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Marketing Jesus
By Kyle Palmer
Its goal is to lead Christianity in a new direction, through statistics, that will hopefully encourage the religion upon Christian families and any other people hit by the shrapnel.
“Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high-powered rifle and scope.”
– P.J. O'Rourke
The Barna Group is a market research firm founded by George Barna, whose information is mostly cited in Evangelical circles.
Its goal is to lead Christianity in a new direction, through statistics, that will hopefully encourage the religion upon Christian families and any other people hit by the shrapnel.
One of George Barna’s books, “Transforming Children into Spiritual Champions,” demonstrates exactly how all good Christians should do this. The book’s cover has that typical sticker found on great music or gangster rap, except it reads “— Pastoral Advisory — The enemy has plans for your children — Do you?”
Oooo! Scary, George, some evil Satan is out there trying to get all the good little children from us. Actually this supposed evil is atheism, Islam, Hinduism and multiple other outlooks on faith that, in fact, are worth giving a glance to, if not all-out belief in.
Elisa Morgan, president of Mothers of Preschoolers, says that Barna’s book “flies straight to the heart of every parent, teacher and pastor. Invest early. Get them while they’re young or they may miss knowing Jesus altogether.”
Is this not disturbing? Morgan and Barna feel Christianity should use the same tactics to link faith with Jesus as McDonald’s uses to link hunger with Happy Meals.
Being the Wendy’s lover that I am, this “get them while they’re young” marketing strategy is more than a little inappropriate, especially when it comes to something as important in a person’s life as their faith.
Since when was recruiting for a religion such an important thing anyway? Oh, yeah, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the Protestant Reformation were some good times for having a bigger fan base than other religions. Well then, what major religious rendezvous do we have in the making here?
If you listen to some born-again Christians: the Apocalypse. Jesus is coming, someday, somehow, to smite something he doesn’t like so much.
Some people will see this article for what it really is: a failed attempt to find another reason to hate Christianity Crazies, but it just isn’t going to happen. While I really wish I had the chops to poke fun, it has been done before, so hopefully the liberal bastion of good hope for the downfall of Christianity will spare me its wrath.
Basically, if you want to find some new bullet to shoot at Jenna, the cow next door who’s dying to tell you why you are going to hell, I don’t have it for you. But as a woman in my Civil Rights and Liberties class would say, “Who cares about your unsympathetic and individualistic collegiate views. What about the children?”
What are America’s children losing because of this “Christianity first and only” mentality? A valuable cultural understanding process is thrown out the window by programming children to follow their parents’ religious beliefs.
Imagine a world where everything is a shake, instead of a frosty! Imagine a world where the realization of the dollar menu, and its inherent righteousness, did not arise. Not following?
Repeat this set of “Imagines,” but substitute God for shake, Allah for frosty and throw in karma instead of the dollar menu.
Republican support of a laissez-faire free-market system leaves goods to live or die by their inherent qualities. Since most born-again Christians are Republican, I find it hard to believe they would not feel obliged to adopt this same market system for the religious choices of their children.
"Marketing is the art of making something seem better than it really is."
–Suso Banderas
On the Net: Barna Group: barna.org
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