{"id":609,"date":"2004-08-26T20:37:00","date_gmt":"2004-08-26T20:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2004\/08\/26\/609\/"},"modified":"2004-08-26T20:37:00","modified_gmt":"2004-08-26T20:37:00","slug":"609","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=609","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I watched a report this evening on the PBS Lehrer Newshour about the recent <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">CBA Convention<\/span> in Atlanta.   For those of you not familiar with this, CBA stands for Christian Booksellers Association.  This was another one of those industry shows where thousands of merchants come together in a big hall and display their wares hoping to attract retailers who will hopefully stock their items, and to make a few extra bucks from walk-up sales.  The CBA Convention obviously involves religious books of a Christian nature.  \u201c<span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">Christian<\/span>\u201d here means the US <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">heartland<\/span> version of Christianity.  But don\u2019t think that heartland means back woods.  Christian media is no longer a small-potatoes proposition confined to little book shops found in low-rent commercial strips.   It now encompasses best-sellers and videos and rock music and software and Hollywood movies (e.g., Mel Gibson\u2019s Passion); big companies like Warner have special divisions that cater to the faithful.  In other words, Christian entertainment is now <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">big business<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>While watching the PBS reporter walking amidst the rows of DVDs and puppets and paintings and book racks, I couldn\u2019t help but imagine a <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">dark, scruffy, long-haired man<\/span> running about, yelling madly, turning over stalls and display cases, and causing much pandemonium.  But hey, I\u2019m sure that <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">security<\/span> would pick him up on their cameras and have him out of there within 30 seconds.  Within five minutes, things would be back to normal, and the pleasing sounds and scents of <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">money<\/span> changing hands in the 21st Century would once more fill the air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I watched a report this evening on the PBS Lehrer Newshour about the recent CBA Convention in Atlanta. For those of you not familiar with this, CBA stands for Christian Booksellers Association. This was another one of those industry shows where thousands of merchants come together in a big hall and display their wares hoping [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}