A few days from now, or maybe a few months, or even a year, Amazon will pull a book from its site. One day it will be there available for purchase with all the rest, and the next it will be gone. One day people will be able to order it and have it shipped to their homes, and the next day it will have ceased to exist, at least as far as Amazon is concerned. This will inevitably be a book that Christians have embraced as orthodox but that the culture has rejected as heretical. And, of course, the great “heresy” of the day relates to sexuality—especially homosexuality and transgenderism. The great “heresy” is that God created and defines our sexuality and that as his creatures we are accountable to live according to his ways. It seems likely to me that the first book to go will be on this very topic. Perhaps it will be Kevin DeYoung’s book or Denny Burk’s or one of Rosaria Butterfield’s or Christopher Yuan’s. And while I am no prophet, I do believe the day is not far off.

When it happens, it should come as no great surprise. Amazon is hardly a company founded by Christians or run according to Christian principles. To the contrary, it is a company founded by worldly people and run according to worldly principles. We cannot be shocked when non-Christians are affronted or offended by genuinely Christian ideas. We cannot demand of non-Christians any more than of Christians that they violate conscience to sell materials they consider repugnant. Thus, surely the day I’ve predicted cannot be far off.

View Comments (8)

The great problem here is that we Christians have given Amazon immense power over us. As Amazon has grown in its retail domination, first across America and then across the rest of the world, it has become the go-to bookstore—and, really, the go-to everything store—for Christians and non-Christians alike. If we look back just 10 or 15 years, we can see there was a much more diverse Christian marketplace for books. There were far more brick and mortar retailers and there were also more online retailers. Sadly, very few have been able to keep up with the juggernaut that is Amazon. Amazon won this battle because they wooed us with vast selection and free shipping and Prime Video and all sorts of great perks the other retailers simply could not match.

But as Amazon surged and other stores shuttered, we inadvertently handed Amazon a near-monopoly over the sale of Christian books. We did this with the good-faith assumption that they would continue to sell whatever we published. But times have changed and are changing and it seems increasingly unlikely that Amazon will continue to sell it all. It seems increasingly likely that they will cede to cultural pressure—pressure that exists both within and outside of the company—and begin to cull their offerings. And then what? It’s not like these books cannot be sold by the Christian retailers that remain. But will publishers even be willing or able to publish them if they cannot be sold at the world’s biggest marketplace? Will you and I even be able to find out about them if Amazon isn’t recommending them to us? And will we be willing to pay a premium to have them shipped to us from smaller retailers with higher prices and no ability to offer free shipping? . . .

The upshot is that as Christians we have given a great deal of power over Christian publishing to the distinctly non-Christian Amazon. What can we do about it? To be honest, I’m not sure. It may be too late. . . .

(Excerpt from Tim Challies’ blog at Challies.com.)