Rejection of Book Manuscript Reveals Troubling Evangelical Attitudes

Readers might recall from my interview last year with Australian scholar John Bracht (see part 1 and part 2) that in the 1980s Bracht wrote an excellent masters thesis. As I wrote previously, this was written for the

"Department of Religious Studies at The University of Sydney, and [it was] supervised by Garry Trompf. The topic for John's 1988 thesis was "Mormonism: The Search for a Personal God." John's perspective on this is both academically rigorous, as well as personally sympathetic and engaging in that John brings together his former involvement with Mormonism along with his academic abilities, and his encounters with evangelical apologetic approaches to Mormonism from the time that continue to be influential today."

Since that time I encouraged Bracht to update, revise and expand his thesis and to submit it to a publisher so that it might result in a book that can benefit evangelical academics engaged in Mormon studies, as well as rank and file evangelicals who might benefit from the sympathetic treatment of such an important topic in Mormonism. Unfortunately, the publisher we initially submitted the manuscript to rejected it, claiming that the document was well written but that it likely would not find a sufficient reading audience to justify publishing costs. The publisher suggested submitting the manuscript to an organization that analyzes manuscripts for Christian writers and makes suggestions as to whether or not certain publishers would consider their projects. The results of their review are instructive, and troubling.

As their letter to Bracht states, the manuscript was declined "with mixed feelings," in that while reviewers noted that the "style is forthright and compassionate," and the author "reveals good theological training" and is a "competent writer," nevertheless the book was rejected because it was hard to find the correct niche for it in that "[i]t is about Mormonism but not like other anti-Mormonism books." As the letter continues part of the problem seems to be that the manuscript at temps to move beyond anti-Mormon and counter-cult approaches to the topic. Although I disagree with their assessment in the first sentence of the following paragraph, it represents the main thrust of their concerns:

"In the main, American Christians do not see Mormons as deceived. They are thought of as predators to be feared and against whom they feel revulsion. Most of the books that have sold at all take the point of view that Mormonism is one of the cults -- not very different from Swedenborgianism, Christian Science, Rosicrucianism, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Christadelphians. There is little interest in preparing to minister to Mormons. We find your heartfelt concern admirable."

In other words, "Thanks for trying to buck the publishing trend in evangelical treatment of 'cults,' but this reading audience has difficulty with any other perspective." Tragically, I fear this assessment of the state of affairs among evangelicals is accurate. I have experienced it myself in regards to writing projects in regards to the subject matter of new religions. Our book Encountering New Religious Movements (Kregel Academic & Professional, 2004) was likely only accepted because we had a contact with the publisher, and even then it was a struggle to negotiate with the publisher for the manuscript to be accepted in its existing form. Another example comes in the form of the Christian-Pagan dialogue book I will discuss here later this week. This project was rejected by a number of evangelical publishers in the U.S. as being worthwhile but unmarketable, until Lion in the U.K. accepted it as a worthwhile gamble.

Some good work has been done by evangelicals in publishing on the new religions for a popular market that runs contrary to evangelical expectations and stereotypes, but sadly we have an uphill battle and a long way to go in moving beyond conceptions of Mormons, and perhaps adherents of other new religions and alternative spiritual pathways, as fearful predators who cause revulsion in the evangelical community. Never mind new ways in which to engage the "religious other." We've got a lot of work to do in our own religious community.