Observations of a Christian book industry worker.

The other week I was at a new bar, this new taproom for a decently established brewery in the city, and the (youngish) (blonde) (kind of bro-ish looking) guy next to me on the bar stool not only turned out to be an off-shift bartender at the place, but also an editor in the Christian book industry.

He said that he wrote, and that he was trying to get more into brewing.

He said that it's hard to reconcile the pastoral and the commercial in that industry, and the way he said it, you could tell that he was just absolutely disgusted, though he really didn't elaborate.

He also said that evangelicalism doesn't contribute to or push forward the wider literary culture at all; it imitates stuff it sees commercially like a year or two after it happens in non-evangelical circles, but it never sets trends, let alone do anything artistically interesting.

I shared with him scholarship that I had read on the deconversion of evangelical artists, and he said it made sense to him, that they grew beyond the tradition.