(OPINION) ETH – Although traditional Christian publishers turned their back on his latest book, Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe, denouncing critical race theory and the social justice movement, prominent Southern Baptist preacher Voddie Baucham Jr. found a home for it at Salem Books, and it is now one of the most talked-about works in evangelicalism.
It is currently the No. 1 book in several Christian categories on Amazon and is listed among the top 100 bestselling books on the e-commerce website, where 95% of those who have reviewed it gave it a five-star rating. On the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association’s bestsellers list for May, it sits at the No. 2 spot.
Data from Salem Books show that since its official release on April 6, nearly 50,000 hard copies of the book and just under 10,000 ebooks have been sold.
“This author has given us the definitive handbook for responding biblically to the critical theories assaulting evangelicalism. This is confessional polemics at its best. The author has carefully defined the terminology crafted, the truth compromised, and the trajectory considered — in the enemy’s battle against the sufficiency of the Scriptures,” gushed David Pitman, one of the many verified purchasers who gave Fault Lines a five-star review on Amazon.
“Though he has winsomely interwoven biographical and historical backgrounds, nevertheless, he never loses sight of the centrality of the cross of Christ. On page 233 he writes, ‘The Jew-Gentile divide was far more significant than the black-white one. If Christ took care of that on the cross, how much more did He take care of any man-made divisions we face today?’ I urge you to read this book carefully. The language, the logic, and the love in it — love for God and love for neighbor — are exactly the biblical message most needed in these tumultuous times,” Pitman wrote.
And these “tumultuous times” refer to the racial reckoning that has erupted in the evangelical church since the killing of George Floyd last May and the debate over whether issues like social justice and racial inequality should be explored through any other lens outside the Bible, such as critical race theory. READ MORE
