BOOKS ON RELIGION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 53, Issue 153, 10 April 1933, Page 8

BOOKS ON RELIGION.

POPULARITY IN ENGLAND. VIEWS OF PUBLISHERS. The reawakening of the interest in religious matters is shown by the increasing demand by the British public for all types of theological literature. Contributory reasons may be that, in these times of unparalleled depression, the public is seeking solace in the written Word, but the growth of the Oxford group and other movements is authoritatively stated to have greatly helped. A member of one- of the leading publishing houses said no fewer than 102,000 copies of a book setting forth the creed of Buckmanism had been sold since last summer, while five editions of a hook published in May, 1932, had already been exhausted. "God in the Slums," by Mr Hugh Redwood, which deals with the work of the Salvation Army, is approaching the ,300,000 mark, although in a cheaper edition than the foregoing books, and 19.000 copies of a book by a young Leeds Methodist were bought by the public in the three weeks before Christmas, in spite of the fact that December is considered by all publishers to be too late a date to avail themselves of the annual rush. Not only are the advance ■orders for the Lenten books published annually considerably in excess of similar figures in past years, but the unmistakable tendency is for the London public to turn to deeper and more abtruse works as typified by the writings of Dean Inge, the Rev. E. E. Raven and Canon Peter Green. The manager of one of the largest bookshops in London declared that, during a. life-time of 42 years spent in soiling religious books, he had never known a time when clergy and laity alike devoted so much thought- to the purchase and study of the best type of Christian teaching. Not only were fresh editions of the well-established books being constantly called for, but the sales of modern authors' works were steadily increasing. Over 500 copies of one particular book with the simple title of "Christianity," had been sold in his shop alone. People might not be going to church as regularly as they did, he declared; they were, however, seeking from the pen what they missed in the pulpit.