Kevin Basil

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This is sort of like The 10 Things I Hate about You, except it’s about a bookstore instead of a shrew.

A post about Family Christian Bookstore on Dmitri’s blog is what got it all going downhill. I have hated that store for many years, long before I was Orthodox. Here’s why:

• They claim to be Christian, but they service a very small subset of that religion. They have no crucifixes, no icons, no Catholic bibles, no catechisms, no Books of Common Prayer, no prayerbooks at all except for clergy. They do not have Catholic or Anglican writers, with the exception of C. S. Lewis. They do not carry G. K. Chesterton, Thomas Merton, Kathleen Norris, Henri Nouwen. They do not carry books on contemplative prayer, lectio divina, or praying the Rosary. Their most thought-provoking books on theology are by Reformed writers like R. C. Sproul. They do not carry Peter Kreeft, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Romano Guardini, Marcus Borg, John Shelby Spong, or Mircea Eliade. They have a very narrow view of what counts for Christian.
• They only carry fiction by Christian Booksellers Association–approved publishers. They have no Madeleine L’Engel, Walker Percy, Frederick Buechner, J. R. R. Tolkein or Frank Schaeffer. All fiction is whitewashed, containing only Sunday School words and nice Christian messages. If it makes you think, you will not find it here.
• Trinkets, figurines, folk art, and kitsch a la Thomas Kinkade abound. Lots of pastels, pinks, powder blues drape the walls. There are several paintings designed to squeeze some tears out, but nothing that makes a man proud to be a Christian. There is no real soul-searing art here. No Rouault prints, no Grünewald, no Raphael, no Holbein. Sure, there’s that one detail of Jesus’ head by Rembrandt. Ooh! But Ed Knippers? He has naked people, for Gosh sakes!
• They are owned by the parent company of Wal-Mart. When push comes to shove, it is not Christ but mammon that determines shelf space.

As you can see, my dislike for Family Christian Bookstores has almost nothing at all to do with being Orthodox. However, it would be nice to walk into a bookstore that calls itself Christian and find at least one shelf devoted to Orthodoxy. Joseph-Beth has not even one eighth the number of Christian books carried by Family Christian Bookstore, but they at least have one shelf for Orthodoxy!

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