I will refrain from commenting on the legal issues (or the legal posture of these cases, which is more than a little muddled in the article), but am posting this merely for general interest.

h/t: Tim Challies

For my earlier review, see here or this collection of information on The Shack.

EDIT: Don’t miss the scathing review of The Shack from James DeYoung, a good friend of the author (William P. “Paul” Young). Also check out Chuck Colson’s review, Al Mohler’s radio broadcast on the book, and Tim Challies’s booklet.

(h/t Tim Challies)

First, there is this comment (unedited) by Ray Stone:

I browsed the pages of The Shack and ended up reading about three and a half chapters, plus the ending. Voom! Powerful. Despite some awkward sentencing and obivous theological loopholes, the book is creatively absorbing. Clearly is does not line up one hundred percent with scripture (no book does), but this is why it is FICTION. Does it dishonors God? I think not. Is is leaven and heresy? That is debatable. It simply is what it is. Let the reader beware. An equally intriguing and controversial work is A Step Into Deliverance by T. Pugh. It is a riveting autobiography about a pastor’s amazing journey down the road to the deliverance ministry. It’s a real page-turner

To start with, I think there is a real problem with forming an opinion of a book based on so little text. The Shack comprises eighteen chapters, a foreword, “After Words,” acknowledgments, and a plug for The Missy Project. I think it’s unfair to an author and to the reader to write a review based on anything less than the core text at a minimum, preferably the core text plus all the “extras.” Much of the danger I see in the book comes in the vast middle, which Mr. Stone apparently skipped.

Mr. Stone’s point about fiction, though, goes to the heart of what I have said, as well as what Mr. Holland and Mr. Challies have said. Mr. Holland reminds us of a great quote from C.S. Lewis:

[A]ny amount of theology can now be smuggled into people’s minds under cover of romance [romantic, imaginative literature, fiction] without their knowing it. (Letters 167).

This is precisely the danger. Many books engage in theology, philosophy, historical inquiry, or other intellectual pursuits under cover of fictional writing. Just because something is fictional does not mean it does not also make profound claims or fall subject to criticism of those claims. This actually seems to be the fundamental difference in mindset fueling most discussions of The Shack. Like Mr. Stone says, “Let the reader beware.”

A Bryce Andrews also chimed in on this blog with this comment (unedited except to correct for formatting problems):

For you shall know them by there fruits. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. The book The Shack, fictional as it may be, is a love story. Just as the bible is the love story of Christ. Religious people will not accept this book, for they are still eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Those who eat from the tree of life will see the fruits. The author has simply expressed himself and his love for god. And just as Jesus was persecuted for doing so, So will be the author of The Shack. Aside from the bible itself, This is the best book I’ve ever read.

Mr. Andrews references the New Testament, specifically Galatians 5:22-23 (“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”). I do not debate this, of course, nor do Mr. Challies and Mr. Holland. Perhaps more importantly, however, he also references Matthew 7:15-20:

“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

Jesus warned that there would be false teachers who came in his name. So did Paul and Peter. It is a real concern. Christians owe it to themselves and the world to inquire who is right and who is wrong; the fact that many people find a book helpful or uplifting is not a definitive answer.

Mr. Andrews makes an additional, but common, mistake in labeling those who disagree with the book’s message or presentation (or at least some of these people) as “religious people.” What does this mean, exactly? It is popular in many Christian circles these days to use “religious” as an epithet, an insult, a way to dismiss a person’s point of view without further discussion. Everyone is religious, in some sense; nobody except for the very young and those impaired by old age or mental illness holds to no beliefs at all about ultimate things. Even those who claim agnosticism must pick one or at most a couple of belief systems by which to structure their lives; attempt to be a devout atheist, deist, theist, polytheist, pantheist, naturalist, and humanist simultaneously, and you will rapidly suffer a heart attack or a mental breakdown. Further, do “religious people” really have one mindset about this? Some of the most “religious” (by any definition) people I know are raving fans of The Shack; others consider it destructive heresy. These people go to the same churches, live remarkably similar lives, and talk to the same friends; there is no “religious” mindset that can be clearly identified here, much less used as a broad brush to sweep away criticism of a controversial book.

As a final point on what Mr. Andrews has said, nobody (that I’m aware of) is persecuting Bill Young. To my knowledge, he has not been threatened, stalked, harassed, imprisoned, beaten, assaulted, or in any way abused; he has merely been criticized. All authors are either criticized or totally ignored; no author ever gains more than a few readers without gaining a number of harsh critics, as well.

Finally, someone named Miriam posted this comment (unedited):

Well said, Bryce!

This book is not the Bible. The Bible is open to interpretation by all who read it. If this were not so, why would we have so many denominations of christian religions who can’t agree on most of the Bible? I see absolutely nothing it this book that disputes the teachings in the Bible.

Perhaps with the christian religious folks it all comes down to power and control over people by focusing on sin and repentance and this book threatens that control. The christian religious church would not have power and control to maintain their congregations if the power of God’s love were taught more than the power of God’s wrath.

As a result of reading The Shack, may the followers of Christ rise up in hope, encouragement, and build stronger relationships with The Father, The Son, The Spirit, and the humans with whom they have contact. Perhaps this book will encourage enough followers of Christ to act as such and Christians will then become known for their love and respect for all mankind rather than for their arrogance, intolerance, and their need to be “right”.

Most of what I could say on this I have already said. As for the “power and control” comments, I don’t know who she’s referring to. Anyone who really wants power and control over people’s thoughts would tap into the power of such a popular book, not fight it. In any case, the power to control another person’s thoughts is a terrible, awful burden, one I would never want to bear. The freedom to discuss and challenge each other to deeper faith and deeper understanding: that is something else, entirely. My sincere hope regarding The Shack is, has been, and will remain that people use these discussions to learn from each other and respectfully engage with the differences of opinion they find. The simple fact is that good, God-fearing people honestly disagree over whether or not The Shack presents a deity that can be reconciled with – not to mention found in – Scripture. That does not mean that those who found the book theologically disturbing can or should be dismissed as “the christian religious folks” or that those who find nothing of concern in it can be dismissed as unenlightened, ignorant, or intellectually careless. People just disagree: honestly, sincerely, and hopefully fairly and respectfully.

Finally, I confess I am not sure if Miriam means that my review and the comments of people who feel the way I do about The Shack were arrogant or intolerant. I hope not. I am simply expressing my concerns about the book here, on my personal website. It is a blog, so I do allow people to discuss what I have to say with me and with each other, including the commenters mentioned above. Intolerance, on the other hand, is an “unwilling[ness] to tolerate differences in opinions, practices, or beliefs, especially religious beliefs.” I am perfectly happy to provide a forum, through this blog, for discussion of topics like The Shack (or anything else I post on). I do hope people will use it in a manner that is respectful toward each other (I demand that much – if things get too intense, I reserve the right to lock comments on a post) and toward me (though I don’t demand that – criticism, even unhelpful and unfair criticism, I will allow).

Earlier:

• This site:
  • Book Review: The Shack
  • Marketing The Shack
  • The Popularity of Christian Books
  • More on The Shack
• Tim Challies:
  • Original Review
  • Follow Up #1
  • His updated review in PDF
  • Follow Up #2
  • His Amazon review (second reader review)
  • His pamphlet review of the book sold on Amazon.com
• Jim Holland

Summary:

Apparently, the Knights hope the suit will help improve their reputation, sullied by age-old accusations of worshipping Satan, denying Jesus, and practicing sodomy. It seems more likely that they’ll have a new accusation added to the list: filing frivolous and unsuccessful lawsuits.

The one thing I have never figured out about the way people talk about this book is the insistence that The Shack is allegorical. It patently is not, but that does not seem to prevent lots of insistence from supporters that it is.

Earlier coverage:

• Book Review: The Shack
• Marketing The Shack
• The Popularity of Christian Books

Anyway, this got the nerdy side – it’s a big side – of my personality fired up, and I started wondering what American Christians are reading, and what they think of it. So, I conducted a little study of Amazon reviews of popular Christian books to see how various books were rated. (Warning: extreme geekery follows…)

To skip ahead to my actual findings, click here.

What I Did
This graph (click to enlarge it) is a summary of the various “star” rankings on Amazon.com of popular and/or historically significant Christian titles, as a percentage of all reviews of a given book, as of March 5, 2008. That is, every book gets a line; the colors indicate how many reviews gave a book a certain number of stars.

The raw data is available here.

Methodology
If you’re interested in methodology and possible flaws, read the next paragraph; if you don’t care, skip that paragraph and see my thoughts below.

To collect data, I simply collected the number of each type of review from each book’s page on Amazon.com and entered them in a spreadsheet. Before I could make much sense of this data, I had to make a few assumptions:

1. Amazon.com reviewers are representative of book readers in general, and Christian book readers in particular. This at least seems reasonable, given Amazon’s massive market footprint.
2. Amazon.com reviews are representative of public sentiments about a book. This seems unlikely, since there is probably a strong bias toward people who bought the book from Amazon; if most reviewers are buyers, we might expect strong upward skewing, so that most reviews of most books are positive. This seems likely, but making the further assumption that the bias at least affects books more or less evenly (which seems questionable, but reasonable) reduces the impact of any positive bias at least somewhat.
3. Amazon.com readers are a representative sample of readers of both very old (e.g., The Divine Comedy) and very new (e.g., The Shack) books. This is unlikely, since classics seem to garner lots of readers and few Amazon reviews, while The Shack, in particular, is spreading largely through word-of-mouth (viral) marketing.
4. Amazon.com reviews provide an adequate sample size for meaningful analysis. While this is very likely true for a book like Left Behind, with 2,169 total reviews, it is almost certainly not true for A Pilgrim’s Progress, with 18, or Knowing the Will of God, with zero. The other books fall in between these extremes, and the sample size may be a fatal flaw of my analysis. Additionally, a meaningful number of reviews – 22 – for Paradise Regained was available only for an edition which includes Paradise Lost, making that data suspect. No reviews at all are available for Knowing the Will of God, despite what I believe is a fairly good reader base.
5. Amazon accurately groups reviews for multiple editions and publishers of one book. This is suspicious, but appears (by the “looks okay to Ed” method) to be significant only in the cases of one or two of the oldest works I included. To compensate for any biases, rather than spend all my time looking at multiple editions and imprints, I just picked the one with the most total reviews.

Discussion
Two discoveries stunned me about this little exercise. First, The Shack has some amazingly positive reviews – 87.8% were five-star reviews, 91.7% were four or five stars, and a whopping 95.1% were three or better. Only The Pursuit of Holiness (at 88.2%) and Knowing God (at 89%) got more five-star reviews, and only seven and six books, respectively, beat The Shack on the other two measures just mentioned. But, The Shack, only on the market for ten months, already has 205 reviews, while The Pursuit of Holiness has only 34 and Knowing God only 73. This tells me that the reception so far of The Shack is overwhelmingly positive, even compared to that of other books, and that it is being read widely compared to some books that may actually be more widely recognized.

Second, I found it very interesting which books were bringing up the rear in the five-star rankings race. Out of 23 books in this little study for which any data exists, The Shack performed third, as I already noted. Other wildly popular books did not fare nearly so well. The popular Conversations With God came in only 15^th, Left Behind a weak 17^th, the wildly successful The Purpose Driven Life a surprising 19^th, The Case for Christ in 21^st, and The Prayer of Jabez a pathetic last place.

Conclusions
What does this all mean? It appears that most popular Christian books – even classics like The Chronicles of Narnia – experience a significant trailing off in support and, in many cases, a backlash when they have been read widely enough. It also means, however, that The Shack despite being reviewed 205 times already, is not experiencing this, yet – it is claiming a popularity greater than that enjoyed by any work by Milton, Lewis, or McDowell, to name a few, and it is still largely unknown to the public.

It’s possible some books get widespread press and attention despite always having a vocal opposition – in which case The Shack truly is ascendant, since it has so little opposition – but it seems more likely to me that the book simply is a long way from peaking. We should expect to see more like a thousand reviews, as a ballpark guess based on other super-popular books in recent years, many of them negative, before we can say that The Shack has passed its peak.

I hope some of my readers will find this as interesting as I have and will start conversations (here or anywhere else) about both The Shack and what people are reading, more generally.

P.S. Just because I included a book in this study does not, of course, mean that I think it’s a good book or one I recommend.
P.P.S. For specific discussion of The Shack, see my posts here and here.

First, there is the Missy Project, which is explained in a two-page blurb at the end of the physical copies of the book, as well as on the book’s official site. (Missy, for those who have not read the book, is the name of a little girl who is abducted and murdered in the book.) This blurb encourages people to blog about it, write reviews (especially positive ones, of course), display it, seek positive reviews from others, buy multiple copies to give away, and so on. My favorite:

Talk about the book on email lists you’re on, forums you frequent and other places you engage other people on the Internet. Don’t make it an advertisement, but share how this book impacted your life and offer people the link to The Shack website.

To me, this sounds like straight-up viral marketing. The proceeds of the book, so far as I can tell, are not being donated to any charitable cause, but are going to the publisher and the author. So, either the author and others are really very convinced that the book is life-changing and are committed to bringing their message to a wide audience (which, conveniently, sells more books), or this is a shameless plug.

Then, there is the author’s site, the home page of which opens with this:

If you are so inclined and would like to write a review for Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble, especially a 5 star review, we would greatly appreciate it.

If that’s not a shameless plug for a book, I don’t know what is. In fact, the entire site feels like one big marketing device. Look at it for yourself.

Loyal readers: what are your thoughts?

Plenty of reviewers have summarized the plot on various websites. I want to comment only briefly on the theological questions raised in the book (for a much more complete review, read this excellent one by Tim Challies). The Shack puts words directly into the mouth of God, about topics like sin and salvation. It does so in a way that indicates God may or may not care about faith, may or may not care about sin, and may or may not think the Bible is useful for anything. It also suggests that institutions (including marriage and traditional Christian churches), governments, and economic systems are all inherently things God dislikes; in the book, Jesus even blames all the world’s ills on institutions, economics, and politics.

The Shack is definitely a moving, interesting read. Unfortunately, many readers will see it as “only a novel” (some are claiming it is allegorical, which it is not) and conclude that questioning the theology is unnecessary. Worse, I worry that some will conclude that, because the book is a novel, it doesn’t even contain theology. When God speaks in a novel, however, especially about the fundamental doctrines of a belief system, the novel is theological.

This review is very brief, but I hope it will encourage others to look at The Shack critically, examining it for more than the impact it can have on people’s lives. Ultimately, I think it is a dangerous book, because it presents theological conversations with God, but most readers overlook the fact that the book has theological implications, while simultaneously embracing what it has taught them about God (for examples of this, see most Amazon reviews). The book deserves to be questioned.

For those who need answers to questions about suffering and the evil things people do, I would recommend either the biblical book of Job or The Problem of Pain, by C.S. Lewis.

This is, obviously, an outrage. While freedom of religion is hardly universal and while other nations routinely persecute Christians and others for their beliefs, Afghanistan has a government the United States helped to create and which the United States is still actively protecting with military force. I’m fairly certain the possibility of people being executed by the new Afghan government for expressing a religious preference other than Islam was not in the minds of any Americans who helped oust the Taliban from power and install the current Afghan government. As Rep. Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, said in a letter to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, “In a country where soldiers from all faiths, including Christianity, are dying in defense of your government, I find it outrageous that Mr. Rahman is being prosecuted and facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity.”

It appears that our own government and the governments of Germany, Italy, and Canada, are expressing the appropriate level of outrage, at this point; let’s pray they keep it up until Mr. Rahman is free to go home.

UPDATE: In an unsurprising move, Muslim clerics in Afghanistan are saying that Rahman must die. If he is freed, some clerics say, the population will kill him (and some of the clerics seem intent on ensuring that outcome).