Many of the book publishers are secular, and apply the same techniques to Christian books as secular best sellers, marketing Joel Osteen and Rick Warren like John Grisham and Tom Clancy.

Left Behind started the trend of Christian themed (yes, a schlocky premillennialist tale to the purists, but Christian nonetheless) mass-market publishing, and we’ve started to get use to the mass-marketing of Christian books. Some of the mass-market stars are OK (Warren, for example) but most lean towards name-it-and-claim it style Pentecostal, or Word-of-Faith-lite evangelicals like Bruce (Prayer of Jabez) Wilkinson.

The other CCM, the music one, has begun to track the top-40 pop milieu, as it become another genre like Country or Jazz or R&B. For instance, Casting Crowns is playing the big Rupp Arena in Lexington this weekend and getting front-page coverage on the weekend magazine of the Lexington paper, getting the same treatment that other pop stars would.

Mass market winds up bringing money which brings in commercial interests; that winds up turning things into something commercial and spiritual, serving both God and mammon. Jesus talked about stuff like that with the Laodiceans, and reached for the barf bag.