The Wittenburg Door

I’ve been reading the online version of the Wittenburg Door for a while but had not read their print magazine until this past weekend. For those unfamiliar with it, they bill themselves as “The World’s Pretty Much Only Religious Satire Magazine”.

If you pick up a copy, I recommend not reading it in a public place. At least, not if you don’t want people looking at you strange. Among the funnier pieces is an article about the new “One Second Bible” for those who don’t have time for the “One Minute Bible”. One paragraph cheerfully notes that “in just over a week “practically anybody” can read through the entire verse of John 3:16.” Which is, the VP of marketing stressed, “all a Christian really needs to know anyway”.
“According to the book’s reading timetable, the more industrious reader can complete Paul’s epistle to the Romans in just under twelve years. (Which is just about the same amount of time it takes the average Presbyterian minister to preach through it.)

Here’s another excerpt:

Good News for CBA 2007
By Darrin Rittenhouse

The slump in sales suffered by Christian Bookstore Association members in 2006 can be attributed to two factors. First, the ferocious attempt by Wal-Mart to corner the market by illegally undercutting Christian publishers. Second, the dearth of even marginally original new books by the world’s best-known religious authors, most of whom have been long since reduced to recycling their earlier work.

Fortunately, a new trend is sweeping among evangelical authors – blending! Why should one author struggle to stretch a marginal idea over 180 pages? Instead, top authors are working together to create a whole new wave of powerful, prophetic, groundbreaking, relatively original books. Here’s a sneak preview up upcoming titles in 2007:

Your Best Purpose-Driven Life Now by Joel Osteen and Rick Warren

Cure for the Common Life You’ve Always Wanted by Max Lucado and John Ortberg

So You Want to be Wild at Heart by John Eldredge and Charles Swindoll

So You Want to be Like, You Know, Wild at Heart (for teens) by Eldredge and Swindoll

The Case for Approval Addiction by Joyce Meyer and Lee Strobel

I Kissed the Bad Girls of the Bible by Joshua Harris and Liz Curtis Higgs

What’s So Amazing about Bruce Wilkinson by Philip and Jabez Yancey

What Every Man Wants… Twelve Extraordinary Women by John Hagee and John MacArthur

You can read more from this issue at http://www.wittenburgdoor.com/current_issue.html.