Dan, I think it would be an interesting research project to find out just how much of “christian merchandising” is actually owned by well known large corporations with publicly traded stock on the NYSE. Just who is it that owns the outfits producing today’s CCM? Who owns the bookstores selling all this xtianized muck? Who is it that is publishing an ever increasing number of gazillion different Bible translations?

Whoever they are, I suspect for them we’re just another market to be exploited.

[...] over at Cerulean Sanctum has written an excellent post entitled Sacred Spam that I can relate [...]

I feel your pain.

I have a contact form and even I get handwritten spam offering from people wanting me to review books or peddle Christian products, Christian MLMs, or pleas for money for missions organizations promising a trip to India if I gave. The worst ones are from the ‘grand rebukers’ who give you the ‘prophetic death threat’ via ‘hit and run’ methods and leave a bizarre looking e-mail address knowing that if you responded, it would bounce back. However, I have their IP address date/time stamp in case someone goes over the edge.

The other area to be concerned over is allowing your name, phone, address (and now e-mail address) to be listed in the annual church member directory. In fact, before I joined the church I attended and filled out the general information forms for the church rolodex, I boldly stated on that form in BOLD CAPITAL letters that the church was NEVER!!! to give, sell, partner, or by any other means my personal information except for local church business issues or letters from denomination headquarters. The reason why is because:

(1): One church I used to attend would, for extra money, contact Christian ministries and offer to ‘give’ them a copy of the church directory for a donation to the church. How I found out about this was that my last name was misspelled in the directory and I started receiving Christian junk mail with the misspelled last name and when the church split, one of the elders who left along with me confessed and asked for forgiveness and repentance for doing this practice.

(2): There are congregation members who will un-staple their copies of the church directory apart, scan them, and offer them (to make some extra money) for sell to Christian organizations (especially religious right political ministry organizations) who ask for money or even more appalling, certain political candidates who have the approvals of religious right organizations. Then you would receive a ’special letter’ appealing to the Christian conscience playing on the ‘abortion’ and ‘homosexuality’ cards in envelopes that looked like government checks, yellow western-union telegrams, or foreign airmail letters with the alternating blue/red stripes.

Also, when I used to subscribe to a very popular Charismatic magazine and it’s sister Christian Men’s magazine, I always received alot of Christian junk mail in my mailbox from National Christian organizations and wondered if it came from them because the address in small print was the same hometown as the headquarters of that Christian magazine???

Calvin Coolidge once said that the “business of America is business,” and indeed commercialism has permeated every aspect of our lives. One doesn’t have to look far to find out that this is the case. It has pretty much defined the paradigm of how many churches operate nowadays: pastor=CEO & church=business-franchise.

But I think an even bigger problem is the increasing tendency of church leaders (or the big name leaders) to be concerned about their being respectable.