Bible Sales are Booming
Recent data shows a surge in Bible sales due to first time buyers and new editions. What do the numbers say about our current culture?
David Fowler, president of FACT, grew up in Chattanooga. He graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with a B.S. in accounting, serving as president of the Student Government Association his senior year. He attended the University of Cincinnati College of Law on the Chapin-Thomas Scholarship, receiving his J.D. degree in 1983. In law school, Mr. Fowler directed the Moot Court program. He participated on the National Moot Court and Craven Constitutional Law teams. He also clerked for the late Harry J. Klusmeier in the Ohio Court of Appeals.
Following law school, Mr. Fowler practiced law in Cincinnati and Chattanooga. In 1994, he successfully ran for the Tennessee state Senate where he served for 12 years. For four years he also directed the Center for Law and Government at Bryan College, teaching classes in political philosophy and jurisprudence. After leaving office in 2006, Mr. Fowler worked with leaders from across the state to form the Family Action Council of Tennessee. Its goal is to protect the interests of families with respect to state policy and to educate the public about the importance of a family-friendly culture.
“There’s still a bit of a relationship there. Focus on the Family at one time had more of a political policy arm. So it had sort of the nurture arm and the policy arm. The policy arm was known as Citizenlink and it was kind of run by a guy named Tom Minnery. Many in your audience would know Dr. Dobsons right hand man.
Actually about a year ago they legally split into different entities. Each has a different boards for the sake of the protection of the Charitable Focus on the Family Organization because political organizations are obviously under a lot more scrutiny today. So we still have a relationship with both groups. It’s not financial. We don’t get money from them, but it’s sort of like being a part of a big denomination, I guess you could say. They have research that we can access to and information so that we’re not having to recreate the wheel all the time.”
“That’s correct and I believe now we’re up to thirty-eight states now have groups like ours, so most of your listeners the odds are, they have an entity like ours in their state. We work at the State capitol level. It started in the late 80’s when Dr. Dobson realized very few people paid attention to what happened at State capitols. Yet, they dealt with issues like pornography and obscenity, and adult businesses, and divorce, and gambling, all kinds of things, and nobody was much paying attention to those pro family issues at the State capitol.
They didn’t want to create a national linity, so they came alongside existing entities to strengthen them. When the marriage amendment was on the ballot in Tennessee, and Focus on the Family, and Citizenlink started coming into Tennessee meeting Legislators, of which I was one at the time, saying, “Who can we work with here to make sure that the marriage amendment passes? What’s the state organization that has a statewide reach?” They just didn’t feel that there was an entity with that weight and gravitas across the state. So they helped formulate one. As I was helping them put it together, I felt the Lord was saying, “You need to go do this.” So I left and that’s how we came into existence.”
“Well, just like every state, the whole same sex marriage issue wasn’t on my radar screen at the time. In 1994, it was in it’s infancy in Northeastern states, in California, it hadn’t arrived in the South. So that’s been a huge shift. I think there’s just been a shift in the church as a whole in Tennessee. It went from being a respected institution that had influence, to one that’s not as respected with as much influence.
When I was a child growing up here, a native Chattanoogan, you didn’t plan events on Wednesday night or Sundays. Nowadays nobody gives much thought to doing those things, and you’ve pastored a church and you see that so and so’s gone because their kids in the swim meet this week Sunday morning.
That would have not happened so that’s been a real shift in our culture, not so much the law, but sort of our culture but the sense of respect for the church in the sense that you don’t mess with the church because that’s such a large number of people. You just won’t get anybody at your swim meet or your soccer game. That’s one of the major things.
Then we’ve seen a shift on the abortion issue here. From an issue we just follow it at the ballot box lately, but shortly after I got into office, our state supreme court said, “There’s a right to abortion” in our state constitution and most of our significant Pro Life laws were struck down, despite the fact that we’re a Pro Life State.”
“Many states, including Tennessee came back and said, “Well, ok we have to allow it, but we’re going to have an Informed Consent Law. We’re going to make sure women know what an abortion does, what it’s like, what the health risks are. We’re going to have a waiting period. You can’t just walk in and say, “Yeah, yeah, I know everything. Just do the abortion.” You have to wait twenty four hours, forty eight hours, regulating clinics to make sure they weren’t done in a doctors office that really wasn’t prepared for emergency responders in the event that something went wrong.
In 2000, our Tennessee Supreme Court said, “There was a right to an abortion in our state constitution. It was part of a movement at the time, in the late 80’s and 90’s by Planned Parenthood, to go to the state courts where there’s little legislative history about the constitution, and get states rights to abortion in case Roe V Wade was ever reversed. We don’t have any constitutional history and in 2000, that fall, our Informed Consent Law, Waiting Period Law, the clinic regulations, those things all became unconstitutional here.
Even though the U.S. Constitution under Roe V Wade allowed them, our state didn’t. So we had to fight for literally eleven years. I was the sponsor of the constitutional amendment when it was first filed to get it on the ballot. Then in 2014, we had a public vote and it was hard for people to understand. We did focus groups and people said ‘Aw no, everybody has an Informed Consent Law. We have one.’ ‘No, we don’t.’ ‘No, we do.”
“In Tennessee we looked at our abortion rates compared to the rates of the states around us. I would often say to people, “Look, do you really think Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas are that much more Christian and Pro Life than we are? If you don’t, then why is their abortion rate lower? Is it perhaps because they inform them, or make them wait?
A rate is the number of abortions per thousand of women of a certain age. So their rate, Arkansas may have fewer abortions but they have three million people. Let’s say we have six. But their rate was even lower than ours or Mississippis. So if our rate was as low as those states, we would be having thousands of fewer abortions every year. That began to make people realize so these laws actually save lives.
People die because we don’t have these laws. Then you began to say, “So what have you been doing to make sure we got a chance to vote on this? That the supreme court took out of our hands.” “Well nothing.” “Well then you’ve been letting babies die.” I hate to be blunt, but that’s what we were doing. What was sad to me, here I am in this state that is over churched in a way, or superchurched compared to the rest of the country.”
“Actually one of the things that’s important that I try to help pastors understand, is that you all have different gifts and passions even as we do, but I’ve often said, God has given to the church everything it needs to do. Most likely in every church there’s somebody that has an interest in these things and I’ll say to the pastor “Look, if your heart is interested in ministries, or if your heart is wherever it might be, is there someone there you trust who could filter that information for you, that you trust? So that you don’t get bombarded by more e-mails that you don’t have time to read.”
“The only thing I think that we do where it can’t be fixed by contract, powers of attorney, beneficiary designations, is that you do get a tax break. If you were to pass away and leave your property to your wife, assuming you have a taxable estate, there’s a deduction so that she didn’t pay taxes till she dies. There are some deductions for gift tax purposes and income tax purposes. If you’re not married you don’t get. But other that, but here’s what I think we need to appreciate. We get the tail wagging the dog. The issue is what is a marriage and because of it’s importance we give it benefits.”
“But my point is that those relationships are different. They are inherently different and to treat them the same is not right. They don’t want to think that they are different, but that’s where our worldviews comply. I say they are different. They say they aren’t different and that’s where the rub comes.
I think by and large, some people don’t want to hear the truth. Some people will just not accept the truth. You know the scripture says that we “suppress the truth in our unrighteousness” in Romans. It doesn’t say that we can’t know some of it. It just says we suppress it. Every time you make an excuse or give me a justification for why you can do something you are stating a principle for what you shouldn’t do.
Jesus was truth and grace. Grace without truth is meaningless. Who needs grace if there’s no truth to offend to violate? But truth without grace is just mean and so we need to have truth and grace. For grace to be meaningful we need to have truth. For truth to not be mean, we need to have grace.”
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Recent data shows a surge in Bible sales due to first time buyers and new editions. What do the numbers say about our current culture?
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