Jonathan: Bible sales have reached record highs in the United States and the United Kingdom. In 2025 alone, publishers tracked nineteen million units sold in the U.S., the highest total since BookScan began tracking sales twenty-one years ago. In the U.K., sales climbed 134 percent above 2008 levels, the first year data was recorded.
Despite this surge, religious press revenues have not kept pace with inflation. According to the Association of American Publishers, year-to-date growth through October is only 1 percent.
Why are Bibles selling while other Christian books struggle?
Thomas: If you look closely at the numbers, Bibles are flying off the shelves, along with Bible-adjacent products. That includes devotionals that are mostly Scripture, workbooks centered on the Bible, and partial or adapted Bibles like The Action Bible, which presents Scripture in comic-book form.
The closer a product is to the Bible, the better it sells. The more editorial judgment Christian publishers impose on content, the worse those books perform. You might expect a spiritual revival to produce a flood of interest in Christian books, as it did in past awakenings. Many Christian bookstores, for example, grew out of the Jesus People movement of the 1970s.
My mother has told stories about becoming a Christian in college at a school hostile to Christianity. When she moved on to graduate school and did not yet know anyone or have a church, she would visit the local Christian bookstore just to be around other Christians. It was a refuge, a place that understood her questions and struggles. Many people were effectively discipled through Christian bookstores.
We are not seeing that now.
What do flat revenues reveal about Christian publishing?
Thomas: Christian publishers are struggling to sell anything other than Bibles and devotionals. If Bible sales are breaking records and overall revenue is flat, that means everything else is declining. If non-Bible categories were also growing, total revenue would be rising.
This is not because people are only buying public-domain translations like the King James Version. Most sales are of copyrighted translations such as the NIV, NLT, and NKJV. These editions offer more options, from font size to binding to cover design. When I recently bought a Bible for a friend, I was struck by how many choices there were.
A few months ago on The Christian Publishing Show, I discussed why Christian publishers have moved sharply left culturally. Many would not publish authors like Charlie Kirk or Meghan Basham. Since that episode, people have privately shared additional examples of conservative or traditionally orthodox books that Christian publishers refuse to touch. Most are unwilling to go on the record because they fear retaliation.
Thomas: One advantage of being patron-supported is that I am not really cancelable. Author Update exists beyond YouTube. Losing YouTube would hurt, but it would not end the show.
Jonathan: We would just scream into the void.
Thomas: Exactly. People ask why Christian publishers would not publish someone like Charlie Kirk. He is one of the biggest names connected to Christianity right now. His book on the Sabbath has been sold out for months. I ordered a copy over a month ago and still have not received it. On Amazon, used copies disappear almost instantly. That kind of demand is extraordinary.
If conservative authors with traditional theology were being published by major Christian houses, those publishers would not be seeing flat revenues while Bible sales soar. That disconnect is telling.
Thomas: Much of the current revival is happening among young, masculine men, what people might call gym bros. This is not new. A similar revival occurred between the 1870s and 1890s in a movement known as muscular Christianity.
Most people know nothing about muscular Christianity, yet many modern sports were born from it. Basketball and football emerged during this same period. Once you understand cultural cycles, you start to see how history rhymes.
If you are a conservative, masculine young man turning to the Bible, there is often nothing for you at a Christian bookstore and little in mainstream evangelical culture. The churches that are growing reflect this reality.
Which churches are growing and which are shrinking?
Thomas: In the U.K., the Church of England has declined dramatically. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church is growing because it remains more theologically conservative. Britain does not have the same vibrant independent Baptist or conservative evangelical movement found in the U.S., partly because those groups were historically persecuted and emigrated.
Jonathan: Yes, they left. We went away.
Thomas: My ancestors were conservative evangelicals who left Britain for that reason. I still love our British listeners, even if our shared history goes back a long way.
In the U.S., denomination data from 2000 to 2024 shows that nearly all major denominations have declined. The Presbyterian Church (USA) is down 58 percent. Southern Baptists, American Baptists, Episcopalians, and others are all shrinking.
The groups growing the fastest are the Presbyterian Church in America, the Anglican Church in North America, and the Assemblies of God. These represent either traditional worship with conservative theology or conservative theology with a modern expression. Everything else is contracting.
What does this mean for Christian writers?
Thomas: Many writers want Christians to read their books, even if they are not writing explicitly Christian titles. Yet Christian publishing has adopted a trend sometimes described as “punch to the right and coddle to the left.” That approach is out of step with the broader cultural shift, which is moving right.
The churches growing are conservative. The churches shrinking are progressive. Publishing that ignores this reality will continue to struggle.
Jonathan: Christianity is fundamentally warlike in structure, though not in the sense of physical conquest. Jesus said, “I come to bring a sword.” Scripture speaks of armor, battle, and division. Families and nations are divided by the gospel. Conflict is inherent.
Even practices like the Lord’s Supper carry martial symbolism. In the Passover tradition, Jesus did not drink the final cup. He said he would drink it later, together with his followers. That mirrors a warrior tradition where survivors gather after battle to honor those who did not return.
Glory in warlike cultures is earned, not conferred. Memorializing the fallen matters deeply. “Remember me” is a powerful command, and no cultures remember their dead better than those shaped by conflict.
I explored this symbolism in Shades of Black II: After Light. I am not sure many readers caught it, but it is all there.
Thomas: If you look at the fourth turning of the 1860s, you also see the rise of muscular Christianity and the founding of the Salvation Army in 1865. The Salvation Army was originally structured with military language, generals, ranks, and missions.
They preached the gospel, fed the poor, and played music in the streets, often right outside saloons. This warlike ethos resonated deeply during that era and drove massive growth.
Thomas: Hopefully this gives some cultural context for where things are heading.
Jonathan: There is going to be a hunger for strong, biblical material that feeds this surge of muscular, conflict-facing Christianity. This movement is predominantly masculine, but it affects everyone.
Even if you are not writing for men, you are writing for women connected to men shaped by this shift. They will need help navigating it, understanding it, and living alongside it.
This is the trend unfolding right now.
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