Tickle said Christian fiction stories and writing have improved and that has prompted more people to buy the books. Over the last three to five years, the core audience hasn't changed, but readers have begun to discover that they like it if it tells a good story. Darren Sherkat, a Vanderbilt University professor of sociology who studies conservative Protestant culture, said the audience for Christian fiction always was there, but mainstream publishers decided decades ago that religion was taboo. The Rev. Andrew Greeley spurred some of the change in thinking in the 1970s and 1980s with books like Cardinal Sins about priests doing bad things. While some dismiss Greeley's books as potboilers, Sherkat said they helped show that fiction centering on religion could sell.
Religion is an important and central issue in people's lives.
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