The Commodification of Jesus

First of all, I hated the commercial. I am wondering if it really came from Chrevrolet or was a spoof.

Regarding the commercialization of the gospel, this is one of the most important issues to me. It’s the reason I struggle to be a part of “organized” religion. Several things trouble me about it:

1 - Marketing Christ and the church culture cheapens it. It’s as if the message itself (salvation through repentence) isn’t a “hard” enough sell on its own.

2 - What happens to those who don’t have the disposable income to throw at all the paraphenalia? I think it creates a sort of caste system within the Church - those who can buy all the gear and those who can’t.

3 - It sends the wrong message - that the proper way to live the Christian life is not inwardly - focusing on our own relationship with God - but outwardly. It’s all about the messages we’re sending to others, what we look like to them. If we’re really going to focus on what God thinks of us, we won’t have time to waste on something as silly as what other think about it. It’s almost like we’re seeking the approval of man that the approval of God.

4 - It gives us wrong motivation to do good. We’ve all heard stories about Christian drivers deciding not to “flip someone off” because of the fish on back of their car. If that’s the only thing stopping us, then our actions may be conforming, but our hearts are not.

5 - If we engage in good marketing, it leaves difficult questions about the people who call themselves believers. Did they truly come to Christ because of a touch from God or did we just make a good sales pitch? I think that’s why we have so many non-disciples thinking they’re all hooked up. Unrepentent sinners who have never truly come to Christ but are fooling themselves and others.

christians have made christianity into big business. just go into a christian book store and check out all the useless books (most of them are just that) and christian ‘entertainment’ (movies, music, video games etc…) then walk into the bible section and check out zondervan’s newest $150 Bible! (Last time I bought a bible I couldn’t find one under $50!)

Commodification is simply the civilized method of turning reality into a concept for our manipulation of its meaning.

Since the language of the spirit world is poetry, not prose, we have always been in a conundrum converting the Consciousness of YHWH into civilized parlance.

The two don’t mesh too well. Look at the complexity of the Trinity. It sounds like gobble-de-gook to anyone without a PhD.

Commodification is ‘selling’ a concept, much like evangelism itself. To convince someone, we have to use their language, vernacular, to create communication.

There is bad theology just like there is bad ‘marketing’ of Jesus.

Perhaps the subject is really trying to have us re-visit the balance we employ in the language we use to convey poetry, wisdom, as prose.

It has to be persuasive enough to break through the barrier of the mind to get to the heart. There it can find consciousness that speaks its own language.

This is a wierd one, and i guess that is why my post was filled with so many questions as oppossed to any real arguement. I have absolutely no idea which side to come down on here! My heart and my head pull in completely different dirrections, though hopefully by the end of the post i might have come up with something!

On one hand, I tottally agree that the use of Jesus and religion to sell cheap tat (or expensive in the case of the car which according to wired did have something to do with chevorlette) is at best unhelpful and at worst downright imoral! I don’t think there are many that would disagree.

Perhaps the question I really wanted to raise, and which I failed to really address in the post was to do with how we use theology and marketing to reduce complex concepts in order to get people on board. Alpha courses being a prime example, is it wrong to build a brand in order to communicate with people? I am sure thats what a lot of the t-shirt people talk about!

If buying things is the language of our culture should we be using it or should we be changing the culture in order that they might understand our complex message.

Perhaps there is a balance, comic-sans should, most certainly, be banned from all church publications or information slips! but what about the churches who have a brand identity, whose notices come in those funky little booklets which are the shape of a little star!?

I think your question assumes that the expanding of the Kingdom happens by getting people to buy into our views, our politics, our behaviors. I think that’s the modern way of “growing the church”, but I don’t think it’s a model that is scriptural or that works in upcoming generations.

I’m totally cool with talking on someone’s level. What I’m not cool with is charging that person money for it. Paul said he wouldn’t take money. He understood that once money is exchanged, the whole system is tainted. It’s like campaign finance. People wonder whether you’re telling them things for the right reasons and politicians have a tendency to say what people want to hear.

I believe that a better model for expanding the Kingdom is simply the Church loving people in practical, sacrificial ways. Building our church buildings bigger and bigger and creating slick, expensive marketing materials while the gap between rich and poor gets wider and wider is a recipe for disaster. If churches used their resources to pour back into the community and threw business models out the window, I believe that God would begin to move in a way we’ve never seen before.

When I pray for what the Church could be, I think back to the believers who lived in London during the great plagues. When someone would get sick in a family, the rest of the family would often leave them behind and head out of town. Many Christians stayed behind to take care of those left behind. To me, that’s expanding the Kingdom.

I also think of a story that I believe was about Charles Wesley. When he began his ministry, he made a very humble wage - something like 10 pounds per week. He learned to live on that wage even though it was very tight. Through the years, he obviously did much better - moving to bigger churches and making more and more money. Yet he continued to live on that 10 pounds per week for many years. When inflation finally made it impossible for him to live on that wage, he doubled it to 20 pounds. Even though he made several hundred pounds per week by that time, he continued to live modestly so he could give to others.

I think marketing often fills churches with consumers, but sacrifical love fills churches with disciples. I also believe that if we took the money out of running churches, you’d see fewer snake oil salesmen or motivational speakers in church pulpits.

I’m a graphic designer and I’ve donated thousands of hours in design services to churches and ministries. I would never take money for what I do. God has given me talents and it’s my duty to give them back to Him. I don’t think refusing to engage in marketing strategies means we can’t have nice looking websites, signage, etc.

PS - I believe Comic Sans should be erased from every machine everywhere and never again used to contaminate any design for the rest of our age ;)

As a consumer, I thought the Chevrolet ad, whether real or spoof, was clever, creative, and catchy. As a Christian, I thought it was at least in poor taste and at most highly offensive. It did not make me want to buy the vehicle. Curiously, it did make me think about planting sunflowers in my garden!

Jesus is not something to be consumed. Jesus is someone to be followed.

One aspect of commodification is that it reduces, minimizes the differences between products. Milk is pretty much just milk no matter which dairy it comes from. So dairies distinguish their product with advertising, package design, assurances of freshness. The commodification of Jesus reduces him to just another interesting wise teacher, although Christians believe he is more than that.

I do become concerned when Jesus is used as a “celebrity spokesperson” or endorser of commercial products. If Jesus would buy this / use this / eat this then shouldn’t you? That doesn’t commodify him, but it does trade on his name for commercial or person gain or profit. Christians do it whenever we claim that Jesus likes this form of worship / this Bible translation / this outreach / this tradition more than another one. Jesus associated with a product does not automatically make it better.

Jesus is not our celebrity spokesperson. We are his witnesses and, as others have noted, we do that best by loving and forgiving others, by seeking justice and mercy in the world, and by inviting others to join us in following him.

A couple of commenters seem to have the idea that this ad was trying to sell an SUV. I believe that is an incorrect assumption. It appears to me that this ad is satire and was probably produced by the ‘What Would Jesus Drive’ crowd who believe it is sinful to drive such a vehicle because it is consumerist and pollutes Gods creation.

Having said that, I grew up in middle-America during the 1950’s and 60’s. The ‘evangelical’ church came to commercialism quite late in this game. In those days there were very few Christian Book Stores. When you found one, you wouldn’t find much of anything other than The King James Bible (pretty much the only translation at the time.) Interestingly, the gospel (up ‘till then) had been having a tremendous impact on the culture. The Judeo-Christian ethic permeated the western world recognizing the worth of the individual. Individuals (whether they were believers or not) were perceived to have value in the eyes of true Christians because Jesus died for each one. Biblical principles became the basis for formation of a just society. Obviously not all in the western world, or even the majority, have been believers yet the influence was there. It seems that mid-century (last) during the height of the industrial revolution, Christians became part of that rising tide of affluence and it has had an impact. When I was growing up the only businesses that were open on Sunday afternoon were restaurants. If you went out to lunch following church the only way to walk it off was to go window shopping. I guess business owners saw all those church-goers walking and decided to open up shop at noon. We loved it! Sunday became a great routine of worship; lunch; shop; evening service. Then the business owners realized that lots of people weren’t even going to church. Might as well open up earlier for them.

All this to say that even though monetary affluence is a wonderful gift from God (whether we aknowledge Him or not), when we have it we perceive the need to be dependent on Him as greatly reduced. We think we (mankind) can do it ourselves including building great big churches for His kingdom. We will not only do that, we will save the planet for Him by telling others what kind of car He would drive. We are no longer interested in telling others what the Bible actually says because we don’t really know ourselves and besides, we suspect that we would be viewed as intolerant. Much better to market a gospel we have created in our own minds using proven advertising models. I’m sure God is pleased?