For those who don't know, there's a chain of book stores known as Family Christian Book Stores. There's a branch in Killeen (TX) in a strip at the edge of the mall there.

Today, I decided to go ahead and pay it a visit for the first time in a while.

When I was there last time, the place was grossly disappointing: they had kitsch in there that bordered on the blasphemous, and their "comparitive religion" section largely consisted of books talking about why such-and-such religious group was evil and/or stupid.

On one hand, the level of kitsch had greatly improved. Gone were the more outrageous items, and in their place was rather sensible fare such as Snoopy greeting cards and Apples to Apples: Bible Edition.

On the other hand,...

In the Bibles section, they had a little something called The Apologetics Bible. Ostensibly, it was full of footnotes, essays, and sidebars meant for ease of study and debate. In reality, some of the essays were devoted to bashing other faith systems and two essays were devoted to talking about why only those who were the right flavor of Christian were "saved".

And instead of a dedicated "comparitive religion" section, they now just have an elongated "resources" section. Said section included a long row of books by a press whose name was something like "Rome Press." What first got my attention was a book they did entitled "Myth-Busters", which was supposed to be their attempt at debunking different religious myths but in reality is lawsuit bait.

Another book had, as its premise, "anyone who doesn't believe as we do is wrong and part of a cult." It was supposed to be a "fast facts & quick arguments" type of work, but the entire section on Mormonism was completely wrong: just about everything in there was either stripped from scriptural context, stripped from historical context, or stripped from theological context... that is, everything which wasn't blatantly made up. I actually got a laugh when they followed this up by declaring the need for people to do their homework despite 95% of the cited references being either overtly hostile or known to themselves be poorly researched. Of course, for those who didn't want to shell out for the whole book, fold-outs of the individual chapters could be bought seperately as "quick reference" sheets.

I checked for other works, but the only other Mormon books in stock - like the only books on Islam in stock - were, again, "They're EVIL and anyone who follows them is going to Hell!" and "They're idiots and we should pray for them" titles.





Is jive like this common at "Christian" book stores nowadays?

Are the only works about other faiths overtly hostile in tone and factually incorrect in presentation?

Where is the "love one another" being shown?

Are the more mainline groups so hard-up to "win" converts that they don't mind it if their authors lie to people or present bad information?

The woman who was working the register today seemed like a spiritually upright person, but I doubt she has any idea of just what she's selling to the public.

Dec 7, 2011 -- 5:36PM, li47 wrote:

Is jive like this common at "Christian" book stores nowadays?                                                                   
Are the only works about other faiths overtly hostile in tone and factually incorrect in presentation?                                                                                                                                 

Where is the "love one another" being shown?                                                                               
Are the more mainline groups so hard-up to "win" converts that they don't mind it if their authors lie to people or present bad information?                                                                           
The woman who was working the register today seemed like a spiritually upright person, but I doubt she has any idea of just what she's selling to the public.

I've never really been to a Christian bookstore, so I don't know about point 1.

Point 2: I tend to check out the religion section at secular bookstores, and most of the stuff seems to be pretty lowkey and scholarly (read: dry), so I haven't really seen what you're describing.

Point 4: In my experience, mainline christianity tends to be pretty accepting and open about other forms of worship. It's the more fundamentalist churches that seem to be more dogmatic, IMO, so it's not really a question I could address (belonging to a mainline church, as I do).

That's my two cents...

Here's an example.

The book I mentioned?

One of their "gotcha" questions was "If Mormons are Christian, why don't they have crosses on display in their churches?".

To someone who didn't know better, this would be a massively shocking thing to read.

But to someone who's Mormon? "If you look closely, you'll note that the area behind the podium is usually designed to represent the Empty Tomb; our focus is on the Resurrection".

Or there's another section of the book - "how to talk to people in cults" or something like that - the author offers the following piece of advice: "Don't worry if it seems like they have answers to all of your challenges; they've been trained to try and rebut everything."

That's right: according to the author, anyone who disagrees with a "Good Christian" (re: whoever believes as the author believes) doesn't know any better and so any answers that they give are canned.

As someone who's spent hundreds of hours and close to $1K on learning more about theology, I find that notion more than a little insulting.

Dec 7, 2011 -- 7:31PM, SeraphimR wrote:

Isn't America a great country!

As Americans we have the right to write, publish, and sell any sort of book we please!

What is your problem with this?

The fact that a company is telling people to hate one another in God's name.

Dec 7, 2011 -- 6:13PM, Ironhold wrote:

One of their "gotcha" questions was "If Mormons are Christian, why don't they have crosses on display in their churches?".

The Puritan ancestors of my own denomination would have answered that question with one of their own:  If Christians believe that the Bible is the Word of God, why would they dishonor its commandments by displaying a cross or any other graven image in a place of honor in the sanctuary?

Of course, today bookstores like the one you visited carry books denouncing my denomination right there on the same shelf as the ones denouncing yours.  Some of them are even the same books.

Dec 8, 2011 -- 7:17AM, smcisaac wrote:

Of course, today bookstores like the one you visited carry books denouncing my denomination right there on the same shelf as the ones denouncing yours.  Some of them are even the same books.

Better yet is when they have misinformation on your denomination and then keep insisting that they are right:

"No, no, Ironhold, that is not what Mormons believe at all..."