Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Isn't This Taking Song of Songs a Little Too Far
This WorldNetDaily piece reveals that the guy who owns GoDaddy.com (of the highly risque Super Bowl ad) is the guy that founded Parsons Technology, one of the leading providers of Christian Software on the market. (HT: A Little About Everything)
I'll be the first one to admit that God is not sex adverse, and sex is so common in marketing today that I did not find the commercial particularly out of line, mostly because it was more making fun of last year's Janet Jackson debacle than being actually titillating.
What I do have an enormous amount of trouble with is that this is a huge sign of how much marketing and sales and money has entered the evangelical mindset.
Now Parson's to my knowledge has never claimed a personal relationship with Jesus. The piece indicates that their initial Bible software was written by a VP, who clearly is a Christian (Homer nods to the original post, now corrected: A Little About Everything); however, all of us have worked for companies that did not share our convictions. I'm not sure there is any personal admonishments necessary here. As I read the WND piece, Parsons himself is no longer associated with Parson Technology and neither, as I understand it, is GoDaddy.com.
But when you combine it with this post over at SmartChristian.com, you really have to wonder what's going on.
SmartChristian is also asking right now, "What is an Evangelical?" I think this incident points out that for many "Evangelical" is a market demographic -- and that includes many in the church. There is a terrifying book I read recently called Branded Nation. It discusses marketing and churches. Made me shudder.
There is no question that marketing offers tools that can help the church spread it's message -- but there is a danger. Marketing by definition treats people as things, or at least members of some anonymous category. Is that what Jesus did? Is that what we should be doing?
I'll be the first one to admit that God is not sex adverse, and sex is so common in marketing today that I did not find the commercial particularly out of line, mostly because it was more making fun of last year's Janet Jackson debacle than being actually titillating.
What I do have an enormous amount of trouble with is that this is a huge sign of how much marketing and sales and money has entered the evangelical mindset.
Now Parson's to my knowledge has never claimed a personal relationship with Jesus. The piece indicates that their initial Bible software was written by a VP, who clearly is a Christian (Homer nods to the original post, now corrected: A Little About Everything); however, all of us have worked for companies that did not share our convictions. I'm not sure there is any personal admonishments necessary here. As I read the WND piece, Parsons himself is no longer associated with Parson Technology and neither, as I understand it, is GoDaddy.com.
But when you combine it with this post over at SmartChristian.com, you really have to wonder what's going on.
SmartChristian is also asking right now, "What is an Evangelical?" I think this incident points out that for many "Evangelical" is a market demographic -- and that includes many in the church. There is a terrifying book I read recently called Branded Nation. It discusses marketing and churches. Made me shudder.
There is no question that marketing offers tools that can help the church spread it's message -- but there is a danger. Marketing by definition treats people as things, or at least members of some anonymous category. Is that what Jesus did? Is that what we should be doing?
