Wednesday, December 4, 2024

Rod Dreher is going to need a better book, a degree in Greek from Dallas Theological Seminary, and three more wives if he hopes ever to compete with Hal Lindsey

 

 

 Hal Lindsey's The Late, Great Planet Earth was translated into 50 languages and sold 35 million copies by the year 2000.

In 2020 Dreher reported his The Benedict Option had sold over 70,000 copies. His Live Not By Lies has sold over 200,000 copies, "by far my bestselling book".
 
Meanwhile the British and Foreign Bible Society estimated in 2021 that printed copies of the Bible number somewhere between 5 and 7 billion, as reported here.  Just between the invention of the printing press in 1454 and 1815, it is estimated that 1.3 billion copies alone were produced.
 
Signs and wonders, miracles and prophecies, sell.
 
Is it an accident then that Dreher's latest book is a book about all this woo-woo? "No one but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." Methinks of Lindsey Dreher doth protest too much.
 
"unconventional beliefs regarded as having little or no scientific basis, especially those relating to spirituality, mysticism, or alternative medicine: some kind of metaphysical woo-woo".