New York, USA - Christian girls just want to have fun too, and the U.S. publishing industry is working overtime to cater to a growing demand for good, clean fun.
Sales of religious books are booming, and the category has much more to offer than just bibles and prayer books.
From Christian chick lit to frank discussions of sexuality and how to avoid temptation, the shelves of both Christian bookstores and secular chains offer a variety of wholesome reading that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
According to the Book Industry Study Group, which uses data from all sectors of the industry, total U.S. book sales rose 2.8 percent in 2004 to $28.6 billion, while religious books saw 11 percent growth to nearly $2 billion.
Calculating exact sales is difficult, however, and the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association says sales of its members' books is an annual $2.38 billion.
Much of the growth is from books like Rick Warren's "The Purpose-Driven Life," the top-selling non-fiction book in the United States in 2004, selling over 7 million copies.
The book surged back up bestseller lists in March after a woman taken hostage in Atlanta convinced her kidnapper to release her unharmed by reading him passages from the book.
Warren's publisher Zondervan, a unit of News Corp's HarperCollins, will publish her account of the ordeal this fall.
Christian fiction too, long belittled as either low-quality dross or frivolous and a waste of time, is enjoying a boom that has been linked by some to George W. Bush's presidency.
THE 9/11 FACTOR
Joan Marlow Golan, executive editor of Steeple Hill, an imprint of romance publisher Harlequin dedicated to "faith-based" fiction, said the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks were "very important in terms of the growth of Christian fiction."
"That really shook us up as a nation and created a longing for a kinder, gentler, safer world," she said, pointing to books such as Karen Kingsbury's "One Tuesday Morning" that deals directly with the day of the hijacked plane attacks.
"There's a sense of reassurance that despite that Tuesday morning the world is in God's hands," Golan said, adding that while not all Christians were Bush voters, there was a common denominator linking politics and reading habits.
"The kind of things that make George Bush reassuring also make them find Christian fiction reassuring," she said.
Mike Morrison, national accounts sales manager of Tyndale which publishes the hugely successful "Left Behind" series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, dates the boom further back.
"It really started taking off before 2000, a lot of people thought there was going to be a cataclysmic event," he said.
Former Los Angeles Times journalist Kingsbury is the Danielle Steel of Christian fiction, with more than 2 million copies of her books in print. "Fame," her latest book out in June, is the story of a Hollywood star and a small-town girl who is tempted by the glamour of movies.
"My main character is a Brad Pitt-type character," she said. "He has everything the world would think would be important but he's very empty."
Last year, Steeple Hill launched an imprint of "hip, fun and smart fiction for modern and savvy women of faith."
NO DRINKING, NO DANCING
"My first thought was Christian girls just want to have fun too, so why not do a variant of chick lit," Golan said.
Guidelines for authors are strict: "The stories may not include alcohol consumption by Christian characters, dancing, card playing, gambling or games of chance (including raffles), explicit scatological terms, hero and heroine remaining overnight together alone, Halloween celebrations or magic or the mention of intimate body parts."
Another publisher offering Christian chick lit is privately held Random House whose Broadway imprint will release "Emily Ever After" in July, the story of a country girl coming to New York. Doubleday-Broadway recently announced plans to more than double the sales of its religion unit.
Lauren Winner, author of "Real Sex: the naked truth about chastity," said Christian bookstores which account for a major chunk of sales in the sector were still cautious about content but non-fiction books like hers were pushing the boundaries.
The book discusses her own sexual experiences before she converted to Christianity and is explicit about the difficulties faced by women trying to stay chaste -- a far cry from past generations when Christian publications would assume women were not troubled by desires of the flesh.
"There's definitely a blurring of lines between religious books and self help books," said Winner, 28, who is studying for a doctorate in American religious history.
Winner said that religious imprints are raising their literary standards, pointing to the major Christian publisher Thomas Nelson's fiction imprint Westbow, launched in 2003.
"It's wholly devoted to doing subtler, less hit-you-over-the-head Christian fiction," she said.
Golan said Steeple Hill was also trying to shed the preachy t