigenous cultures and the common spiritual heritage of all humanity.”

The American Theological Library Association's Elia conjectures that conservative and evangelical groups “have developed an increasingly complex marketing strategy for an extremely large American audience of conservatives and evangelical Christians.”

Through her literary consulting work, McCord is able to get to the crux of that complexity. “With the wider acceptance of spirituality in the marketplace, it has become more common to promote books that fall into the spiritual/secular category to both religious and mainstream venues,” she says. In order to command the attention of both audiences—represented by small religious outlets as well as major libraries, bookstores, and media— McCord makes the following not entirely startling admission: “We tailor our press materials for distinctly different audiences. Our aim is to introduce the spiritual themes found in our authors' books through a medium that might be more applicable to the audience we are addressing and then build interest from that common ground.”

With the common ground expanding, this two-pronged marketing approach may soon be obsolete. Christian Library Journal's Hesch says she often receives “nonfiction books that purport to be Christian, but some come from a 'personal spirituality' viewpoint, meaning they may lean toward any of the world's religions, or none at all.”