Marketing in Religion

For a long time now in Western Society, Christianity has had the most powerful marketting campaign of any existing religion. I can't remember the last time a Jewish person knocked on my door to try to get me to convert, but in suburban America you probably get a few calls a year from one Christian group or another. Despite this continuous truth, the way in which Religion has been marketted has changed quite a bit over the years.

Originally, Christianity was packaged as a religion for the masses. The Savior, Jesus, was a carpenter, not a king, and walked the earth without need of material wealth. So too did the followers of Christianity preach in a way that made the poor seem superior: things like "The meek shall inherit the earth" or the concept that there is a Heaven where even the poorest are saved. One can see how it would be appealing to a serf that his downtrodden state was not an eternal affliction.

However, in the past few hundred years there have been many different takes on spreading Christianity. The Spanish spread it with missionaries and conquistadors as they pillaged the Americas. The puritans came to take religion as a strict social order, keeping the Word as a stern reminder against a wrathful God. The tactic of the Great Awakening was one of fear; messages like "You are held above a fiery pit and are doomed to burn. All that keeps you aloft is God's good grace; and don't think he won't let go!"
The Catholic Church has long taken the position of a moral compass, providing guidance for people and a translation of the word of God. This has proven more effective at some times than others, and in a modern arena more and more new tactics have been used to secure the faith of churchgoers.

What I find to be particularly surprising is that some churches are beginning to strip away the religious iconography in favor of a more powerful marketing campaign. When I first saw Dogma, I thought that such a time would never come when the cross would be replaced with an icon like "Buddy Jesus. "

Yet to my surprise, reading this article in the NY Times by Jonathan Mahler, "The Soul of the New Exurb," I found out that this new megachurch has ditched the cross in favor of lattes and Xboxes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/magazine/327MEGACHURCH.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1
The first thing Pastor Lee did when establishing this "Radiant" church was to ask people why they didn't go to church and then change the church to fit their complaints.

Is this the new face of Christianity? A religion packaged in pop culture and stripped of all dogmatic influence?

The next thing we should ask is this: Is this a good change or a bad one?
On one hand, there is danger in having a moral compass that changes with the wind. If a religion embraces every trend that comes down the avenue there is a chance that the message will be lost along the way.
On the other, one of the most damaging properties of existing religion is the tendency to attack, exclude, or ignore others because they don't share the same belief system (a point that was made in Dogma by the Muse). Would a Christianity focuses on self-improvement and goodwill over scripture and Dogma be a negative change?

For class discussion today, if we have any, I wanted to discuss this because I have little experience with traditional religion and thought that perhaps the more informed members of our class would do a better job at weighing the positives and negatives of this situation.

For course readings click here:
http://secularsacred05.blogspot.com/search/label/course%20texts