Last week, action star Chuck Norris sued the publisher and author of a new book based on the popular Internet meme Chuck Norris Facts. You know, like, “Chuck Norris’s tears cure cancer. Too bad Chuck Norris has never cried.”
Many of Norris’s ironic fans were perplexed. “Why is Chuck being such a spoilsport?” asked a Wired blogger. “One could argue that the uniformly treasured lists rekindled a geek-hipster love of Norris, his mullet-y locks, tight jeans and flying roundhouse kicks.”
But what geek-hipsters don’t realize is that for many people, Norris’s career didn’t actually need rekindling. His fire may have gone out in our world, but for a few years now, it’s been burning more brightly than ever in the parallel universe of Christian pop culture. Chuck Norris is the biggest thing in the evangelical bubble since Kirk Cameron. Or at least Stephen Baldwin. Norris’s endorsement of Mike Huckabee wasn’t as much of a surprise -- or joke -- to Huckabee’s base as it was to the rest of us.
In 2004, Chuck wrote his spiritual memoir, Against All Odds, for B&H;, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. Since then, he has “co-written” two Christian western novels, The Justice Riders and A Threat to Justice, which the publisher describes as a “heroic action tale of good versus evil, with elements of faith and romance.” Fiction is the fastest-growing segment of the Christian publishing industry, and there’s a glut of Christian genre novels right now, from Westerns, to thrillers to romances. Typically these books are “clean” versions of their secular counterparts, with a few scenes of prayer thrown in and, almost inevitably, a weepy moment where a main character falls to his knees and confesses that he is a sinner who needs Jesus. Partly because the books are so formulaic, having the name of a mainstream star on the cover is a great way to stand apart from the competition.
In 2006, Norris also began writing a colu
Many of Norris’s ironic fans were perplexed. “Why is Chuck being such a spoilsport?” asked a Wired blogger. “One could argue that the uniformly treasured lists rekindled a geek-hipster love of Norris, his mullet-y locks, tight jeans and flying roundhouse kicks.”
But what geek-hipsters don’t realize is that for many people, Norris’s career didn’t actually need rekindling. His fire may have gone out in our world, but for a few years now, it’s been burning more brightly than ever in the parallel universe of Christian pop culture. Chuck Norris is the biggest thing in the evangelical bubble since Kirk Cameron. Or at least Stephen Baldwin. Norris’s endorsement of Mike Huckabee wasn’t as much of a surprise -- or joke -- to Huckabee’s base as it was to the rest of us.
In 2004, Chuck wrote his spiritual memoir, Against All Odds, for B&H;, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. Since then, he has “co-written” two Christian western novels, The Justice Riders and A Threat to Justice, which the publisher describes as a “heroic action tale of good versus evil, with elements of faith and romance.” Fiction is the fastest-growing segment of the Christian publishing industry, and there’s a glut of Christian genre novels right now, from Westerns, to thrillers to romances. Typically these books are “clean” versions of their secular counterparts, with a few scenes of prayer thrown in and, almost inevitably, a weepy moment where a main character falls to his knees and confesses that he is a sinner who needs Jesus. Partly because the books are so formulaic, having the name of a mainstream star on the cover is a great way to stand apart from the competition.
In 2006, Norris also began writing a colu