Book Reviewed by Aubrey Ducker,
Winter Park, FL
Shopping for God: How Christianity Went From In Your Heart to In Your Face
James B. Twitchell,
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007, $26
If God had a face, what would it be and would you want to see, if seeing meant that you would have to believe . The lyrics to Brian Withycombe‘s “ . . 1992 hit song ask, “if God were one of us,” how would we react? Every Sunday morning evangelists, ministers, prophets and priests put their human face on God attempting to sell the church and salvation to sinners and seekers alike. James B. Twitchell sees a marketing opportunity, one which has been used for centuries, but now adds Madison Avenue techniques second to none.
If you could buy God, what would you pay? Where would you go “shopping” for God? Twitchell, Professor of English and Advertising at the University of Florida, answers these and numerous other questions. As the title implies, religion (or in particular Christianity) has changed from a deep feeling held in our soul to a showman like performance art intended to force conversion and compliance. Be like your friends and neighbors or be left out of the party!
Pastorpreneurs as Twitchell calls them are building “city-states of believers” as they use big box retail practices to sell “low-cost rapture” seeking transfer growth from the “oldline suppliers,” Methodist, Episcopal, and Lutheran. If all this seems particularly heathen or even offensive, perhaps that is because Christians do not usually consider their faith from a purely marketing perspective. Twitchell however sees religion as one big marketing experiment. Where best to purchase an afterlife? From a tried and true, tithing-required, robe-wearing church with elders and history, or from the fun-loving, people-pleasing pastor who plays golf with you on Tuesday, preaches prosperity on Sunday, and wears a mike like a rock star?
Certainly the prime marketing season running from Black Friday to Endof-Year markdowns, also known as the Christmas season, offers churches a unique revival period. From the first time the church decided to use the pagan festival of sun (Winter Solstice) as an opportunity to promote God, people have used this time as a marketing machine par excellence. The Twelve Days of Christmas highlight consumerism’s link to the Cross as no other secular song, yet Christians continue the myth that the twelve days are a road to salvation hidden from Catholic police of the middle ages. Even today, the battle of Merry Christmas versus Happy Holidays pits “real Christians” against those who would market the holiday to a secular world without offence.
Reading this book is both a challenge for the believer to accept much of the history of Christianity not taught in Sunday School and an introduction to marketing principles being mastered by the flourishing megachurches, as mainline denominations see continual decline from the glory days of 1950s revivalism.
Pastors and church growth ministers should read Twitchell’s book even if only to learn what others value and attempt. Some books should be neither tasted nor swallowed whole, but they should be read for their value and shared with others in need of the lesson.
