christian book reviews
Analyzing the Impact of Christian Book Reviews on Faith Communities
Which Christian book source or sources could best be considered to be leaders, or at the least recommendatory to potential readers of the books reviewed? The trade magazine Christian Bookseller has for many years been a professional journal serving the bookselling industry and, in response to publisher and public demand, has consistently reviewed an important percentage of all titles issued in the religious book market. A second review source was the non-trade magazine, Christianity Today. These two journals are recognized by most in the Christian community and the secular trade as the most important Christian sources of reviews. Book Chat, Book List, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly were all examined and provided reviews of an unofficial nature by literary critics or non-professional Christian reviewers. Although Kirkus does not have an official policy about religious reviews, there are occasionally some titles included in their publications. Church libraries were considered to be important boards of review to the largest group of readers. Each church body or denomination periodical was believed to have reflected the needs of their denominational readerships – the largest group of readers. Since they periodically review books, it was assumed that their readers would be influenced by these church newspapers and periodicals. In their more official transactions, church headquarters are among the leaders in terms of direct purchasing power, promoting book selections that were often adopted for general and denominational use. All six of the reviewed church newspapers were assumed to represent general Christian fiction interests in their subsequent periodical reviews. In 1994, a study was conducted to test the influence of professional and general regional church periodical reviews on the selection of Christian adult fiction, and secondly, it evaluated how closely Samford patrons’ preferences and general library selection items matched.
Christian book reviews provide guidance that is of unique value to the faith community because they are typically prepared by members of that community who can authenticate that the content of the book is consistent with their faith. Aside from secular publication outlets that have specialty columns or occasional reviews of religious books, little attention was given to religious literature by general publishers until the mid-1970s, and even then there was occasional controversy over what could be categorized as a ‘religious’ book. Since there are a substantial number of Christians, including several major denominations with well-defined doctrines, time looked for a business to be found in publications that reinforced secular motivations by targeting special interest groups, assuming that the bibliographic industry could find ways to locate those special interest groups.
Christian book reviews are one resource available to faith communities for identifying good narrative and theology stories. Often posted on Christian websites, blogs, and print publications, written anonymously by paid or volunteer leaders in Christian faith communities, or Christian and non-Christian librarians and teachers, Christian book reviews comment on individual works of fiction for children, youth, and adults, as well as non-fiction stories, printed in a spectrum of genres and non-fiction stories written by an equally wide spectrum of authors. Researchers have also determined that individual reading journals that include Christian book reviews can positively influence attitudes toward religious faith, character strengths, and well-established faith formation activities, such as Bible study and prayer, for individual readers.
Narratives have long been recognized for their power to connect readers to the faiths and cultures of others. Within Christian faith communities, stories authored by a diverse group of Christian and non-Christian writers can inspire, comfort, uplift, challenge, and increase empathy for others, a critical faith habit. Theological stories, accurately written stories, and scholarly religious stories, in particular, can answer existential questions on purpose, meaning, and the rich Christian tradition insights. For children, narrative stories provide resources for faith formation. However, a discerning consumer of narrative stories must select stories suited to their individual, family, or faith community needs and expectations.
We illustrate how meaningful judgment of popular Christian books and their reviews is difficult partly owing to the ambiguous role that these works play in many Americans’ spiritual lives. Use of the qualitative analysis software NVIVO, the Christian Bestsellers List of 2007, and Christian bloggers’ reviews published in 2009 uncovered emergent themes in these Christian books. We explore the classification of books by genre, their theological stances and inspirations that churchgoers can hope to gain from reading them. Moreover, examining the ethical, spiritual, psychological, and cultural implications of these books’ impact on the faithful leads us to question whether generating respect, hope, and support among many diverse readers should be an integral measure of their success.
In this section, we expound on how Christian books and reviews aim to mold believers’ Christian lives. We also discuss the inherent challenges in assessing the merit of popular Christian books. Critical analysis of the content of the top-selling Christian-themed books highlights the diversity in denominations, issues confronted, and inspiration offered to their readers. Given the variety of perspectives and approaches of these texts, we argue that popular Christian books cannot be evaluated using a common set of criteria, including their reception by readers. By virtue of reflecting the synonymous power of the transcendent as well as the concerns and views of the authors and of the readers themselves, the most popular Christian volumes should (and do) exhibit different manners of literary and spiritual content.
Faith communities have been in existence for countless generations, shaping society and history inexorably or amorously tucked away from everyday knowledge. The rich heritage of wisdom and spiritual practices firsthandly heeds and comfortably rests in religious settings. Personal stories, commonly acknowledged as the oldest form of literature, retell faith experiences of everyday moments that matter in a vividly recalled factual representation with prose in a narrative voice. They imbue the singular ability to propagate faith. That faith, fashioned by this specialized form of literature, has served indistinguishable communities for centuries in situ the assemblage where this experience is held. Nonetheless, crafting this literary specialization of faith or community experiences into a specific pattern with an audience that potentially transcends the pews would require a different perspective of faith storytelling, with the target readers firmly in mind.
On display in the Church, especially on scholarly e-lists and reputable Christian book review websites, the privilege that has been postulated is safeguarded by a unique method of faculty member-reviewer verification and the duty to infuse integrity. While the proper credential of the reviewer-applicant is a first-step audit, the fact that the publication of a verifiable faculty-authored review, as a mode of impartial judgment in Christian academia from at least 10 different institutions, is the passageway to becoming a forever-authenticated reviewer. This effectuates anywhere between a 40-70 range in faculty-authored reviews for Theological Studies, 50-90 for Books & Culture, and 70-100 for Christian Higher Education in the coverage panel. This manuscript explores issues within the process of providing a network for specialized theological book reviews.
Ethical considerations of representing Christian literature in book reviews are further enhanced by the spiritual nature of readers who mostly accept what spiritual leaders, such as authors, present. For a religious society, readers are spiritually taken aback when a public figure lacks moral standards or fails to embody or uphold significant shared beliefs, values, and behaviors in line with the faith community. Therefore, the authenticity and devotion shown by reviewers in conveying the importance of such Christian works to the literary community, in the service of the faith community, represent a significant ethical consideration in the reviewing of Christian literature. Christian book reviews enjoy a certain amount of readership among faith communities within scholarly as well as ecclesiastical settings, as the tip of the Christian literary iceberg.
While we do not make theological claims, we conjecture that this could be due to the Christian connection to preaching and teaching and the importance of constructing and disseminating narratives in Christian doctrine. This specific case contributes to the studies that assess how people use the internet to manage their religious identities, in the context of content useful to the specific study of religion in the area of online review mining. One major area for future research would be to extend this analysis to other religious communities, as recommended by many systematic literature reviews on religion and the internet. Although overall conclusions and co-occurrence analyses found broad agreement between various religious demographic groups, there is a large potential to observe greater diversity within each subgroup.
Though the impact of commercialization of religious products has been cited as an area of concern for religious studies researchers, especially as it relates to the potential moral, ethical, and spiritual issues involved, the internet has not been used enough to analyze religious products and the impacts disseminating religious messages can have on faith communities. This research represents a pioneering step in that direction. In particular, this paper goes beyond basic detection of product popularity among the category of religious book to assessing the impacts of thousands of book reviews on major religious book categories. We find that these religious categories are not purely commercial in nature, as in four out of eight of the categories the reviews appear to increase the connection between readers.
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