Phyllis Tickle on "The People of the Books"

In the December 2004 issue of Sojourner's Magazine, author and religious-book-publishing guru Phyllis Tickle cites a 50.8 percent growth in book publishing in the last decade. Tickle states that religious publications have dominated the trade in the United States, displaced merely once or twice by children's publishing. Why the sudden jump? Tickle explores the issue in her article, "The People of the Books." Her main premise? Beginning as early as the 1960s and continuing on into the 90's, "Americans’ inquiries about spiritual matters began to take place less and less frequently in pastors’ studies and more and more often in the quiet back corners where most bookstores shelved their religion titles in those days." She writes that such trends have continued to the present day, as with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, which, as she states, "testifies to the lusty good health of religion fiction." For Tickle's full article, please visit the Sojourner's Magazine website, at sojo.net.