NEW YORK — The books are ready for shipment, fans are waiting breathlessly for the final installment, and tables in bookstores across America will soon be piled high with stacks of the newly published thriller. But we're talking heaven, not Hogwarts.
This week, "Kingdom Come," the 16th and last novel in the hugely successful "Left Behind" evangelical series, will be released, and the publication marks the culmination of a sea change in the American book world. Before the first installment in Tim LaHaye's and Jerry B. Jenkins' modern-day stories based on the Book of Revelation appeared in 1995, Christian fiction was typically tucked away in Christian bookstores. Now, 43 million books later, the Left Behind titles have paved the way for these books and others like them to be sold in chain outlets, discount stores and big box retailers.
And while more secular readers, and even some evangelicals, may find the novels off-putting, their cultural stamp is unmistakable: A 2005 episode of "The Simpsons" satirized the Left Behind books. The series was a question on "Jeopardy!" As George W. Bush's faith-based presidency has boosted the visibility of evangelical thought in American political life, the books' themes have echoed in the wider culture -- Mel Gibson's smash-hit "The Passion of the Christ," for example, followed the path blazed by the series.
It has all been a blessing to the book world, where a variety of Christian genres is flourishing. Rick Warren's inspirational book, "The Purpose-Driven Life," has sold more than 25 million copies, making it one of the largest-selling hardback books in U.S. publishing history. New Christian titles in fields as far-flung as chick-lit, science fiction and weight loss are appearing all the time. And Tyndale House Publishers Inc., the Illinois-based house that produced the Left Behind books, has become a major publishing player.
The series has also been a wake-up call for the normally secular-minded, New York-based book business. Before the Left Behind novels came along, said Lynne Garrett, religious books editor for Publishers Weekly, "I don't think people in this business had a clue that the potential Christian market was so large."
LaHaye, a longtime activist on the Christian right who helped organize the Moral Majority, offered a more blunt assessment: He said the books didn't break into mainstream stores until sometime in 1998-99 because of the publishing world's bad attitude toward evangelical Christians. "In some cases it was because of religious bias, people didn't want to give Christians a corner of the market," he noted. "The Left Behind series just blew that away."
