Churches & Capitalism: Marketing the Gospel

Catch-phrases, slogans, and "10 Essentials" dominate not only the airwaves of advertising, but the godwaves of church marketing as they seek to meet the people in the marketplace and beckon them to their spiritual shop. By breaking down the Gospel to manageable chunks that catch people's attention, they rob the Gospel of its compelling pieces of social change, and focus on the satisfaction of selfish desires crafted by Capitalism.

At its core, Capitalism does one thing extremely well: it disciplines our wants. It gives us impetus and at least the perception of opportunity to earn what we want, and to give up on what we want until the proper opportunity is achieved. Capitalism achieves this by dipping deeply into the cultural channels of desire, and by programming people to believe in their selfish wants.

How does the Church combat this monster of a machine? One of two extreme ways: sacrificing the Gospel by marketing it, or by combatting Capitalism itself at its own game.

For some churches, the church should meet the people where they are: in the marketplace, and provide the alternative voice to combat the noice directly. To sell ads on train walls, to give catch-phrases to radio stations, to sell books of "7 Steps of Highly-Successful Churches" and "10 Basics of Christianity", the "Purpose-Driven Church" and other minimalist approaches to the Gospel. Think these are only advertising and not really capitalism? The concept of delayed gratification is one aspect of the disciplining process of capitalism that finds rich fruition in marketed Christianity. The necessary component of the Christian story of delayed salvation, the social impetus to help others, is absent from the capitalistic marketplace.

The Christian Church in this context should do the opposite path of counter-capitalism. The offering up a competing set of principles and beliefs that also turn people's wants towards the Church and towards God. The want is not for yourself or your immediate surroundings, but the wanting, the yearning, is for God. To be saved (in God's economic sense) is to take the selfish wants and redirect them towards God who is our beginning and end.

Capitalism, then, is not an asset of the church, but is its necessary enemy. There is a clash of technologies of desire, one that wants in one's self-interest, the other that channels that want into God's interest. Capitalism's mechanisms focus the already-present channels of culture's wants on the individual; Churches should reconfigure the entire infrastructure to be focused on God for one another. When you reduce the Gospel to catch-phrases, all of which are focused on the individual (see next week's diary), then you lose the social message of Christ and betray the Gospel.

How to combat this this? How to keep evangelizing with integrity, but one that actually works? In an abstract sense, by subversion: by not playing Capitalism's game. By not buying ad space or airtime, but by offering up the counter-set of principles by doing what capitalism cannot: embody them. No person embodies capitalism, they just drink from its breast. A person of Christ can embody the work of Christ in social outreach and justice initiatives that live out the Great Commission in far better ways than . By being human billboards of integrity in your community, and by inviting others to do the same when they wonder where you get your power. Building a church of lightposts is better than powering a flourescent cross, as the power comes from within, not dependant on an external source.

While I leave it to you to figure out the practical ways, the simple point is this: By submitting to Capitalism's principles, the Church is getting short-term gain for long-term alienation and irrelevance of the Church. Even as we see the rise of Church exposure on the airwaves and in politics, we see the donut effect of the loss of the church's grounding in Christ replaced by the empty core of self-interest.

The church and capitalism are impossible bedfellows, as they don't dream of the same thing.

Go back to your church growth councils, and say to them: "Get out of bed with capitalism, you whore of a church, and go back to your Creator who beckons you to come home again."