“The Shack's wild success doesn't reveal how Bible-thumpy this country is. It shows how alienated from religion we've become.”

Nathan Heller, in a Slate article that both lampoons and appreciates The Shack:

When every publisher turned down [William P. Young’s The Shack] in its current form, Young and some friends founded their own firm, Windblown Media, to fill what they considered "a big hole" in publishing: Although there were "religious" books and "secular" books, they thought, there were no titles in the middle ground, no "spiritual" novels that cast God as a path to happiness without serving up dogma. The Shack is just that book, and its success proves not how much this country loves religion but how far from mainstream faith the nation's aspirations have shifted. [emphasis mine]

Gotta love that last line. Heller seems to appreciate The Shack for the same reason some appreciate primitive folk art:

Young's too-weird-for-the-pulpit thoughts…have the appeal of knobby heirloom-produce in a world where much religion arrives vacuum-packed. His theories…accomplish what mainstream faiths tend to fail at: connecting recondite doctrine to the tastes, rhythms, and mores of modern life. The Shack's wild success doesn't reveal how Bible-thumpy this country is. It shows how alienated from religion we've become.

I’ve shared my Twitter-length take on The Shack before.