I’ve throught about this a lot at my Day Job, which is in associational book sales.

But my yellow flags come out of an experience I had as a regular visitor to a certain large Unity Church in the Detroit area. The pastor/author did cultivate a certain personality driven fellowship with her regular sale of her own books to the congregation. The church in question seemed to become more of her own fan club, than a house of worship. It is not automatically evil to sell books in church. As you point out, and as I must agree with, books are excellent vehicles for lifespan RE. But there are temptations our eyes should be open to. The small temptation is the commercialization of religious writing, in a place where the ideal should be more co-operative and less mercantile. The big temptation (if the pastor/author is both good and prolific) is to use the combination of church and book sales as a vehicle for self promotion. Lastly, my wish was merely that more churches had excellent libraries visitors, members, and friends could use without consideration for their ability to purchase. Most of us don’t need to own a book, to learn from a good book.

If my current partner in ministry were not as careful as he is about self promotion at our church, we could easily have a church where he is followed instead of God. To paraphrase something I heard from a Catholic friend, “Church should never be about who your priest is. Your loyalty should be to the Body of Christ.”

Given that there are so few books on theology written by UUs (we tend to produce more of the “100 Days With Ralph Waldo Emerson” type of thing, or those poetry/meditation manuals), well-researched, thoughtful and passionate sermons are how we’re doing theology these days. I, for one, want to produce a published version people can take with them. Of course we don’t charge for them; they’re part of the ministry of the church.

There’s nothing more depressing to me than walking into a coffee hour and seeing a pile of beat-up, 20 year old books on display. I love books. Books excite me. Our DRE puts out a big table of NEW books every Sunday — they’re shiny, they catch the eye, they generate conversation, people borrow them and recommend them for book group — and we also have a church library full of older things.

I understand your caution about consumer culture but for heaven’s sake, it’s BOOKS we’re talking about, not selling thongs with the name of the congregation on it. After all, all the great cathedrals of Europe have gift shops, which I hardly think is a degradation of their cultural contribution. When I buy a book in a gift shop I can actually learn more about a faith tradition, a building, or a congregation.
I think of the selling of books not as a capitulation to consumer culture but as a part of lifespan religious education outreach.

I like the idea of second hand books sold as a fundraiser for a specific project or church group. But what I would love to see more of are church libraries. And not libraries full of members’ 20 year out of date, donated books. But a church library that stocks classics of the particular faith tradition, a good stock of relevant new books, and quality children’s books that match the values of the given church.

-Derek