Publishers line up to lay hands on savings of the Christian saved

I found a copy of the The Indwelling at the local bookshop in Bethesda, although most of its readers probably picked it up at a specialist shop. And yet Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins's Tom Clancy-like thriller held the New York Times bestseller No 1 slot for four weeks last year, a ranking based entirely on sales in mainstream bookshops. No mean feat.

I was curious. I had heard a TV book reviewer turn on a panel colleague to complain that a publishing phenomenon was passing literary America by. "When has the Left Behind series ever been mentioned on the networks?" she complained. The Indwelling is part of the Left Behind series which has sold some 28 million copies in the US, making it the most successful venture ever in Christian publishing after the Bible. And the series is only the tip of a more extensive phenomenon, the emergence of a commercial mass market in the cultural expressions of the evangelical Protestant movement. This includes a belief in the literal truth of the Bible and, in the case of the Left Behind series, of the imminence of the apocalypse and the Second Coming.

Cultural ghettoisation proceeds apace. Niche marketing. If the gay community, the black community, and the women's movement can all produce a literary response to the huge buying power of their constituencies, why not the Christian heartland of America?

But when I say literary you must not take me too literally. The Indwelling is a desperately poor read, with the descriptive eloquence of a sub-Archer airport tome but without the storytelling knack that gives the Grisham-Clancy genre its escapist, addictive quality.

Here we are faced with a chapter in the titanic struggle between the depleted forces of the saved and an ungodly world government, the "Global Community" (GC), the bastard offspring of the hate-figure of the American right, the UN Security Council.

It is headed by the Anti-Christ, Nicolae Carpathia, and the book is set in the seven-year period of "tribulation" which, Biblical prophesy believers hold, will precede the moment of the Second Coming.

Carpathia's assassination opens the book. It concludes with his resurrection as the living incarnation of Satan. Meanwhile the small valiant band of true believers, "left behind" following the apocalyptic events three years before - the "rapture", when millions of Christians were abruptly snatched from the Earth to meet their Maker - struggle to escape the vengeful GC whose thuggish forces leave a trail of tortured victims.

Their inspiration, Tsion BenJuddah, even gets a chance to slip up to Heaven for a brief conversation with Michael, Gabriel and Mary. The purpose of such literature is not just entertainment, as LaHaye, a self-styled expert on Biblical prophesy, makes clear on his website. The "takeaway" message of the series, he says, is that "nothing is more important than making a decision now where you stand with Jesus Christ. Don't wait until it is too late." The end is nigh and you too may be left behind.

Recently the Left Behind series has produced a kids' offshoot which has already sold seven million and a movie (three million sales). Furthermore, other authors have taken up classic popular fiction themes - Janette Oke has given prairie romance a Christian spin with Love Comes Slowly (one million sales), while Max Lucado's The prayer of Jabez is an exhortation to live a Christian lifestyle (five million sales).

The Christian Booksellers' Association, whose convention last week was attended by some 13,000 people and which serves approximately 2,300 Christian retailers, estimates that its shops handle about two-thirds of the annual $3 billion sales of Christian books, videos, music and products, with the rest being sold through mainstream outlets. The publishing trade has begun to take the phenomenon seriously - this year Warner Books launched its own Christian division, joining Doubleday, HarperCollins, Putnam and even Harlequin Romances.

Hollywood has also recognised there is a market out there among people who wear their old-fashioned religion proudly on their sleeves. The Omega Code, a story of an evil tycoon who steals a secret Biblical code with which he plans to take over the world, made over $12 million in 1999 at the box-office. It is now being followed by a sequel, Megiddo, at a cost of $20 million, whose director Matthew Crouch says he will visit up to 1,900 preachers before the launch to publicise his work.

psmyth@irish-times.ie]