Article October 30, 2000 Issue

"The demand for religious books ... still growing"

By Phyllis Tickle

Phyllis Tickle is a well-known writer on religious subjects and an astute trend-watcher. Formerly the religion editor for Publishers Weekly, the international journal of the book-publishing industry in the English language, she is currently its contributing editor in religion, monitoring trends in spirituality and publishing. Besides reviewing a host of books on prayer, self-help, and spirituality, she has also written a number of books herself, including God-Talk in America (Crossroad, 1997).

She comments for the Sentinel on the current state of affairs in religious publishing and on the steadily accelerating public demand for books on spirituality.

After self-help books, I think "angel" books were the first big sign of the religion boom. From 1990 to 1993, authors were selling anything and everything on angels. Their texts were clearly for the underchurched or the unchurched. These books first exposed us to the huge number of Americans yearning for something they could experience—they could feel—that was a thing of the heart. In a sense, angel books gave people permission to talk in nonrational terms. Their popularity reflects people's attempts to reach out from their religious memory for something that had been, but was no longer, there.

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