NEW YORK--The U.S. fiction market has never seen back to back religious favorites, Publishers Weekly religion editor Lynn Garrett told the Associated Press. And booksellers can't help but link the sales to the recent success of Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" in concluding what the market wants.

Booksellers are taking note of the Christian market. According to the Publishers Weekly list, the latest "Left Behind" novel, "Glorious Appearing" landed solidly in the No. 1 spot, taking the place of another top-of-the-list novel with Christian themes, "The Da Vinci Code."

"Whether they feel negatively or positively about religion, people in American culture think about and care about it," Garrett told the AP.

Jerry Jenkins, who co-authored "Glorious Appearing" with Tim LaHaye, said the popularity of Christian books is part of what he termed, "God hunger -- people looking for something beyond themselves."

But authors such as Dan Brown, who penned the "Da Vinci Code" thriller may have found the Christian market but are supplying it erroneously.

Christian leaders and even one New York Times reviewer reportedly found Brown's book full of historical and theological error.

But since the book is fiction it was anything goes until Brown claimed his fiction was true. Then, the AP reports, the Rev. Darrell Bock of Dallas Theological Seminary wrote the first of several Protestant attack books, "Breaking the Da Vinci Code."

Another work from Roman Catholics, "The Da Vinci Hoax," is set to be published.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has issued warning against Brown's book. Lutheran professor the Rev. Barbara Rossing, has also written against the theology of the "Left Behind" novels in "The Rapture Exposed."

Jenkins sees beyond the criticism and views his books as evangelical in nature. "A lot of people know this story, believe it and are encouraged by it," he told the AP.