The Cheapening of Church, And Other Matters

Around the time that the Disney version of the “Lion, Witch & Wardrobe” came out, it was revealed that Disney had begun a church-based marketing campaign for the movie. This was not unusual in itself; the Purpose-Driven books, the Left Behind movies and Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ had also been marketed through churches. The unusual thing about Disney's campaign was that it hosted a sermon contest in which pastors could enter sermons which mentioned Narnia by name. The winning pastors would then receive a free trip to London and $1000 in cash. It was a sign – by no means the only sign – that secular corporations had discovered the vast potential of the “evangelical market.” To be sure, there were other signs, such as the marketing of George Bush to evangelical voters (but that analysis will have to wait until we get into the discussion of Power.) The Disney campaign spawned a new, rather pejorative term: the “sermo-mercial,” which is a product commercial disguised as a church sermon. (Sources: “Product Placement in the Pews,” Knowledge@Wharton, 15 November 2006, http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1605; “Blessed are Those Who Preach About Narnia,” Catharine P. Taylor, http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2005/week49/index.html)

Even before the 2004 elections or the launch of Narnia film franchise, there was so-called joining of sacred and secular in a marketing campaign which, surprisingly, had nothing to do with books, movies or political candidates. It was the 2002 “Chevrolet Presents: Come Together and Worship” concert/speaking tour sponsored by General Motors and featuring a number of leading CCM artists and Max Lucado, a popular preacher and author. Chevrolet and General Motors hoped to get some sales mileage out of that tour, although their hopes were somewhat dashed. But the secular business world became fascinated by the success of Mel Gibson, Disney and Rick Warren in marketing their products via evangelical churches. Secular corporations also wanted a piece of that pie.

Thus in 2007, Chrysler launched the introduction of a new luxury SUV model by sponsoring a Patti LaBelle gospel music tour through fourteen black American megachurches. Megachurches in particular have begun to attract the interest of a growing number of secular corporations and service providers, who now regularly consult seminary professors and church researchers to devise marketing strategies most likely to succeed in a church setting. For instance, a financial planner looking for more clients consulted Greg Stielstra, Vice President for Marketing of the Christian Trade Group of Thomas Nelson Publishers. Stielstra told the planner that the number one reason for marital discord is finances, and that church-going couples experiencing such trouble first consult their pastors. He put the planner in touch with a number of local pastors, who now refer many of their church members to this financial planner. There are many examples of such “networking” nowadays.

And now I must confess a certain problem which I believe to have an actual medical basis, namely, that it's hard for me to handle cheese. When I was a kid, I could drink milk, though I didn't like it all that much, and over time I lost my ability to digest anything other than yogurt. But I was really turned off by cheese. My parents believed that my dislike of cheese was some sort of finicky childishness, and eventually I also came to believe that this was true. Yet as an adult, there were times when, if I walked into a room in which a strongly-flavored cheese dish was being cooked, I would start feeling nauseous. Even now, certain strong cheese smells can make me feel like I'm about to hurl.

The money-driven cheesiness of the modern church experience is a cause for nausea. Just writing about all of this makes me want to hurl. I remember times during my search for a “healthy church” in which I would hear the pastor or presiding elder of some big modern church exhorting his audience to “Buy Book X, because we really want to support that kind of book, and it can be used as a witnessing tool!” This was also done to us when the Passion movie came out. And one time I heard a pastor hawking his youth minister's new worship CD, saying something like, “Folks, you have a wonderful opportunity to hear Justin's great heart for worship! You'll be blessed by his passionate lyrics,” etc. But has it really come to this, that now in 2008, the secular marketers whom I spend so much time and energy avoiding are waiting at church to shake me down the moment I set foot inside?

And what does this say about the sort of things one can expect to hear from the pulpit? Some people still go to church in the expectation that they will meet someone who is willing to tell them the truth. When the church and the pulpit become simply another organ of secular corporate big business, that expectation vanishes and the church becomes yet another expression of cheesy corporate commercialism.

Commercialism defines the culture of American evangelicalism. Commercialism is the antithesis of truth-telling, because truth-telling involves risks. Telling the truth does not always lead to increased sales of things. Truth-tellers are frequently unpopular. Commercialism, on the other hand, emphasizes the quarterly report and the bottom line, and its tendency is to stick with “what sells,” with proven formulas for commercial success. The Christian faith has been known historically for its martyrs, for its unpopular, Scriptural, risk-taking, “Thus says the LORD” truth-tellers who more than once “turned the inhabited earth upside down.” The faith of today's evangelicalism is quite tame in comparison. To be sure, we have our CCM praise/rock/metal/hip hop bands, our action movies and our books. But they are all so commercial, so identical, so formulaic, so insincere. They are paycheck efforts.

Let me illustrate by playing movie critic for a moment and analyzing three movies I saw within the last three years, namely, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Sixth Sense (yes, I saw it for the very first time in 2006), and Osama. All three movies have similarities. Two of the movies are about people facing situations beyond the physically normal, movies which require an audience to suspend disbelief for a while and buy into the movie's premise. Children are the main focus in all three movies. And two of the movies were risk-taking works of art. The Sixth Sense was M. Night Shyamalan's first blockbuster. During the making of the movie, however, he was an unknown, and the studio which backed him took a risk. Shyamalan did his best to craft a ghost story which, while frightening, was also a multi-layered statement about life. The acting, moreover, was superb. Shyamalan and his cast showed that it is possible to tell a gripping, thought-provoking story with a small cast, ordinary settings and few special effects. I do not believe in ghosts, nor do I share Shyamalan's views on life. But he was able to draw me into his world through that movie.

Osama was every bit as powerful as The Sixth Sense. It had no ghosts, unless one counted the ghosts who haunted the face of the young actress, Marina Golbahari, who played the title role. In that role, it seemed as if she was more than acting, as if she was actually re-living in vivid flashbacks the horrors of surviving under an extremist religious government. It was twice a risk-taking venture – first, because it was not destined to be a moneymaker, and second, because those who made that movie risked their lives to make it.

The impression I got from the Lion, Witch, & Wardrobe, on the other hand, was that this was a movie that was made solely to collect money from evangelicals. The story was subtly twisted away from C.S. Lewis's original version in that the focus was no longer on Aslan entirely, but rather on Peter's evolution into a king. Aslan as Divine allegory was de-emphasized, and became instead, Aslan as interesting cartoon character. Disney did this in order to make the movie commercially salable to a wider audience. Yet in doing so, they weakened the narrative flow and dramatic movement of the story. The Disney version seemed sort of hacked together. The wisecracking American-style villains were another tacky departure. And the kids were horrible actors, merely going through the motions, except, maybe, the kid who played Edmund.

If the Narnia movies, unfortunately, are the high point of evangelical culture, then much of the rest is unspeakably tacky. (For instance, the Left Behind books will probably never be used in a high school literature class.) But this sort of thing is what is hawked from church pulpits Sunday after Sunday in many places. Even now, I'll bet that millions of churchgoers will be reminded today of how the upcoming Prince Caspian can be used as a witnessing tool. We are told that we must have the latest Purpose-Driven, Every Man's Study Guide to the Next Big Thing (for a small fee, of course). It's all produced in order to collect a paycheck, not to tell the truth. Now much of evangelical publishing has been taken up with teaching us how God wants to bless us and make us successful, and secular marketers have discovered the benefits of going to church. Are you trying to find out where to spend the blessings God wants to give us all? All you have to do is ask some megachurch pastor to hook you up with a businessman in need.

This brings up another thing about the present evangelical culture, namely, the glorification of worldly success. I am thinking of people like Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar and others who preach and write so much about securing material wealth by seeking God's blessing. What they are actually doing is promoting a very false idea of life in general, and especially of the life we all can expect to be living during the next few years. The life they offer us is one which our secular, commerce-dominated society loves, namely, a life of unending and ever-increasing consumption. Just name it and claim it and it will come to you. And if it doesn't, well then, just rebuke the demon of poverty and cast it out!

The problem is, however, that we are now starting to face functional, structural, global limits to consumption. World crude oil and oil liquids production is now around 85 to 85.5 million barrels per day and hasn't risen for over thirty months, according to the Energy Information Administration. Dozens of countries around the world are facing energy shortages of one sort or another. This is leading to a slowdown of economic growth. And our excessive consumption is visibly and demonstrably destroying the earth. There are also the economic troubles we are now facing because of the subprime mortgage crisis – a crisis caused by too many people trying to get something for nothing. These problems are God's way of telling us that we have become greedy and are in need of a change. These problems can't be named and claimed away or rebuked away. But we are not listening to what God is saying. When hard times come, as they certainly will, many evangelicals will be utterly unprepared, spiritually and emotionally. They will collapse like a house made of matchsticks.

The commercialization of the evangelical church is just one more thing that has made church unsafe for many people. Think about it. How many junk mail ads do you receive each day? And some of them are cleverly disguised to look like Government notices – until you open them up and discover questionable refinancing offers. How do you feel when you know you're being hustled? How many people have signed up for the National “Do Not Call” list? Why do you suppose they did so? How many people have Caller ID and Anonymous Call Blocking? If there was a National “Do Not Junk Mail” list, how many people do you think would sign up? How many people are there who are sick and tired of being hustled? They go to church, expecting it to be a safe, truthful place, and are they supposed to let themselves get hustled there? It's bad enough that they have to dodge pleas to buy tacky books, CD's and DVD's, that a portion of their money goes toward paying royalties to read a Bible translation or to sing a worship song. What kind of freak three-ring circus is this, that they now have to deal with insincere, paycheck pastors introducing car salesmen and financial planners from the pulpit? Does this make me angry? You bet it does. Who broke my church?

The next post will be my final post on the topic of Money. Anger will be a big part of that post.