Evangelicalism: The Marketing or the Message?

Lone Starr: But Yogurt, what is this place? What is it that you do here?

Yogurt: Merchandising.

Barf: Merchandising? What's that?

Yogurt: Merchandising! Come, I'll show you…Merchandising! Merchandising! Where the real money from the movie is made.

-Spaceballs

Christian radio is quite a beast. If you’re in a decent-sized market, I bet you can find five to ten Christian radio stations with a casual tour of the dial. This has become a hobby of mine. On car trips, I like to find preachers or Christian rock, and I’ll listen until the nausea begins to jeopardize my driving. This drives my wife nuts, but she humors me, partly for the sake of the blog and partly because she is just nice and tolerant to a fault. I do think it bothers her, though, that I have Christian radio stations on my preset and I listen to them with our infant daughter in the car. I’ll have to stop that when the little one is old enough to understand.

So one of my favorite stations is run by Calvary Chapel, which is apparently a nationwide network of churches that could be generally classified as evangelical. I can discern no traditional denomination from either their radio broadcast or the bulletin from church this week. I like the Calvary Chapel radio because they have a lot of preaching, often focused on Biblical passages, rather than the almost exclusively pro-life propaganda that one gets from Catholic radio (a blog entry on that later, for sure). Calvary radio preaching is pretty humorous. To give you just a taste, here’s an example. I recently learned that demons are real. Not in some metaphorical or symbolic way, but actually real. And they are out to harm me every minute of every day. But that is good news! Because the only relationship I want to have with a demon is for it to be my enemy. And there is more good news: the Bible says that 1/3 of the angels in heaven fell with Satan*. That means that there are still 2/3 of the angels that are on my side. Therefore, the forces of evil cannot win. It is a mathematical certainty.

Oh my. Yes, this is my entertainment on the way to work in the morning. So when I heard that this radio station has local churches affiliated with it, I had my next church with which to resume the blog project. There were many Calvary churches in the area to choose from. Mine happened to be located in a strip mall. Good start. It is a former supermarket, now selling food for the soul. Man does not live by bread alone, after all.

It was refreshing, I admit, to realize that the beautiful appearance of a church doesn’t matter to many churchgoers. Attendees of this church need no awe-inspiring architecture, no ornate sculpture, symbolic iconography, or even a nostalgic feeling of walking into a church building. In a sense, they are not subject to the persuasive power of those traditional church elements. So is it more about the substance of the message? Perhaps.

The place was full. Not packed, but full enough. So they’re doing something right, I suppose. I continue to be surprised at the success of the evangelical movement, even in a liberal community like mine. But it doesn’t take a theology degree to figure how powerfully influential the marketing is. Unimpressive from the outside, this church was pretty smooth on the inside. The sanctuary is adjacent to a Christian bookstore and Christian coffeeshop. In the anteroom there is a large, flat-screen television showing a feed from the sanctuary. I must have walked by ten greeters, all of whom were wearing matching polo shirts. “Welcome, brother,” they said. That made me all fuzzy inside.

Let’s get to the service. Typical elements of an evangelical service:

• No ritualistic liturgy. The bulletin had a rough outline of a few items, including music, sermon, and collection, but nothing resembling traditional prayers or readings. I’m glad to see they put no more stock in that uninspiring crustiness than I do.
• Contemporary music. There were no hymnals and no organ, just a projection screen with lyrics and an acoustic guitar. They sang 3 or 4 songs in a row to begin the service. For all the popularity of contemporary Christian music, this was pretty boring. One thing traditional churches have going for them: good music. Bach was no slouch.
• A focus on the Bible. Nearly every person walking into this church carried his/her own Bible. That’s not too common. The sermon was based on a specific passage, and the pastor encouraged everyone to read along. This is consistent with the evangelical belief that each individual can experience God directly; no intercessor necessary.
• A focus on the spirit. It’s all about the love, baby. Evangelicals place way more emphasis on the holy spirit than other Christians. This is the third piece of the trinity, and frankly, I never understood why it needed to be separate from God or Jesus. But the New Testament, particularly the book of Acts, places much importance on it, and evangelicals use it as a foundational aspect of their worship. God should be felt in the soul, and each individual should be moved to worship or act on his own, as the spirit dictates.
• Just a tad bit of crazy. The speaker began by saying that Jesus is going to return, and we need to be ready for it, because it might even happen before then end of their church service that morning, and wouldn’t that be awesome. I think he was totally serious. Nobody else in the room let out a chuckle. I had to disguise mine as a cough.

The emphasis on the Holy Spirit is a huge factor in the success of evangelicalism and one of its defining characteristics. It’s all about feeling good. These churches convince people that God has directly touched each of them, that it is God’s love that makes them feel good. Also, if you put your hand in the air, you feel it even more strongly (but not as strongly as those people who put two hands in the air). It is a powerful message. I’m sure this message partly accounts for the stark difference I see in attendance. Most of the churches of European denomination I’ve attended—Baptist, Presbyterian, Reformed, Methodist—are somewhere between struggling and on life-support. But this Americanized brand of evangelicalism is flourishing. What they say must have something to do with it, because people wouldn’t show up just because of the marketing, would they? The radio station, the flat-screen TV, the matching polo shirts, the heavenly smell of God-sponsored coffee? (Slightly tastier than secular Starbucks, no doubt.) Is this why people go? Certainly not. The message must have something to do with it.

But I don’t see it. Seems to me that underneath it all, the same mushy feel-goodery underlies it all. Evangelicalism has watered down the intellectualism of the old denominations, replacing it with just feeling the spirit. But it was mostly pseudo-intellectualism to begin with. Really—can one have an intellectual assessment of demons or supernatural realms or why God makes tsunamis? No. Evangelicalism has simply repackaged the old messages, given them some modern pizzazz, some American flashiness to answer that stuffy European curmudgeonry. A spit-shine certainly can make junk look good.

*(N.B. This postulate is taken from Revelation 12:4, which says that 1/3 of the stars fell from the sky. The mythic book of Revelation is written in symbolic language, and interpreting this passage to refer to angels/demons is by no means self-evident. I think most preachers on the radio expect their audiences to be stupid. Of course, if you are listening to a radio preacher, you probably are. But that doesn’t apply to me, naturally.)

Week 6: An Evangelical Christmas Carol

“Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

            -from “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” by Herbert C. Woolston

“Scrooge became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”

-from A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

Christmas as an atheist is pretty strange.   Seems I can’t go anywhere without nativity scenes and angels reminding me that “Jesus is the reason for the season.”  I now get a small sense of what it must be like to be a Jew or Muslim living in America during Christmastime.  It’s pretty obnoxious.  Still, as an atheist I appreciate the gift-giving, the family time, the traditions, and the spirit of goodwill, all of which can be entirely secular. 

This week’s Churchgoing Atheist destination was an Evangelical church in a blighted urban neighborhood.  I wanted to see something really different from what I’m used to.  The website suggested I could find speaking in tongues—one of my goals for this project—so I went for it.

Well, there was no speaking in tongues, but in most other ways the Evangelicals lived up to my expectations:

• It was packed to overflowing, even in a neighborhood full of boarded up houses.  Clearly, people need hope. 
• There were no Bibles—because why constrain ourselves with, you know, book-learning and such, when you can just feel the spirit?
• The music was energetic and non-traditional.  Electric keyboards and drums, on a stage at the front, accompanied the songs.
• It was multicultural.  Many African Americans, some Spanish speakers, some speaking Asian languages, and many white people as well.  I admire the inclusiveness.
• Everyone seemed ridiculously happy.  If I’m to pursue this Churchgoing Atheist project, this is something I must come to terms with.  How can I defy and criticize institutions that bring such profound joy to people every day?  (Still, it’s a delusion!  Should happiness trump truth?)

I can’t say, however, that my first Evangelical experience was a typical one because the entire service was devoted to an elaborate Christmas play, which was performed by the many children and youth leaders of the church.  I was at first disappointed that the regular service was replaced by this extended children’s lesson, but as it got going, I became increasingly horrified at what I saw.

Horrified is a strong word.  It was a cute play. It was funny.  It was touching. It championed love and kindness.  It gave many little kids a chance to act and sing for a doting audience.  And since this church is so multicultural, it was like a miniature version of “It’s a Small World,” with children of all shades raising voices together in an act of cultural unity that the world doesn’t see enough of. 

Still, horrified. The original script of this play made fun of intellectuals who study the Bible.  It made fun of Jehovah’s Witnesses, by name, because they don’t celebrate Christmas.  But more offensive to me was its message of nonsense.  It featured a girl who “corrected” the belief that the Christmas story begins with the Virgin Mary.  She described how the prophet Isaiah had prophesied the coming of Jesus (Isaiah 7:14 and 9:6).  That prophecy probably had nothing to do with Jesus, but is pretty easy to apply to Jesus retroactively.  Couldn’t Isaiah have told us Jesus’s name?  Oh yeah, he did: “Emmanuel.”  That’s not “Jesus,” but nobody seems to care.  The nonsense got worse. To express how much earlier the Christmas story began, she referred to the famous opening of the Gospel of John: In the beginning was the Word.  She said that the Christmas story “began in the mind of God.”  How anyone could claim to know the mind of God, I don’t know.  This kind of meaninglessness persisted for some time.

The most memorable part of the play was an abbreviated production of A Christmas Carol.  After this play-within-a-play, the adult actor who played Scrooge had the opportunity to explain to the kids the meaning of the play.  He said that the Holy Spirit had visited Scrooge, and at the end of the play, Scrooge became a good person because he finally found Jesus.

What?  Scrooge found Jesus?  Was I supposed to get that from the ending of A Christmas Carol?

So I thought about this.  It is not outrageous to interpret the story this way.  I could see how Christians might view the spirits that visit Scrooge as the Holy Spirit.  Dickens was a believing Christian, so it’s possible.  And I could see that one might attribute Scrooge’s transformation to a religious conversion of sorts.  Since it takes place at Christmas, perhaps one could make the stretch that he “found Jesus.”  He became a good, charitable person who was filled with the Christmas spirit.  OK. 

But there are some problems with this interpretation.  The first is this: the word Jesus never appears in the book A Christmas Carol.  Not once.  If Dickens intended for us to read Scrooge’s transformation as “finding Jesus,” don’t you think he might have mentioned Jesus?  In order to write a Christmas story without mentioning Jesus, one would have to purposefully try to avoid it.  The absence of any mention of the “savior” is near proof that Dickens was not interested in the religious nature of the holiday.  In fact, “God” is barely mentioned at all—only a handful of times in phrases like “God bless you” and “God knows.”

But perhaps Dickens intended for the message to be implicit?  Doubtful.  Dickens rarely attempted to disguise his message for the reader.  He beats his readers over the head with his social commentary, so that they will make no mistake about the problems Dickens wishes to change.  A Christmas Carol is about kindness, generosity, love, charity, and compassion.  These are virtues that Dickens cherished, and we all should.  Christians have adopted them as “Christian virtues,” but that is an empty phrase.  They are human virtues.  No specific religion—nor even religion in general—has exclusive ownership of these virtues.  Dickens was championing an ethical approach to life (and coupling it with the holiday tradition to sell books), but by omitting Jesus entirely, it seems Dickens was making an attempt to divorce virtuous behavior from Christianity.  Indeed people do not need religion to teach them to be good.

Wait, you ask, wasn’t Dickens a Christian?  I’m no Dickens expert, but I believe he was, as nearly everyone in Victorian England had to be.  But his books are focused on social, political, and moral issues, and there is little sense of any benevolent divinity in them.  Even when he does explicitly refer to religious issues, it is in the context of social justice.  He probably best fits with a religious worldview that understands all religion to have the purpose of social justice.  Many people interpret the Gospels or other religious texts to be valuable primarily because they teach humans how to be good to one another.  For Dickens, salvation was not to be found in heaven, but in the social transformation of this world. 

Consider, for example, the end of Hard Times, when the character with the most Christian virtue, Stephen Blackpool, falls down a mineshaft.  He looks up at the star, and Dickens says it’s like the star that led the wise men to Jesus.  An explicit religious reference.  That star, however, symbolizes no saving Jesus, no merciful God, for Stephen Blackpool dies, and that’s that.  Stephen tells us what that star symbolizes to him: people should be kind to one another.  Stephen’s death illustrates that the heartless capitalist system of Victorian England victimizes good working people, and Dickens uses Stephen’s death to call for compassion and humanity in the industrial world. God is absent from the world of Hard Times, and I believe he is nearly absent from A Christmas Carol as well, or as absent as he can be in a story about Christmas.

I left the Evangelical church and their bizarre Christmas play feeling utterly sorry for those beautiful children.  Their incorrect lesson about Dickens may not matter much in the big picture, but the big picture does matter: churches teach falsehoods.  They present them with confidence and claim that those who don’t buy what they sell are missing something vital.  Churches may have good motives, but those children, all the little children of the world, are being brainwashed.  Why do they need to hear that Jesus loves them?  Why can’t it be enough to say that their parents, family, and friends love them?