Buying the Sacred and Profane: Best-Selling Religious Non-Fiction in the 20th Century.

In this paper we examine trends in the popularity of religious and spiritual nonfiction books over the past nine decades. We not only find considerable variation in the number of these books appearing on best-seller lists over time, but also in the content and themes of the books. We make use of an innovative technique for coding cultural objects, by applying Qualitative Comparative Analysis to map the changing configurations of ideas contained in religious and spiritual best-sellers. Preliminary analysis indicates that characteristic themes emerge during different time periods. For example, the 1990's saw the emergence of spiritual or religiously themed books which sought to address the material concerns of their audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]