Personally, I am not surprised. I think the traditional houses may be recognizing the existance of the market due to the success of many recent projects that made a lot of money (i.e. "The Passion," "The Sacred Romance," "The Purpose-Driven Life," the Narnia movie,etc.)
At least that is how I'm trying to persuade prospective houses to give my manuscript a chance. The market is there, the money is there, why not make some of it themselves? I'm like Ronni, it's really good news for me because I want a secular house, mainly because my book is a seed-planting allegory and I want the house to be able to handle the number of copies I hope to sell. I'm after the lost kids because I was one when I first started reading C.S. Lewis years ago.