Shopping for God: How Christianity Went from in Your Heart to in Your Face - Softcover

Oh Lord, Why U.S.? An Overview of the Spiritual Marketplace

This is not a book about God. Turn back now if that's what you're after. Save your time, money, and perhaps your temper. This book is not about belief, or spirituality, or the yearning for transcendence. Don't get me wrong: those are truly important matters. Rather, Shopping for God is about how some humans -- modern-day Christians, to be exact -- go about the process of consuming -- of buying and selling, if you will -- the religious experience. This book is about what happens when there is a free market in religious products, more commonly called beliefs. Essentially, how are the sensations of these beliefs generated, marketed, and consumed? Who pays? How much? And how come the markets are so roiled up right now in the United States? Or have they always been that way?

By extension, why are the markets so docile in Western Europe? In 1900 almost everyone in Europe was Christian. Now three out of four Europeans identify themselves as Christians. At the same time, the percentage who say they are nonreligious has soared from less than 1 percent of the population to 15 percent. According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, another 3 percent say they don't believe in God at all. Churches in Europe are in free fall, plenty of sellers but no new buyers. According to the World Values Survey in 2000, in twelve major European countries, 38 percent of the population say they never or practically never attend church. France's 60 percent nonattendance rate is the highest in that group. Here in the U.S., only 16 percent say they rarely go to church.

No wonder Europeans look at us and think we're nuts. Are we? We're consuming the stuff in bulk 24-7. Religion here is perpetually ripe. Are we -- a nation disparaged as shallow materialists -- more deeply concerned about the eternal verities than our high-minded European cousins? That is doubtful. So what gives?

One answer is that we're doing a better job of selling religion. Or to put it in the lingo of Econ 101, we are doing a robust business in supplying valuable religious experiences for shoppers at reasonable prices. But, if so, how so? And do I really mean to suggest that the marketplace is not just a metaphor, but a reality? Does the small church on the corner operate like the gas station? What about the megachurch out there by the interstate -- is it like a big-box store? How come the church downtown with exactly the same product is in shambles? And, while we're on this vulgar subject, how do churches sell? How do they compete for customers, called believers and parishioners in some venues and seekers in others, if indeed they do? They say they don't compete. At least they say this in public.

Are the religion dealers, if I may call them that, in any way like the car dealers on the edge of town? And what of the denominations that they represent -- do they compete? How similar is their behavior to what happens when General Motors goes up against Ford or Chrysler? And what happens when foreign lower-cost suppliers (like Honda) and higher-end suppliers (like Mercedes-Benz) enter the market? And how about home-grown low-cost discounters (like Costco) or web-based services (like Autobytel.com) that often sell cars almost entirely on price? The analogy is blasphemous, yes, but it may help us understand not just the spiritual marketplace but the current state of American culture.

If denominations don't compete for consumers (and they say they are interested only in new believers or lapsed believers, not in brand switchers, or what they call transfer growth), why are almost all of them spending millions of parishioners' dollars on advertising campaigns? Why are they hiring so many marketing consultants? We will look at some of these denominational campaigns because it's clear that they are poaching other flocks. There is an entire new business model called the Church Growth Movement to help them along.

Essentially, this book is about how religious sensation is currently being manufactured, branded, packaged, shipped out, and consumed. The competition is fierce. Some old-line suppliers (think Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran) are losing market share at an alarming rate. Some of them are barely able to fund their pensions without dipping into investment capital. For them, things are going to get worse, a lot worse. They can't change their product fast enough. For them, doing church is a two-hour Sunday affair, but for an increasing number of super-efficient big-box churches, it can last for days, even the whole week.

These new churches, megachurches, are run by a very market-savvy class of speculators whom I will call pastorpreneurs. By clever use of marketing techniques, they have been able to create what are essentially city-states of believers. They are the low-cost discounters of rapture that promise to shift the entire industry away from top-down denominationalism toward stand-alone communities. Small case in point: in the last few years, we all have learned a new common language. We use born-again, inerrancy, rapture, left behind, megachurch, and evangelical in ways that our parents never did. Some of us even use the word crusade.

Religion has become a major source of pop culture. You can see this in the role of celebrity. The old-style celeb kept his religion to himself. Now he's in your face. In a way, however, this represents a return to the original definition of celebrity, namely, the one who celebrates the religious event. Nothing is more revered in American popcult than the renown of being well-known.

So we all know of Mel Gibson's evangelical Catholicism and Tom Cruise's Scientology. And what of Madonna and kabbalah, Richard Gere and Buddhism, Muhammad Ali and Islam? I think it's safe to say that a generation ago, most entertainers did not wear their religiosity on their sleeves, or anywhere else for that matter. Madison Avenue and the film studios saw to that. Now, just the reverse. You wear your belief on your sleeves, right next to your religious bling.

Since the religious experience is moved through media, through delivery systems (of which the church itself is becoming less important), let's have a quick look at the transformations being wrought in film, television, radio, the internet, and even dusty old book publishing. What we'll see is how transformative the new version of Christianity has become on the very vehicles that move it around.

MOVIES

If, as the saying goes, the religion of Hollywood is money, then the returns of Christiantainment have proven a God-send. Back in the 1950s, as television was stealing the movies' thunder, there was a spate of big-budget, big-screen, big-star, little-religion movies called "Sword & Sandal" epics. Some are still cycling through late night television: The Robe, The Ten Commandments, and Ben-Hur. The Bible was invoked more for Sturm und Drang, son et lumière, and, let's face it, really steamy love scenes than for any presentation of dogma.

It was in the marketing of one of these movies, incidentally, that the faux Ten Commandments tablet first appeared in a public space. In many ways its exploitation neatly condenses the theme of this book. As Cecil B. DeMille readied his costly Paramount production of The Ten Commandments for release, he happened on an ingenious publicity scheme. In partnership with the Fraternal Order of Eagles, a nationwide association of civic-minded clubs founded by theater owners, he sponsored the construction of several thousand Ten Commandments monuments throughout the country. DeMille, a Jew, was interested in plugging the film, not Christianity.

A generation later, two of these DeMille-inspired granite monuments, first in Alabama and then on the grounds of the Texas capital in Austin, became the focus of the Ten Commandments case before the U.S. Supreme Court. What was essentially an advertisement for an entertainment had become a deadly serious pronouncement of in-your-face faith.

The modern biblical epic is nothing if not drenched in the blood of Calvary. Adios, Samson and Delilah, David and Bathsheba, Demetrius, and all those gladiatorial interludes with the smarmy and wonderfully named Victor Mature. Golgotha, usually glimpsed only as the curtain falls in the Sword & Sandal epic, is now stage center. The modern version, viz. Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, is nothing if not a total rearrangement of the genre. This film revels in small budget, no star, no love scenes. Shhh, please, this is a serious re-creation of what really happened.

Nothing in film history compares with Gibson's film. It is truly sui generis. And as such, it's a condensation of broader changes. First, it is unflaggingly serious. The language is Aramaic, for goodness' sake. If not literally true, then why use the real language? Next, it was released in a totally un-Hollywood way. The movie was initially shown in a venue aptly suited and wired for this experience: the megachurch. After all, when your projection and sound equipment rivals that of the local cineplex, why not use it to showcase film? And since the megachurch is open 24-7, you can schedule multiple viewings. And there are stadium seats and amphitheater architecture. This place was ordained for film.

The marketing of The Passion was still more revelatory of cultural shifts. The initial advertising did not go from studio-to-you, but from studio-to-minister-to-you. If you ever wanted to see the much-ballyhooed targeted entertainment, here it is. And finally, The Passion was what the earlier attempts only dreamed of: it became a legitimate blockbuster. Not only did it gross some $400 million in the U.S., not only did it revolutionize how movies are taken to market, but it also had what is called a huge back end.

The big money in movies is not just in theatrical display but in this aftermarket. Here is th...