Industry experts are divided as to the reasons for the “flattening” of Christian product sales, according to The Washington Post.

Some attribute the dip to a glut of products, while others say the industry is struggling to interpret the desires of young Christians who “have grown skeptical of what they see as a commercialized, isolating version of faith,” said the newspaper.

Stan Jantz, a marketing consultant and author who ran a chain of Christian retail stores for 25 years, told the Post: "This is a generation that doesn't necessarily want a store that segregates Christian from non-Christian products."

Headlined “Religious retailers do a bit of soul-searching this Christmas,” the article noted that thousands of Christian bookstores that were “long the backbone of the religious retail industry” have closed in the past decade, leaving the industry “in a state of ... soul-searching.”

After several decades of “intense growth,” there have been no religious blockbusters in the past couple of years to drive sales during the holiday,” a time religious retailers rely upon even more than their secular counterparts. The top-selling CD on major e-tailer Christianbook.com for much of the past week has been The Gift by Scottish singer Susan Boyle, who shot to worldwide fame on a British TV talent show, the newspaper reported.

“The industry is looking forward to a boost in 2011, when there will be a new edition of the most popular evangelical Bible—the New International Version—as well as multiple spinoffs from the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.”

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