According to a Murphy’s Law calendar, “In America, every major cause becomes a major industry.”

Thar’s gold in that thar Mount Zion!

           There is no doubt where you can make some big money these days.  According to a consulting group called MarketResearch, the estimated retail market for religious products was about $7 billion in 2004 (source: abcnews.go.com), up from $5.7 billion in 1999.  Another firm called Packaged Facts projects that this figure could surpass $8.6 billion in annual sales by 2008, including “everything from hit movies and popular music to live-action figures of Christ and the apostles” (source: money.cnn.com).  Bible sales for various publishers are currently estimated at somewhere between $425 million and $609 million (source: Cindy Crosby, Not Your Mother’s Bible, publishersweekly.com).  Average revenue totals for a single Christian merchandise outlet can add up to between $300,000 and $440,000 per year, depending on the size of the market.  And for all those who can’t pass up a hot opportunity, Forbes magazine reports that the biggest retail giant of them all, Wal-Mart, has become the largest retailer of Christian-themed merchandise, with well over $1 billion in sales.

           Christian music is a major component in this.  The Christian/Gospel category of overall music sales is the sixth most popular genre according to SoundScan's 2004 year-end report.  Gospel music sales outpace sales of Latin, soundtracks, jazz, classical and new age genres (source: christianmusic.about.com).  Accordingly, in 2003 the Gospel Music Association estimated that Christian music generates about $900 million in sales annually; another estimate given by GMA president Frank Breeden was a figure of $920 million for 2001 (source: info.detnews.com).  Christian music sales, both on CD and via paid download, over the first six months of 2006 were 11% higher than during the same period in 2005.  The rest of the music industry experienced a 4% decline during the same time period; and no other genre has a 2006 sales jump anywhere near the level of the Christian sector (source: ccauthority.com).  Thus far, I have been unable to find either figures or estimates for the amounts of royalty payments made to Christian songwriters whose music is played on radio or TV, or for the copyright fees paid to them for the use of their worship songs by churches in their services.

           So with books being the largest category but music the fastest growing, Christian merchandising is clearly a force to be reckoned with.  Hollywood began to understand that fact anew (after TV’s Touched by an Angel had been all but forgotten) when Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and the screen adaptation of C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe each enjoyed phenomenal box office success reminiscent of Cecil B. DeMille’s biblical epics.

           Christian media outlets don’t exactly have to pinch pennies, either.  In the U. S. today there are somewhere between 1600 and 1700 Christian radio and TV stations.  Three of the largest Christian media outlets which supply a large portion of the non-musical programming for these stations each reported revenues of nine-digit figures each, for a total in 2004 of just under a billion dollars.  This figure does not factor in major print media or the smaller broadcast networks. 

           With this kind of money involved, it would do well for us to carefully examine the motivating forces behind this commercialism and discern who talks the talk so that they can roll in the dough.  This is nothing new in history—for example, in the 17th century, Calvinist merchants piled up wealth in the belief that it was a sign of God's blessing.  When the Pilgrims sailed to North America they were seeking both religious freedom and commercial opportunity (source: money.cnn.com).  But even if there were only a little money involved, it may still indicate to us that there is a pervasive and damaging attitude which misdirects us away from the purity of heart that is the hallmark of the believer and replaces it with a more avaricious frame of mind concerning the activity we undertake on God’s behalf. 

Jesus junkies 

           No matter where we look in the modern West, we are inundated by advertising.  A message about a product is likely to confront us anywhere and at any time; we do not need to leave our home to see it—it will come to us.  It does not mind using the radios in our cars, the televisions in our homes, our mailboxes, the internet, large print newspaper ads, billboards, or even our telephones to get to us.  Through slick ads from equally slick salesmen we are enticed to buy the latest whatever-it-is with promises that it will make us faster, sexier, healthier, wealthier, or just generally better off. 

           But enticements to buy Christian products take a different tone.  There are other means of getting Christians to buy specifically Christian items or services by appealing to their advantages over those “secular” facsimiles.  Sometimes the pitch can be as simple as the fact that a Christian made this widget, so we should support our brother and buy all our widgets from him (it is irrelevant that they may be of inferior quality).  Or we may be convinced that some Christian product may serve as a talisman of sorts—for example, hanging a cross over your door may be a means of invoking God’s blessing on a room, or playing CD’s of worship music may be a way to ward off evil spirits with the thought that they simply won’t enter a place where “praises are goin’ up.”  (This thinking is an extension of ideas that are discussed further in the article Of the World, But Not In It, which precedes this one in the NHC section.)

           Christians are well known for being a cause-driven people.  Therefore quite often a product is marketed to us with the promise that it will help us to further the cause by helping us to spread the Gospel.  If a person’s curiosity is aroused by seeing a particular item in the possession of a believer, it can provide you with an excuse to begin to share the Christian message with them.  Occasionally the product is designed so that the “witness” doesn’t even need to be present, but the message is put across without the need for so messy a thing as interpersonal contact.  Two of the more ridiculous of these ideas are mentioned in a blog by Russell D. Moore entitled Christian Retailing and the Great Commission.  He refers to a report in the Los Angeles Times covering a Christian retail expo: “mentioned … are Christian golf balls with John 3:16 on them, so that, even if you lose it in a sand trap, well, ‘lose a golf ball, share the gospel.’  Also for sale are Christian sandals that leave footprints that leave the message ‘Follow Jesus’ in the sand behind them.”

           In his blog, Moore goes on to cite an interview with Alan Wolfe of Boston College about the shape of contemporary Christian retailing.  Wolfe, an unbeliever, told Moore that he “finds the kind of ‘stuff’ he sees at venues such as the International Christian Retail show to be indicative of an anemic American evangelical subculture.  Wolfe said that he does not want Christians to ‘witness’ to him about the gospel, but, nonetheless, he sees in Christian T-shirts, breath-mints, and boy bands the reality that Christians don't want to witness to him anyway.  Wolfe said that he cannot imagine an unbeliever coming to faith through, say, a Christian bumper-sticker on the car in front of him.  Buying the stuff gives Christians an easy conscience that they are carrying the Great Commission without ever having to verbally and relationally engage their unbelieving neighbors.  I suspect he's right.”  Moore went on to conclude that “whatever the ‘evangelistic’ selling point of these products, I think the real reason they make money is an American Christianity seeking to form a common community, a common culture.  Unfortunately, instead of finding this in churches, with one Lord, one faith, one baptism, we find it the same way the culture around us does: by buying stuff with the same logos.”  (For more, see the Touchstone Magazine website.) 

An important distinction

           It is not the intent of this essay to criticize Christians who engage in business; the point of contention that I raise is the commoditization of Christ and His Gospel.  It is important therefore to take a moment at this point to distinguish between Christians who do business and Christianity as business.  There are many entrepreneurs who are very successful at integrating Christian principles into the way they operate the ventures they undertake.  Michael Zigarelli, dean of the School of Business at Regent University, a Christian school in Virginia Beach, Va., estimates that there are 500,000 to 600,000 "Christian owned and operated" businesses in the U.S. today, which accounts for about 10% of all corporations (source: time.com 8/9/05).  And the idea that it may be more challenging in the world of business for a Christian is illustrated by this observation by business owner Chuck Wallington: "the challenge is that now you've got to wear two hats.  It's not just a ministry and it's not just a business — it's a hybrid.  And if you want to survive you've really got learn how to do both" (source: abcnews.go.com).  As this illustrates, modern evangelical business owners often measure success in souls saved as well as widgets sold.

Freely you have received, freely sell

           Much as when Simon the sorcerer offered money to the apostles for the power to lay hands on believers and impart to them the Holy Spirit (see Acts 8:9-24), it has become all too easy for us to think that financial compensation somehow needs to be made available to those whose gifts from God are shared with others in the body of Christ.  And if we happen to be on the financial receiving end of that transaction …

           If we allow ourselves the luxury of seeing faith as a commodity to be mass-marketed, we run the enormous risk of over-simplifying the ramifications, while at the same time understating the cost so that we can make the sale.  This watering-down process, aside from putting notches on our belts, lessens the true impact of the life-changing experience of the Gospel on the hearer.  Like so much else on Madison Avenue, Christianity has artificially been made attractive through, among other things, the promotion of the ease of its technical acceptance—just say a little prayer and sign a little card.  Little wonder that among the American church charitable giving is in decline, while the divorce rate, sadly, is also comparable to that of those outside the church.  In key areas where we should shine most brightly, we fade into the glare of the other lights around us; when our song should be the sweetest of all, it has become no more than just one more voice in the chorus of ideas that swirl about us.

           If growing a big church is an end in itself, and is the ultimate measure of success, it stands to reason that pastoring one can easily be a quite lucrative career choice.  Is it then any wonder that, according to a Barna Group survey, only about half of Protestant senior pastors hold to a worldview that would be considered biblical?  After all, big churches take in big tithe bucks, and can then afford to pay out big salaries to their big staff.  So why not say that you’re “called,” and why not learn the lingo and figure out how to use it to be a motivational force, and why not just regurgitate the theology lessons in seminary in order to make the grades, and why not sit through the ordination ceremony, and why not be a defender of solid doctrine, and why not “pay your dues” as a youth minister as the first rung on the ladder most often is?  You can end up with a beneficial and noble career as a respected community leader without ever having to give in to those silly notions of Heaven or Hell or of humbly seeking the face of the Living God.  Only those on “the fringe” will ever notice—and so what if they do?

           If local churches are governed by a sanctified version of a CEO, it is little wonder that success is measured in numerical, or maybe even financial, terms.  Once it is generally understood what our yardstick is for measuring this success, our competitive natures begin to surface in some ugly ways as we then compare ourselves one to another to find the greatest of the great.  If that greatness is ours, we gain status, the bragging rights, and of course a claim to the entitlement of reaping for ourselves the benefits commensurate with the title.  If that person is someone else, we seek to find out how they got to the top, and then we start to use their techniques as our own means to emulate their achievements.  This process clearly ignores the concept of prayer for God’s wisdom for our situation.  And lest we forget that all of our manipulating needs a noble face, we give lip service to it being for the glory of God, certainly not for us.  Every number represents a soul—isn’t that reason enough?

It’s all in the attitude

           We are often told that spreading the gospel takes money.  Appeals for giving are presented as necessary evils.  Do we know where the money really goes?  Is it any of our business anyway?  It is high time we held those accountable who handle the monies donated, and stopped swallowing whole the old maxim that “we give as unto the Lord, and once it’s out of our hands, it’s not our concern.”  It is time we finally stop lining the pockets of those who do not get the idea that, “it is more blessed to give than to receive” is a message for all of us.  Certainly we would not want to “muzzle the ox that treads out the corn” (I Tim. 5:18), but neither would we want to feed that corn to the jackal.

           Missiologists have often discussed how much of the American missionary effort merely accomplishes the exporting of the American culture or way of life and how much transmits the Gospel itself.  Apparently modern Pentecostalism has decided to ignore the inculturation debate—that is, if a recent Pew Forum survey is any indication.  The hallmark of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement (nowadays corporately referred to as “renewalists”) is the highly controversial act of speaking in tongues.  But among those renewalists in 10 nations with sizeable renewalist populations in which the survey was conducted, only a single-digit percentage of believers outside the U. S. disagreed with the statement “God will grant material prosperity to all believers who have enough faith,” while in six of the ten nations, those who said that they practice tongues-speaking averaged out at just over half (source: Ted Olsen, What Really Unites Pentecostals? Christianity Today, Dec. 2006, p. 18-19).  This illustrates the leaven of the prosperity gospel; the chief export of modern Laodicaea.

           But how can this be such a surprise?  When high-profile Christians from a culture rife with capitalism, free market ethics, competitiveness, and often outright greed create an addendum to the message, that addendum is likely to bear some “Christianized” ideas of the characteristics of the culture of its origin.  So this gross misdirection of Christian attitudes espoused by the teachers of this faction is to be expected when its origin is in a land where Gordon Gekko, a lead character in the movie Wall Street (portrayed by Michael Douglas), can get away with instructing us that “greed is good.”

           For those who may think that these attitudes will pass away with a particular generation, let us be reminded that the apple does not fall far from the tree.  One strong indicator that we have been remiss in teaching discernment to our children concerning unselfishness has arisen in the surveys that show that born-again Christian teens are just as active in stealing and swapping music as their secular peers who pinch the latest Eminem rap hit or Kelly Clarkson power ballad  (source: ccauthority.com). 

Our dirty little secret? 

           Of course we have rights, including the right to participate in the open market.  Of course economic forces may be applied at any reasonable opportunity.  Of course there are and always have been those who are simply trying to make an honest living.  But it behooves us to ask ourselves what kind of Pandora’s Box we may have opened with our good intentions. 

           When I began this essay, I fully intended to collect as much data as I could concerning the sale of Christianity as product.  It would be a sweeping avalanche of figures that would illustrate the enormity of the market and make obvious how far this trend had gone.  Then at the end, I was going to say something a bit terse, like: loving Jesus with nothing more than a pure heart and a tattered old Bible—priceless! 

           However, it took much more time and “Googling” to come up with the figures in the opening paragraphs than I expected, and even then much of the information was more easily obtainable from general news articles (as you may have noticed) such as those on CNN or ABC News than from Christian-based sources.  Many individual ministries had tax reports available, but it seemed that if you were interested in knowing aggregate figures or general estimates for the Christian market as a whole, the Christian community just wasn’t going to tell.