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The Church of Best-Sellers
Media people are the high priests of secular culture, encouraging people to worship what sells.

...The vast machinery of the news business is now wired to detect best-sellers as early as possible—and pump them until they drop off the lists. And the media are not choosy about their best-sellers. If you've got the numbers, you've got our attention. For example, the trade's traditional chariness about religion goes out the window if a best-seller is involved. The authors of the Left Behind books recently made the cover of Newsweek in a story that touched repeatedly on their best-seller status, as if to remind us of the key point.

Rick Warren, religious leader and author of The Purpose-Driven Life, has been everywhere lately, including in a spin-off story on the front page of The New York Times about his influence over prisoners. Reading the story, you could feel the ticket-punching moment coming, and then, there it was: "The Purpose-Driven Life, a Bible-based self-help book, has been on best-seller lists since October 2002, selling about a million copies a month."...