The Review Revolution: Improving Culture through Kvetching: Argh: The International Christian Retail Show

I'm on my way home from the International Christian Retail Show in Denver, having been bumped from my afternoon flight. I'm writing this with very bleary eyes after a red-eye flight as I wait for my final connection in the freezing cold Atlanta airport. I had to buy a sweatshirt.

OK . . . What's up with "Christian pirates"? At the entrance to the exhibit floor, there was a booth by that name, with people dressed up with eye patches and hooks for hands. Nobody could figure out what, if anything, they were actually selling. Are they just trying to make Christians seem cooler by some kind of association with Johnny Depp? Making some kind of statement about Christians who download music and videos without paying for them?

As I reflected on this, I had a truly cynical moment: this whole darn industry is full of pirates. And even worse, I seem to be one of them. I spent most of the show tracking the story about the impending sale of Multnomah to an as-yet-unspecified NY publisher that every source we talked to confirmed (OTR) was Random House. I had a rotten moment at the Multnomah booth, trying to get those soon-to-be-unemployed employees to tell me what was going on. But, as one told me, THEY didn't know what was going on. They're about to lose their livelihoods to a far-off conglomerate which aims to plunder their backlist and leave them stranded on the desert island of Sisters, Oregon. A kinder, gentler form of piracy?

Well, change is the way of the world. Sometimes I feel terribly ambivalent about American culture and our business-as-usual approach to business as usual. On Morning 2 of the convention, as I exited my hotel and walked to the convention center, a homeless person behind me targeted me as an obvious conference-goer and berated me for about a block. "So this is the future?!" he bellowed. "Selling your soul so you can go to work every day with that bag? This is our future?" I kept on walking and did not engage him. But it was a damn good question. I thought about it all day as I paraded past the Jesus junk and kitsch for sale at the show.

For me, what makes this industry fascinating and compelling are relationships and books. Even as I feel conflicted about the business aspects of producing those books, I revel in the amazing people I get to work with and the occasional glimpses of grace I see at work in religious publishing. Lives are changed (sometimes) and I see (occasional) moments of transformation. But it seems to me that there's a whole lot of repentance in our future.