God and Controversy on the Net

In the beginning, there was religion on the Net. Pretty soon it became a world of Web sites, chat rooms and shopping outlets, most often tailored to Evangelical Christians. In the past year or so, Christian sites have expanded to include Crosswalk.com (https://www.crosswalk.com) for books, CDs and financial advice; Musicforce.com (https://www.musicforce.com) for CDs and concert tickets; and as of August, Amazon.com (https://www.amazon.com), for a specialty store within the giant Internet outlet.

Yet another site, iBelieve.com (https://www.ibelieve.com), is in “pre-launch” phase, with full service scheduled before the end of the year.

Amazon’s special features include a bestseller list updated every hour, and interviews with authors. So far though, the Web site hasn’t hosted Misty Bernall, who wrote the most controversial Christian book of the season, even as reports published in an Internet magazine claim its entire premise is false.

“She Said Yes, the Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall” is ranked 195th on Amazon’s bestseller list of thousands of titles (and 11th on the New York Times list). It is Bernall’s account of her daughter’s turnaround from troubled teen to model Christian before she was killed in April at Columbine High School. Just weeks afterward, Bernall announced that she would write Cassie’s story. The 17-year-old junior was one of 12 murdered students.

Misty Bernall said she planned to share Cassie’s story “to encourage parents and teenagers,” even after conflicting reports questioned who, exactly, said “yes” to a belief in God. Several witnesses told police it was not Cassie Bernall but Valeen Schnurr who responded to Dylan Klebold’s question. Schnurr suffered 15 gunshot wounds but survived. She and others have said that one of the shooters asked if she was a believer after she’d already been shot. When she answered, he held his fire and walked away. Last month, Salon, the Internet magazine (https://www.salon.com), published a report on the discrepancy, but book sales seem unaffected.

About 300,000 copies of the book, in its third printing, have been shipped, according to publisher Chris Zimmerman of Plough Publishing.

“Perhaps people are tired of hearing from everybody else about what Columbine means,” he said of the book’s success. “Maybe they’d just like to hear from a mother.”