The current top-selling book app at the iPhone App Store features some familiar faces from my childhood: Mama, Papa, Brother, and Sister Bear. According to a press release sent out yesterday, “The Berenstain Bears and the Golden Rule”—which showcases the Berenstain’s fine illustrations and gives young readers the choice of reading the text or listening to an audio version—has bested more than six-thousand competitors in the books category.

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Though I’ve enjoyed the conceit of my beloved picture books safely tucked away in an old toy chest (maybe even the one that Papa built for Brother and Sister in the splendid “The Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room”), it’s true that the series long ago moved beyond those simple square soft-cover editions—to animated television shows, holiday specials, and computer games. The Berenstain Bears date back to the nineteen-sixties, but the books I remember—about bad manners, trouble at school, and baseball tryouts—were all written in the eighties by the husband-and-wife team of Stan and Jan Berenstain. Their son Mike later joined the team, and following Stan’s death in 2005, mother and son have continued writing new tales from Bear County. All told, more than two hundred and fifty million copies of Berenstain books have been sold.

I was thrilled to read that my favorite bears remain popular with kids today, and a new platform means new readers. Then I noticed something odd about this incarnation of the Berenstains: they’d become practicing Christians! The golden rule is just the kind of sensible, even-handed moral that I remember from my old favorites, but in the new app, the universal theme is tied directly to a Biblical source: Matthew 7:12. “Golden Rule” is part of the “Living Lights” series of Berenstain books published by Zonderkidz, a division of Zondervan, a Christian publisher based in Michigan. (The app is produced in association with Oceanhouse Media.) Other titles in the series include “The Berenstain Bears Say Their Prayers,” “The Berenstain Bears Go to Sunday School,” and “The Berenstain Bears: God Loves You.”

The singular quality of the series always seemed to be the everyday fallibility of the characters; they could be mean-spirited, selfish, territorial, and gluttonous (they’re bears after all), but by the end of each book, they would redeem themselves—restored to their better selves by the steadying influence of trusty humanist values and good cheer. God never seemed to have anything to do with it. Now, I'm faced with the unthinkable: would these once agnostic Reagan-era bear creatures now vote Tea Party in the next election?

Random House still publishes the earlier Berenstain books. We’d love to see an app out from them soon.

Update: All this talk of religion got us thinking: weren’t the Berenstain Bears Jewish? There’s a group dedicated to such speculation on Facebook, and the blog Jew or Not Jew has examined the issue, giving the family “Barely a Jew” status. There is no mention of religion in the Berenstain’s official bio, but a 2002 review of their autobiography in Haaretz points out that Stan Berenstain was Jewish, and that his wife Jan “grew up in an Episcopalian Philadelphia family.” The Berenstain’s two children, Leo and Mike, were raised on stories from both Judaism and Christianity. However, the couple resisted religious elements in their books for children:

The Berenstains have been asked by countless fans if they can expect a Berenstains Hannukah book. Not likely, they said. “There’s no way to do it without bringing religion into it,” said Stan. Christmas, the Berenstains reason, is popular and widespread enough so that it doesn’t get into the murky waters of competing religions.

In his bio at Christian Book Previews, Mike explains the new direction of the series, which now dives into those murky waters head first: