With news that HarperCollins Publishers has purchased Thomas Nelson – the biggest Christian publishing company in the world – we see the biggest assault yet on the Christian industry.

Harper, which owns Zondervan, a major competitor to Nelson, is adopting the strategy that began in the ’90s: We won’t join Christian publishing, so we’ll beat it.

What I mean is that (and this column will use generalizations; please understand there are still good things being done in the Christian book publishing industry) a couple decades ago, when large New York houses began to see the money made from Christian publishing, they decided to buy good-sized companies, usually ones that had grabbed the brass ring in sales with a hot title or series (“The Prayer of Jabez”; the “Hugs” series).

This meant that Christian companies like Howard and Multnomah became imprints of large, “secular” companies. They still function and produce Christian books and present at Christian trade shows … however.

It doesn’t take a shuttle scientist to see that once a Christian company becomes the property of a secular company, the Christian entity is no longer independent. There used to be a few independent publishers out there, and no one compromised their messages, and no one told them to steer clear of certain conservative authors.

I remember once bringing all this up at dinner with some publishing friends; we were at the big summer Christian trade show, sponsored by the Christian Booksellers Association.

I said something that sounds off-the-wall to anyone but a Bible-believer. I said that if we were indeed living in the last days (someone else had brought it up), then we should be able to track compromise in Christian publishing. In other words, if the writings of Paul and the other apostles are true, we would arrive at a time when people would not put up with sound doctrine.

I immediately understood that most of the people at the table now thought they were having dinner with a dodo bird. There was an embarrassing silence.

Yet I know others in the industry who feel as I do. The news of the Nelson sale is but one more piece of evidence.

Ever since the Chicken Soup books were allowed into CBA, there has been a steady movement towards books that are not orthodox.

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