Lifeway DOESN’T Carry Voddie Baucham’s #1 Best-Selling ‘Fault Lines,’ but Has Entire Landing Page for Christine Caine
Despite the financial collapse and implosion that has led Lifeway, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention to close all its retail stores, lay off thousands of staff, and lose tens of millions of dollars, they continue to stick by their convictions; which is to platform every sort of errant and aberrant author that they can make a buck off of while denying their readers a best-selling balm to the soul.
The most recent example of this is the fact that they have an entire landing page for Sarah Young and her mystical, montanistic, theoerotic book Jesus Calling, selling some 25 variants of it.
They also have an entire landing page for Christine Caine, the charismatic, egalitarian, one-time leader from Hillsong who preaches the word/faith prosperity gospel while leading a network designed to empower women to become preachers and pastors. Caine holds to the notion that Jesus died on the cross to give you possessions, wealth, and health, and that it is there for the taking if you have enough faith and confess it positively. It’s no surprise then that she cut her teeth on Hillsong, the Brian Houston-led boondoggle that has the reputation for being among the most immature, Scripturally ignorant, and carnal people in the history of the world to ever call themselves Christians. Despite these troubling factoids about her, her swag will get sold as she gets promoted as one of the elite “Lifeway Women.”
Certainly, the decision to platform these women is absolutely par for the course and unsurprising behavior from Lifeway. As we have thoroughly documented, far from being concerned about equipping Southern Baptists with an exquisite selection of the best books that Christendom has to offer, Lifeway’s primary driving factor is the pursuit of the almighty dollar, routinely taking little sidequests along the highways and byways of the Baptist experience, on a mission to attain some of that sweet, sweet filthy lucre.
How else can you explain their propensity to stock every sort of soft-covered spiritual strychnine they can put on their shelves in any space not currently occupied by a Beth Moore bible study?
They bottle up that poison to entice undiscerning readers to imbibe their books, while simultaneously refusing to carry Voddie’s anti-social justice opus Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe.
Check the website. That book is nowhere to be seen.
This is despite the fact that it is a National Bestseller, having ranked as high as 5th on USA Today’s top-selling books and #7 on the Wall Street Journal’s. It has a 4.9/5 star rating based on 4300 reviews and was Amazon’s #1 bestseller in Christian Ministry and Church Leadership, as well as is the #1 bestseller in Christian Social Issues.
In fact, the kindle book and the audiobook also hold spots #3 and #7, respectively.
Why not carry Voddie, given that they carry literally everything else?
Look who runs Lifeway, and you’ll know why they won’t carry this book, but instead will hock trite like Young’s “Jesus Calling: 365 Devotions for Kids (Boys Edition) instead.
Despite the overwhelming success of his book, Lifeway has purposefully chosen to keep it from its shelves and from the hands and heads of potential customers, lest someone become exposed to its apparently intolerably toxic message. They like money all right, but not enough to risk exposing their readers to anti-social justice, anti-Critical Race Theory messaging.
God forbid. That would be a bridge too far.
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In the third from the last paragraph, don’t you mean the word “tripe” instead of “trite?” Frankly, I’m amazed Amazon is carrying Voddie’s book, given their ties to BLM last year, but bottom line they want the money.
Not surprised. Only Christ-followers tend to respect Voddie.
It is good to point this out, but I am fairly sure this is not a surprise to most. LifeWay is a garbage factory that is likely run professing unbelievers (atheists). They don’t care what they sell, they just want to make money.
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We have several Christian books for sale on our theoarch website. Look at the books for sale page and you will find titles like God, Korea & Me; The Church & Science; Noah’s Flood: Did take place, and more. All are meant to strengthen your faith in Christ
Not at all surprising as Fault Lines is actually a pretty good book. I’ve both the hardback and audiobook version, though I cannot recommend the audiobook version until Brother Voddie records one himself. The narrator does an okay job for the most part, but he’s no Voddie.