The Marketing of the Christ

An open letter to Christian and other religious organizations 

For a long period of my life, I was a man of very little faith. All the evil in the world, the fundamental indifference of man to the interests of his brethren, the ease with which we give in to our basic biological instincts for self (and self-interest) preservation—all these, at some point, led me to wonder about the business of an omnipotent, omni-present God in the affairs of mankind.

Walking the world on the brink of godlessness is a lonely and pointless endeavor.  Certainly not the kind of existence I found enjoyable. And so, one drearily uneventful evening in 2004, I went to see a special screening of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” hoping not as much to restore my faith as to find the inspiration to re-evaluate my faith, and the lack of it.

Sadly, whether or not the film had the stuff to affect me that way, I probably will never know.

It wasn’t a bad film.  On the contrary, it’s by far the best, most graphic, most hard-nosed take on the crucifixion ever.  You better believe it: I felt every lash that tore into the Christ’s flesh, cringed at every spit that landed on His face, raged at every mockery that mangled whatever dignity He had left.  From Zeffirelli’s “Jesus of Nazareth,” through the countless Christ films I’ve seen—I spent all of my formative years, and the better part of my teens, in a Catholic school—this one was the first to ever really do justice to the event.  Unsanitized, un-glamorized, un-editorialized. 

Until the film ended.

As was my usual habit at the end of a good film, I began to read the credits while doing a quick organization of my thoughts about the film, for a more thorough reflection later on while lulling myself to sleep.  Unfortunately, no sooner had the credits begun to roll when my thoughts were rudely interrupted by one of the organizers of the show.  In his hand was an invasively written interpretation of the film, which he read aloud, as if the film needed such “supplementary reading.”  And, as if this weren’t insulting enough (for me, at least), ushers soon began distributing leaflets, the contents of which I didn’t even bother to know—I walked out, rudely (sorry), before they could get within a mile of me.

Admittedly, the courage and dedication of many volunteer evangelists is admirable, the way they expose themselves to such rudeness as that which I displayed, in the (genuine, I hope) desire to reach even one soul out of the hundreds (or thousands) in attendance.  But, speaking as a lost soul, I must say that’s no way to do it.  And I’m quite certain that I don’t speak only for myself.

So what would penetrate a godless cynic’s thick skull? I don’t presume to be an authority on any of this, but I can speak as both a spiritual vagrant and an advertising professional.  I don’t presume to preach about the right way to preach, but I can share a few basic principles that might help in marketing Christian spirituality to people like me. Yes, evangelization is essentially marketing, believe it or not.  And like marketing, it’s not as much about what is being sold as it is about whom it is being sold to.

Soft-sell.  The fact that my kind is already plagued with doubts about God is a wall that is next to impenetrable.  An unsolicited sermon on the mount (or in the movie theater, or on the bus, or wherever) most definitely won’t work.  Free will is a powerful weapon—especially in shutting out unwanted messages.  So try a little subtlety.  Smooth talking doesn’t always have to be a conning tool.  As the saying goes: drop a frog in boiling water, and it will jump right out; heat the water slowly, and the frog will boil without knowing it.

Keep it relevant.  The plain truth about marketing is that your product’s best features are not necessarily its selling points. A spiritually sound existence is probably the mother of all “products.”  It’s loaded with features, and it’s free!  But that doesn’t mean that everybody will want it—or at the very least, know that they want it.  To presume that people (especially the lost souls) will readily listen to “the words of God” out of conscience is bordering on self- righteousness. If you really want to sell someone like me a piece of Heaven, find out first what makes me tick—my needs, wants, fears, issues, dreams, turn-ons… And then speak to me in those terms. 

Keep it real. The promise of salvation and eternal life in the kingdom of God is like Einstein’s theory or relativity—we’ve all heard of it, but honestly, who the hell can grasp the idea? The point is that people in this day and age have so much on their minds that there’s hardly room (if any at all) for profoundities that are not readily translated into tangible, everyday, real-world concepts. The challenge to evangelists is this: offer a realistic, tangible, and believable instant gratification for accepting (in the real sense of the word) Christ into my life, and you’ll have legions of loyal customers in a heartbeat. 

Keep it simple. The most enduring advertising strategies are the ones that can sum up the brand in a one-word elementary concept: Volvo is safety; Marlboro is cowboy (and all the qualities that a cowboy represents); Coke is fun. Often, the advertising concept is hardly even traceable to any inherent product feature. But the campaigns have stuck simply because they are, well, simple. No highfalutin ideas; just basic concepts that can be empirically explained to even a six-year-old kid. For Christian organizations, here’s the brief: the brand is Jesus Christ; the proposition is spiritual salvation; what’s the one-word elementary advertising concept? Answer that, and I guarantee you’ll be God’s top hotshot salesman. 

Fortunately for me—and no thanks to the preachy, self-righteous evangelists—I have managed to grow a little bit of faith over the years since that night of the film screening. And since then, I’ve learned of several spiritual activists who attempted to use the ways of the world to achieve God’s designs. Most essentially flopped, but kudos to those guys for thinking out of the box!

Last week I read about some church communities in America who’ve started using Twitter during services, which as expected got the purists and the pragmatists at each other’s throats again. The debate on the so-called commercialization of Christianity will always come and go, and probably never really be settled. But let me just pose this question to the old-school clergymen out there who insist that modern ways have no place in evangelization: why in God’s name do I have to pay to receive my 7 Sacraments?

The point is we live in a world run by commerce and all things modern. And if the way to save souls is to play by worldly rules, I say it’s a game well worth playing.