Misnomer
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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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11 Responses to “Misnomer”
Copyright © 2002–2011 Kevin Robert (Basil) Fritts, all rights reserved.
May 15th, 2003 at 4:52 pm
i could not agree more with your assessment.
May 16th, 2003 at 11:23 am
Very true. They’re owned by the parent company of Wal-Mart? Oy! I too do not find anything useful at Christian Family bookstores.
May 16th, 2003 at 12:41 pm
C.S.Lewis is Anglican!? *gasp* 😉
May 17th, 2003 at 10:47 am
Yes, but a lot of his theology was very similar to Orthodox I’m told.
May 19th, 2003 at 9:32 am
C.S. Lewis was indeed an Anglican, but his beliefs were actually probably closer to a sort of quasi-universalism (following Augustine, who believed that God’s love was SOOOOOOOOO big that nobody would ultimately end up in Hell, even Lucifer–to believe otherwise is to negate the ultimate nature of divine Love, which is a prominent feature in Augustine’s theology. Naturally, this is not a tenable position for anyone believes that God’s justice is as much a part of God’s nature [or for anyone who knows any Greek at all, unlike Augustine, who was notoriously bad at Greek]).
May 20th, 2003 at 12:25 am
Pete: Have you ever read the Great Divorce? You are right to question Augustine’s Greek, but I don’t see how one could read the Great Divorce and call Lewis a universalist!
I think there’s a fine line between hoping that all will be saved and believing it’s inevitable!
May 20th, 2003 at 9:56 am
And what’s even more funny is that you can at least find Orthodox books (some, not many) at Borders and Barnes and Noble of all places.
May 20th, 2003 at 12:53 pm
i have indeed read the Great Divorce, and I don’t mean to label Lewis a strictly universalist (hence the ambigious prefix “quasi-“). the suggestion that he leaned toward universalism comes primarily from The Last Battle, in which the follower of Tash is “saved” (to couch it in theological language.) Not EVERY follower of Tash is “saved,” which suggests that Lewis’ position was indeed not a strict universalism, at least not along the same lines as Augustine.
May 20th, 2003 at 2:59 pm
I said, “close” not exactly.
May 29th, 2003 at 8:26 am
Dude. The Last Battle is *fiction*. And he *repeatedly* insisted that it was just a story, and not intended to be alegorical. It was magic, not theology. Now, you can choose to say that you don’t believe that, but the fact remains that, although it is clear that one’s fiction is influenced by one’s world-view, it is not a necessary conclusion that they are identical. Repeat after me: The Narnia books are fiction.
People that take the Narnia books as alegory are doomed to find all sorts of places where the alegory breaks down. I hate analogies …
June 2nd, 2003 at 3:50 pm
I think you are perhaps confusing Lewis with Tolkien. Lewis was quite aware of the allegory that he was writing. One of his interpreters, Kathryn Lindskoog, was indeed congratulated by him for being so perceptive in her interpretations of his fiction, specifically the Narnia series in her essay, The Lion of Judah in Never-Never-Land.
On the other hand, if you are basing that on any “private” writings supposedly by Lewis that have been released in recent years by his estate, under the direction of one Walter Hooper, there is a massive weight of evidence that it is corrupt and not to be trusted. Quite a tragedy, really.