I can't tell you how much I appreciated Jason Byassee's article. As someone who works in Christian retail, I am constantly frustrated by the content of many "Christian" books these days. In a time marked by a conservative-fundamentalist movement in our country, it shouldn't come as surprising that most of the books I see fly off the shelves have almost nothing to do with Jesus himself, but rather with political agendas or conservative cultural ideologies. Even Wild at Heart, as Byassee points out, is saturated with patriarchal speech and does more to support conforming to traditional gender stereotypes than conforming ourselves to be like Christ.
For so long I've felt like my thoughts on this were just cynical and bitter, that maybe I was wrong in thinking these books weren't dealing with Jesus in the way I thought a Christian book should. It is comforting to know I'm not alone in this observation, and I can only pray that more Christian authors can step up and give us something more.
Justin Harvey
Winston-Salem, North Carolina