By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Romance novels are one of those guilty pleasures that too often go unacknowledged, let alone talked about. However, they are wildly popular and, except for an approximate 60/40 skew in favor of females over males, the mix of income, education race and professions of the more than 51 million readers in the U.S. looks very much like the population as a whole.
The fastest-growing segment of that market is the Evangelical Christian romance, which made up about 10 percent of the 2,100-plus romance novels published in 2001. Christian romance fiction has all the elements of mainstream romances, except the romantic relationships occur exclusively between committed Christians. The man and the woman struggle not only with themselves and their relationship to each other, but also their relationship with God.
Tyndale House, dedicated to “minister[ing] to the spiritual needs of people, primarily through literature consistent with biblical principles” has developed its own romance imprint, HeartQuest books. Their guidelines for prospective authors is typical of the demands of the “inspirational romance” genre generally:
Both the hero and heroine must both be Christians before they get involved in a relationship — “A Christian character may feel an attraction for a non-Christian,” the guidelines read. “But it must be clear that it is not God’s plan for a believer to marry a non-believer or even to pursue him/her in hopes of winning a convert to Christ.”
The Christian element of the story plays as important a part in the novels’ plots as the action and romantic angles, and appears near the beginning, usually no later than the end of the first chapter. One other major distinction from the standard genre romances is that the Christian versions have no steamy — or for that matter, even tame — sex scenes.
Over the last 10 years, Beth Calvo of Seattle says she has seen “an insidious creep” of evangelical Christian novels onto her local library shelves. In part, this is not surprising since the genre is scarcely more than a decade old. Library officials say they are just catering to the tastes and requests of the public.
“As a Jewish reader, I find this startling and offensive,” she wrote in an email to the Jewish Transcript.
“Does Freedom of Speech mean that our great democratic institution, the public library, now has the right to shove Christianity down my throat under the banner of fighting censorship?”
Along with the inspirational romances, she also expressed her concern about juvenile literature in the library’s children’s collection, which also has an avowedly evangelical theme.
“Checking out the children’s section, I see that Dick and Jane too are struggling with ‘Let go, let God,’” she wrote. She says she has no particular objection to the works of respected authors with a Christian perspective, such as C. S. Lewis’ Narnia series, or even Pilgrim’s Progress.
A longtime supporter of the Seattle Public Library, she applauds them for resisting what she calls “book censorship by right wing groups.” Still, she is troubled by proselytizing works appearing on the book shelves and not being labeled to indicate what they are.
“I do object to their spending public money,” Calvo told the Transcript in a telephone interview. “The way that I look at it is that it is a First Amendment issue,” she says, “because Christianity is the majority religion and the way this country started was people wanted to be protected from having the majority religion crammed down their throats.”
Steven Freeman, Legal Affairs Director of the Anti-Defamation League, sees the question as more about community relations than a First Amendment issue.
“I think they are appropriate discussions to have,” he says. “For the library to be violating the First Amendment Establishment clause, there would have to be some clear message of endorsement of religion.”
He explains it even further.
“It’s perfectly legitimate for them to acquire books from religious publishers as one of their sources. From a free-speech standpoint, what they are doing is they are providing patrons of the library with a choice. They are not saying to anybody that they have to take out those books, or any books for that matter.
“I think that it would not be a bad idea for the library to consider identifying books that it has acquired from religious publishers in a section,” Freeman adds, but “I don’t think they’re under any obligation to do that.”
Calvo says she was told by her local librarian that the library’s content has a no-labeling policy, because so many requests come from various interest groups.
Seattle Public Library’s policy is that “any labeling, sequestering, or alteration of materials because of controversy surrounding the author or the subject matter will not be sanctioned.” At the same time, it says, “the Library collection will be organized, marked, and maintained to help people find the materials they want.”
“That’s actually talking about age levels,” says Lois Felker of the policy statement. Felker manages the library’s collection department. Putting labels such as “Mystery” or “Romance” on books “is more advisory,” she says.
Tom Horne, who manages acquisitions for the library collection, says Seattle Public Library does not discriminate based on viewpoint, but manages its budget to try to accommodate people’s requests.
“The publishing world is publishing what they think is going to sell, and the reviewing sources review what they think is going to sell, and libraries select what we think people are going to read,” Horne says.
He says they get a “pretty predictable” number of requests for the kind of books Calvo is raising objections to “in the same way as with romance novels and science fiction. All of those things, we have pretty steady and ongoing demand for.”
As for Jewish and other religious literature, Horne says they get fewer requests for novels than for nonfiction titles in those categories. According to Felker, Nancy Pearl of The Center For The Book has indicated the collection already includes a good selection of Jewish literature. That selection will likely grow.
The Center for the Book, an arm of the Library of Congress since 1977, promotes an understanding of the vital role of books, reading, libraries and literacy in society. The Seattle CFB has been operating since the mid-1990s.
“We’re giving the library a grant and that grant money will go for the programming. There’s also a portion of the grant that will go for collections,” says Michele Yanow, the Nextbook Fellow working with the Seattle and King County library systems. “Some of that money will go for books that support our programming. The rest of the collections money is really for the libraries to purchase Jewish cultural materials that they wish.”
One way to resolve Calvo’s concern, a librarian suggested, is to become familiar with the list of Christian romance writers and publishing houses who produce the works she objects to, so she can avoid them.
Strangely enough, some of today’s best-known and best-selling authors published heated bodice-rippers before turning to inspirational romance fiction.
A trade group, the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association maintains a Web site, www.ecpa.org, with a list of 250 member companies and organizations, as well as its own Christian Bestseller’s List.