Where Would Jesus Shop?: The Relationship Between Politics and the Use of Popular
Culture in American Evangelical Churches
Abstract
This research focuses on the relationship between media use and political action by
evangelical organizations in the U.S. Using ethnographic observations of media use in
multiple churches in Champaign, Illinois and surrounding counties, we have found that
mainstream media – such as popular television shows and movies, as well as commercial
references – permeate the modern, evangelical church experience. The adoption of
secular popular culture blurs the boundaries between religion and mass media
specifically, and between public and private in general. In the past, scholars who study
the relationship between religion and media have made a distinction between religion as a
private, sacred phenomenon and the mass media as a secular public enterprise. However,
our observations would indicate that, at least in the case of evangelical churches in
America, this line is being erased, and the spheres once considered to be mutually
exclusive now overlap, as religion moves into the public, political sphere and as popular
culture enters the church. This move from the public into the private – and vice versa –
has significant implications for the role of religious organizations in American politics.
Introduction
This exploratory project began as an offshoot from a larger study on media use and
the public sphere that was funded by a National Science Foundation grant, in which
individuals from all walks of life kept media diaries in which they recorded their daily
media use in their private and public lives.1 Many of the participants were religious and
discussed their religious involvement in their diaries, sometimes in the context of politics
and the 2004 presidential election, which was being held at the time. Those individuals
who did not consider themselves to be religious also discussed the role of religion in
national politics, noting what they considered to be appropriate and inappropriate overlap
between church and state. This salient feature of the diaries (ie, where the line is drawn
between public and private, and between politics and religion) led us to begin
ethnographic observations in local churches.
The data for this research come from ethnographic observations of evangelical
churches in Champaign County and surrounding areas in southeastern Illinois. We
attended Sunday morning services in these churches and took notes on the content of the
sermon, the media used, the interaction among parishioners, and the spaces themselves.
We also examined the websites for these churches to supplement our observations. It is
important to note that, although our observations were limited to churches that operated
within our area, all of these churches were connected to larger religious organizations.
Some of the churches were part of Assembly of God, and others were part of institutions
that operate worldwide, but all were evangelical1. Thus, although the findings of this
By “evangelical,” we are referring to the generally accepted definition used in the U.S., in which
evangelicalism is seen as based in the Protestant tradition, and in which the Bible is taken literally and seen
to be inerrant. As Morgan (2003) states, evangelicalism views the “scripture (as) an untrammeled and
unparalleled record or transcription of divine thought and will” (p. 108).
1
research are based upon observations of small and large churches in southeastern Illinois,
our local observations might be indicative of larger trends in evangelical churches in the
U.S.
When we began our observations in the church, our attention was drawn to the
plethora of media – both old and new – and technology that framed the experience.
Many scholars have discussed the importance of material culture in American
Christianity. McDannell states that
American Christians…want to see, hear, and touch God…. Throughout
American history, Christians have explored the meaning of the divine, the
nature of death, the power of healing, and the experience of the body by
interacting with a created world of images and shapes. People learn the
discourses and habits of their religious community through the material
dimension of Christianity” (1998:1. emphasis added).
This emphasis on the sensual nature of religion – or “visual piety,” to use the words
of Morgan (2003) – in evangelical churches is not particularly new. Both Hendershot
(2004) and McDannell (1998) note that Protestants in particular have demonstrated an
affinity to (as well as a simultaneous rejection of) material culture that dates back to
Victorian times, if not earlier. What does seem to be new, however, is the enlistment of
media, both new and old, into church services that not only emphasizes the importance of
secular popular culture to religious institutions, but is also related to the increasing
connection between religion and politics in the U.S. More specifically, we theorize that
the incorporation of mainstream media into churches help to construct a specific religious
(moral) and political (conservative) identity, which then sets the stage for possible
political mobilization through churches that political scientists have noted as a
phenomenon in recent American politics. As part of this argument, we put forth that the
incorporation of secular popular culture into churches represents an erosion of the tension
between public and private, between the profane and the sacred, that has often been
discussed by scholars of religion and the media.
Typically, scholars (such as Schultze, 2001) have seen an irresolvable tension
between mainstream media and modern religion, manifested in the rejection of popular
culture by religious groups, but also in the treatment of organized religion by the secular
media. However, Hoover notes that the old dividing line between religion and media
may be disappearing:
What was once easily understood as a line between private and public has been or is
being erased as a result of forces at work in contemporary religion and contemporary
media. What has emerged in place of an old dualism between the private and the
public, between the religious and the secular, and between the sacred and the profane
is a less definite space where those distinctions exist in a state of fluidity and flux
(2001: 50).
This may be especially true in the churches we have observed, as evangelical
organizations are especially adaptable and inventive in using material culture to spread
religious messages (Moen, 1998:193). This makes sense, in part because of the nature of
evangelicalism itself. As Hendershot (2004. p. 11) notes, “It should not be surprising that
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evangelicals know how to manipulate the conventions of popular media. After all, a
completely isolated culture could not be evangelical, could not reach out to share ‘the
good news’ of the Bible with others.”
What we have witnessed in the course of our visits to churches can almost be
described as an embrace of popular and consumer culture by evangelical organizations,
in which religious messages often are couched in consumerist terms, or delivered in the
form of popular and commercial culture. Several scholars have described the practice by
which religious groups take the forms (such as film styles) of secular popular culture
while changing the content to reflect religious values (Hendershot, 2004; McDannell,
1998). One example of this is provided by Schofield Clark (2003), who notes that
evangelical churches were adept at using media to send religious messages, seen
especially in publicly-released movies like A Thief in the Night, designed to show what
would happen to those who didn’t adopt the beliefs of the Church in a story about the
Rapture.
What we have seen, however, goes beyond what Hendershot (2004) describes as the
“poaching” of commercial forms of popular culture by evangelicals. Instead, what we
have observed is first the wholesale appropriation of movies, television shows, and
commercials – and the concomitant references to consumer culture – that do not have
explicit religious content, and then the attempt to imbue these media, in the context of
church services, with moral values and religious messages. Many scholars of religion
and media (Hendershot, 2004; Morgan, 2003; McDannell, 1998) have focused upon the
use of religious popular culture that has been produced by evangelical organizations, such
as Veggie Tales (the Christian videos for children) and the myriad bumper stickers, tshirts, and music that espouse religious values. Very few, if any, have discussed the
incorporation of secular popular culture and commercial media by religious organizations
themselves. In that sense our research is unique, and possibly a result of our method,
since ethnographic observations within churches themselves allow a glimpse into what
churches are actually doing on a day-to-day basis.
Consumer culture and popular culture
Before describing the adoption of consumer culture by evangelical churches, it is
important to define the relationship between popular and consumer culture in the context
of this research. By consumer culture we mean both the actual consumption of goods
and services but also the consumption of popular culture and mass media (which in the
U.S. are mostly commercial). Consumption in both senses is invoked in church
language. For example, many sermons mentioned local and national companies, casually
referencing them in discussions of how to be a good Christian in everyday life, with one
pastor mentioning the temptation not to put money into the coffee jar at Panera, or why
picking up trash in the Wal-Mart parking lot is important. In a different sermon, another
pastor asked for a show of hands who in the audience had gone to Wal-Mart to get the
latest Xbox video game for their children during a discussion of war and abortion.
In addition to commercial references, however, one church also broadcasts local
college basketball games for the public at night, using the church not solely for religious
purposes, but also for public enjoyment and consumption of secular popular media. The
church leaders themselves acknowledge this, referring to what would normally be called
the church “sanctuary” (where services are held) as a “theater,” and referring to the
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sermon itself as a “show” during services. Thus, consumer culture in the context of the
churches we observed includes the consumption of popular culture as well as specific
references to consumption of commercial goods. Multiple instances of this consumerist
aspect of evangelical church services were observed in all of the churches that we visited.
Why embrace consumer culture?
The adoption of popular and commercial culture is potentially beneficial to
evangelical organizations for several reasons, but primarily we believe because media
culture is a central aspect of Americans’ everyday experience and identities (CITE).
Because of this, new churches’ ability to enlist this culture in the fabric of their service
and teachings empowers them to capture the imaginations and allegiances of Americans
who might not have formerly had any particularly religious inclination, education or
identification. Seen from this perspective, the various movie clips and popular
commercial references allow churchgoers to draw upon their own, pre-existing
knowledge about popular and consumer culture (both distinctly American) in order to
better understand the religious messages conveyed by the church. Most often, the secular
media were used in conjunction with specific passages from the Bible, so that a clip from
the Lone Ranger television show was accompanied by a reference to John 13:35 (“By this
all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another"). One of the church
leaders explained it in precisely these terms, telling us that many members of the
congregation were not “bible literate,” and that using media in the service made the
service more accessible and the ideas less foreign, thus making media into an effective
evangelizing tool.
Building from this point, the function of popular culture in the church thus appears to
be three-fold: first, it helps to educate new church members that may be unfamiliar with
the teachings of the bible by providing a frame of reference through familiar secular
movies and commercials. Second, it firmly embeds the church experience in American
popular culture, in the process blurring the line between private religious practice with
public mass media, a phenomenon noted by Hoover (2003, 2001). Third, the use of
popular culture enables the construction of a specific identity – consumerist, moral,
conservative, white, and male – within the church congregation itself.
These conclusions bring us back to our original interest in the presence or absence of
political activity in religious spaces in the U.S. When studying the relationship between
modern religion and politics, it is clear that political action by churches represents a move
by evangelical churches into the public sphere.2 What we are discovering is that the
public/private distinction is becoming blurred in the other direction as well, as secular,
mainstream media enters into the space of the church. Typically, evangelicals have
attempted to be “in” but not “of” the secular world (Hendershot, 2004). However, it is
possible that the erosion of the boundary between the sacred and profane that occurred as
American churches have become more political has resulted in the incorporation of the
outside, secular world into the church. It is beyond the scope of this research to explore
2
Many examples of this exist, including that 22 percent of voters in the last presidential election indicated
that the most important factor for them was “moral values” (Ludden, 2004), or simply the fact that the most
salient political issues in the last election included abortion and gay rights.
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what these changes mean to religious organizations and their members3. Instead, we use
what we have observed to explore how the use of secular media – both old and new – has
changed the political nature of American evangelical churches.
Getting a Postcard from God: The Church as Locus for American Politics in the
Bush Era
The political nature of churches in American culture has long been recognized (Shupe
and Misztal 1998; Buddenbaum, 2000; MORE REFS). Many have commented on the
prominent role American churches have played in the 2004 presidential election,
attributing President Bush’s election victory to the role evangelical churches played in
mobilizing support for the Republican party (Frank 2005; MORE REFS). One example
is the highly publicized list of 22 “instructions” that were sent to churches from the BushCheney campaign that included doing voter registration drives, distribute voter guides,
and identifying who in the church was “pro-Bush” (Cooperman, 2004). In addition, the
fact that religion and religious issues such as abortion and gay rights were such central
issues in the last presidential election campaign indicates the central role that religion has
come to play in American politics. A comparison of voting by religion between 2000 and
2004 illustrates the growing influence of religion on voter behavior (Figure 1).
There is also evidence from the NSF “media diary” study indicating that some
individuals felt pressure from their churches to vote for a conservative president. One
couple in particular who were devout Christians mentioned that their pastor exhorted the
congregation to vote for Bush on the grounds of moral values. The couple stated that
they decided instead to vote for Democratic candidate John Kerry because of their
unhappiness with the Iraq war, but couldn’t tell anyone at church for fear of ostracism.
This statement is an important indicator of the increasing overlap between the political
and religious spheres. It also indicates the importance of not focusing solely on the
messages – from both mediated and non-mediated sources – but on the reception of those
messages as well, a point addressed later in this paper.
What we have found in the course of our research is that there are different ways that
churches are political, and different methods that they employ toward social and political
ends. Not everyone agrees that religious organizations are overtly political. Hendershot
(2004), in her examination of churches’ use of religious media within and outside of
church services, states that “although some Christian media are designed for overtly
political and sometimes incendiary purposes… the majority of Christian media does not
have overt political intentions” (p. 9). This difference in opinion could be due to
different considerations of what is political. For Hendershot, politics might be restricted
to electoral politics and partisan campaigning; in the context of this research, however,
politics includes electoral politics as well as other factors such as political mobilization
and the wholesale embrace of capitalism towards social and political ends.
What follows is a description of our observations of political activity in several
evangelical churches. Although pastors in conversations with us (as outsiders) indicated
that they were bipartisan, the content of the services indicated otherwise.
3
For more discussion on secularization theory, see Moen (2001); or see Hoover (2001, 2003) on how
recent changes in the mass media have influenced religious organizations.
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1. Political content of sermons: In the course of our research we observed repeated
instances of explicit political talk. During one service, the pastor made a connection
between George Bush and God, expressing disappointment that “I never get a phone call
or postcard from George Bush, although I’d like to,” but we can all communicate directly
with God. Here, members of the congregation are addressed as Americans. But in this
case, the specific identification goes further, with an allusion to George W. Bush which
cast him in the light of a great leader, and the concomitant implication that a politically
conservative congregation supports Bush, looks up to him in this way and desires direct
communication with him. Another pastor at a different church also overtly equated the
American president with Jesus, referring to Jesus as “our president, our commander in
chief” who “put himself on the front lines” to sacrifice for a cause.
Interestingly, this theme of militarism and doing “battle” again enemies was
mentioned repeatedly in several churches in terms of waging “spiritual warfare.”
Sermons in different churches included discussions of the importance of doing “battle”
against “evil,” using clips from war-themed, popular movies such as Gettysburg and Ben
Hur, with one sermon in particular emphasizing Mel Gibson’s character in the movie
Braveheart as an example of how to become a “radical revolutionary” for Jesus. The war
language used in the sermons – in conjunction with the films – touches upon a theme of
new American militarism of which evangelical churches have been associated, beginning
with the Vietnam War and continuing with the ongoing Iraq War (Bacevich, 2005). This
new militarism may be responsible for the absence of criticism by many evangelical
churches on the current U.S. war in Iraq, seen especially in the framing of certain
political issues.
2. Agenda setting and priming of political issues: While associating George Bush
with God and Jesus was an example of an overt invocation of politics, political references
were not always as explicit. Another evangelical church sermon alluded to the
importance the church played in agenda setting and the priming of political issues,
especially the war. In this case, the pastor began to talk about the cause for the lack of
peace in our society, including the “war in the Middle East” (and, oddly, the holiday
shopping rush at Wal-Mart and the pastor’s search for the latest version of the Xbox
video game player), and how some might feel that this war was the cause for chaos and a
lack of peace. We fully expected an ensuing discussion of the war in Iraq and the tragedy
of lost lives, but the talk then turned to a discussion of Jesus as the “King of Peace.” It
turned out that what we needed to be concerned with – what Jesus truly cares about – was
not the ongoing war but instead what was termed the “slaughter of the innocents,” a
thinly veiled reference to abortion that is identified by this name on evangelical websites.
The message sent by the pastor during this sermon appeared to be that you can care about
the war to a certain degree, but what Jesus cares about (and what should be the most
important issue) is abortion.
In part, this lack of criticism against the war appears to be tied in to evangelical views
about abortion. A sermon at a different church shed some light into the relationship
between war and abortion, stating that, “although abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia are
immoral, God does allow for death in battle.” This sermon included video depicting
small, white crosses on a grassy expanse with the U.S. White House in the background,
again alluding to politics in relation to these issues. In addition, homosexuality and gay
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rights – salient issues in the 2004 presidential campaign – were discussed, in one instance
three weeks before the presidential election:
What about Christianity and the whole, um, gay/lesbian scene? I don’t
believe Christianity says that’s the way we ought to live, but…we ought
not to be a barrier for them coming to Christ to get the help that they
need…. I’m not saying we have to have (an AIDS) ministry. We don’t
support lifestyles that don’t fit with the Bible, but we support them coming
to Christ and getting help (emphasis added).
Here, homosexuality is treated as an addiction, similar to alcoholism, a problem that
can be “fixed” through religious counseling (Hendershot, 2004). From this perspective,
support for gay rights is unnecessary, because homosexuality is simply an aberrant
‘lifestyle’ choice.
This method of framing the issues is important to consider when exploring the
relationship between politics and the mass media in the context of religion, because
political messages that churchgoers receive from their pastors may a significant effect on
their use of mass media and on their political opinions (Buddenbaum, 2000: 27).
Specifically, Buddenbaum theorizes that “specialized sources” – such as religious leaders
in church – influence how people interpret and use the mass media, in part by supplying
alternate resources for making sense of information and forming opinions (p. 28). In the
context of our research, the influence of the media on religious beliefs appears to be part
of the strategy of evangelical leaders. In discussing evangelical organizations
specifically, Jelen (1993, in Buddenbaum, 2000: 25) notes that “the belief within
Conservative Protestantism of an inerrant bible coupled with a rhetorical style that links a
specific Bible verse to each statement, gives a normative dimension to clergy
pronouncements that is much more conducive to political mobilization than the liberal
Protestant emphasis on individual autonomy and reason.”
What we would add from our own observations is that evangelical churches have
begun the practice of associating specific bible verses to secular films, television shows,
and commercials. For example, a discussion of Desperate Housewives was accompanied
by the bible verse Peter 3:7 (“Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to
knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs
together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered”).
These two examples – the explicit political content and the framing of political issues
within church services – may not surprise those who followed the involvement of
religious organizations in the last election, especially those familiar with evangelical
institutions. What our research can contribute, however, is a better understanding of the
use of secular popular culture – and the concomitant consumerist emphasis – by
churches, especially in relation to American politics. Our argument is that the use of
popular culture has the potential to make the rhetoric of these religious organizations
more powerful when couched within the language and ideals of American consumer
culture. Integral to this argument is the construction of identity and how religious
individuals make meaning in their lives.
3. Construction of identity and meaning-making.
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This research supports the idea that group identities (at least within the context of the
evangelical churches we studied) are formed within a capitalist framework that uses
secular popular culture. What we found is that the references to mainstream media –
popular Hollywood films, television shows, and commercials – bracket and permeate the
experience, invoking we argue a particular sense of identity that is above all consumerist,
politically conservative, white, male, and moral. The use of this media indicates that
evangelical leaders recognize that, as Americans, their congregations lead highly
mediated lives, and churches’ ability to incorporate media that is familiar to churchgoers
allow religious messages to be delivered in a form that is familiar to American
individuals.
The role of the media in identity construction and meaning-making is addressed by
Hoover (2003) and Schofield-Clark (2003) in several reception studies, with Hoover in
particular exploring the interaction between media and religion, and how this contributes
to “meaning making and the construction of identity” (2003: 10). Hoover states that the
recent proliferation of the mass media and the resulting diversity of information and
symbolic sources available has accentuated a sense of individualism and personal
autonomy (and has also resulted in a loss of control over symbolic forms by religious
organizations). As a result, religious individuals now take a consumer approach to
“shopping” for the church and religion that best suits them (2001: 50). This trend of
“personal autonomy” and emphasis on the self is applicable to this research because of
the churches’ focus on consumer culture, which is largely focused on individual wants,
needs, and desires.
Interestingly, our observations in the church affirm Hoover’s assertions. As one
pastor noted during a service, “It is difficult to bridge the word of the Bible with life in
the 21st century.” In addition, another pastor quoted Rick Warren (author of the wildly
popular book “A Purpose Driven Life”) when he described American churchgoers as
“Christian bunnies” that were “hopping all over the place” from church to church. This
statement was accompanied by a clip of the television show the Lone Ranger [LAST
SLIDE HERE, ANDREA], which the pastor showed because “the Lone Ranger
symbolizes western mentality that we can do it all by ourselves.” This message is telling,
because it indicates that these evangelical churches have recognized that their
constituents live highly mediated lives and that, as a result, the media – in this instance,
an American television hero – plays a key role in how individuals make sense of their
public and private lives.
4. Consumer power. Recently, certain scholars have noted that evangelical churches
changed their strategy, from boycotting companies that went against religious ideals in
the 1970s and 1980s, to using proactive consumer buying power in the 1990’s and 2000’s
(Hendershot, 2004). McDannell (1998) notes that there are now Christian phone
directories published to aid church members find Christian car dealers, florists,
restaurants, and other companies. Thus, if there is a company that supports the messages
of the religious right – be they political, social, or moral – religious leaders attempt to
support them financially.
The apparent economic mobilization by religious groups and their members indicates
that not only have evangelical organizations incorporated references to secular popular
culture into their church services, but that they embrace many dimensions of capitalism,
in effect drawing important aspects of public life into the previously private space of the
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church. This is evident in the mentions of both local and national businesses in almost
every sermon we observed, in which the discussions of these companies were woven into
the fabric of the sermon in the context of a religious message. When discussing how to
be a good Christian, one pastor noted that one shouldn’t steal from the “honor system”
coffee can at the national chain restaurant Panera, nor should one litter in the Wal-Mart
parking lot; and a discussion of how to integrate of the Bible into everyday life was
facilitated by showing a menu from the local restaurant “Smokey Bones” (eg, how the
Bible is a “menu” for how to live a moral life).
What follows is a description of church services that incorporate secular popular
culture – and its attendant consumerist perspective – into the style and content of their
church services, and then an exploration of the reasons that secular culture is playing
such a prominent role in American evangelical churches today. For the sake of space, in
this paper, we focus on two of the churches we observed: a new, relatively small church
that was a “plant” from a larger church in a nearby town, and a mega-church with over
2,000 members. As mentioned previously, both churches are part of larger evangelical
organizations in the U.S. and worldwide.
“Welcome to All-Mart”: References to Popular and Consumer Culture in Church
“I have a pain in my side, a headache, and don’t feel that being a greeter at
All-Mart is fulfilling.” (From Choices Community Church, October 9, 2005)
On our first visit to the churches we were struck by the media-saturated nature of the
experience that included PowerPoint presentations, live music, websites, and clips from
popular movies, television shows, and commercials. The use of many different forms of
technology – such as the Internet – by religious organizations is not unusual, as has been
noticed by Miller and Slater (date) and Keane (1997), in their examination of the speed
and skill in which religious organizations have adopted new technology. In addition, the
use of religious popular culture produced by Protestant churches is not new, as several
authors (Hendershot, 2004; McDannell, 1998) have noted. Stout (2002) and
Buddenbaum (2001) in particular note that Protestant churches in particular have not
drawn as clear a line between the sacred and the profane as other denominations such as
Catholics or Mormons. What is striking, however, is the degree to which secular popular
and commercial culture saturate the evangelical church experience, often providing the
main theme for the sermons.
Choices Community Church
Choices church, a small organization of approximately 140 members in a small, semirural town in the Midwest, presented a skit entitled “Welcome to All Mart,” a thinly
veiled reference to the well-known corporate giant Wal Mart. The purpose of the skit
was to present a man who held a boring, repetitive greeting job at “All Mart” (“Welcome
to All Mart” was the continuing refrain throughout the skit) who acknowledged the
feelings of purposelessness that such jobs are seen to engender. The solution for this man
came in the form of his friend, who told him that the reason that his life felt purposeless
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was because he had stopped going to his church. The real solution, then, to a low-paying
job with few benefits, is the adherence to religious beliefs and practices. Similar to other
skits we observed, the pastor told us that the script came from a national organization that
mass produces and mass markets a variety of such scripts to churches in the U.S.
The Walmart sketch was accompanied by a clip from Groundhog Day, the popular
film starring Bill Murray, in which Murray is shown attempting to explain to a group of
local men in a Puxsawtawnee, PA café that he is cursed by having to live the same day
over and over again. When he expresses his feelings of purposelessness and despair, one
of the local men looks up and dejectedly rejoins, “sounds about right.” The scene was
shown in conjunction with the “All Mart” skit to reinforce the idea that religion can help
us to live life with purpose (ie, help us to not live the same day “over and over again”).
There were other references to popular culture that we observed during our visits to
the church. In one case, the congregation was asked to visualize Alex Trebek and the
Jeopardy show category boxes (like “Geography,” “Presidents,” etc.). The pastor
imagined a category called “Containers,” and church members were asked what the
answer to the question of “As a container, what am I to be filled with?” would be
(answer: “purpose”). There were other examples of media use in Choices that were
striking examples of the church’s (as well as its members’) familiarity with American
consumer culture. The church produced a video spoof of an Enzyte commercial, a
product for the enhancement of male sexuality, and they aired a (nationally-produced)
spoof of a well-known Budweiser commercial about the “ordinary guy.”
What makes this use of popular and consumer culture especially noteworthy is that in
order for these sketches (including All Mart) to be effective educational tools, there must
be a prior knowledge by the churchgoers of the company and its original commercials in
order to make the connection and understand the message that the church is trying to
send. The pastor himself explained that he was nervous that his audience would not “get”
the reference to the Enzyte commercial in one of his sketches, which revolves around a
man in 1950s style white suburbia who was sad until he purchased “natural male
enhancement” pills. What the pastor noted, however, was that the congregation
immediately began chuckling in response to the commercial’s familiar tune and visual
style, indicating their ready familiarity with mainstream commercial media.
Interestingly, in these two examples, secular popular culture is taken and used
wholesale within the services, with no alteration or change in the content. What is
especially striking is that these secular commercials and films are used within the
services and infused with religious values, sending a message that is undoubtedly
different from what the original creators of the programs had in mind (enhancement of
male libido and consumption of alcoholic beverages, respectively). In other words, this
church seemingly was able to use the non-religious messages of popular films and
television shows to refer to the messages of the Bible, which were displayed on the
screens after the clips had been shown.
Intrigued by what we were finding, we visited other churches in the area to determine
if the heavy media use we were seeing was a unique phenomenon. We visited a much
larger church in a nearby town and found a similar saturation of church services with
secular, consumerist media.
The Orchard
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The Orchard is a “mega-church” with over 2,000 members (according to the church
website) that is similar to Choices in that it also incorporated a great deal of
entertainment and consumer media into the services, more than was observed at Choices.
Almost every sermon we attended contained popular film and television clips, as well as
references to local and national companies. During one sermon, we watched a clip of
Antz the movie to illustrate how to live a life “with purpose.” In another service, one of
the pastors discussed Nike shoes:
You know the tennis shoes that we all wear with the waffle on the bottom?
(They’re made by) you know, Philip Knight or whoever it is that owns Nike
made his billions. Hap (her husband) had that designed before Nike ever
came out with them. [laughter] I mean, come on, Hap - what were you
thinking?
In another service, the church played a lengthy clip from the classic Hollywood film
Ben Hur. In this scene, Jesus gives water to a very thirsty Charlton Heston, a man who
has been enslaved by the Romans. After the clip was shown, the pastor referred to Jesus
as “the ultimate thirst quencher,” alluding to Gatorade, a popular sports drink. Thus,
although the scene from Ben Hur seems to say that Jesus fulfills our most basic needs, it
is a mixed message, for Jesus is now directly associated with the pleasure of material
consumption. This clip, with its religious overtones, was unusual in this church: in fact,
it was the only film that could be considered overtly religious.
Early in 2005, the Orchard held a series of six sermons that focused on the theme of
marriage in the U.S. The pastor noted that “American households are desperate with the
brokenness,” stating that the sermon series was “going to take a cue from some popular
television shows” such as Desperate Housewives, Wife Swap, The Brady Bunch, Super
Nanny, Bachelor/Bachelorette, and MTV’s The Real World, with each sermon in the
series represented by a different show. Each of the sermons played clips from the shows
and discussed them in the context of Christian marriage. Although this seems as though
it is an example of using secular media to show what is not appropriate as a Christian
(and thus could represent a rejection of mainstream media), the pastor noted that
watching the Real World was important because it helps Christian parents understand
their children.
As is apparent, the Orchard – which is part of a larger evangelical organization with
over 500 churches in the U.S. alone, and double that worldwide – relies heavily on
mainstream media to convey its messages. At this juncture, the architecture and the
space of the church merits attention because it directly reflects what we were seeing in
the church services. As we attended services, we also focused our attention on the spaces
themselves, and what they could tell us about the church.
An Analysis of Space
The consumerist content of The Orchard’s church services is reflected in its
architecture [SLIDE]. From the outside, the building itself does not look like a church:
with its low (one story, no steeple) architecture, lack of large windows, and no apparent
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crosses, it looks from the street more like a community center. In addition, its name –
The Orchard – evokes less a sense of a religious space and more of a restaurant, winery
or other consumption space, and its location – on a main thoroughfare, right off a major
interstate highway – seems more appropriate for a Wal-Mart or large shopping center.
Once you enter the interior, there are no obvious signs that you are in a religious space.
The outer doors open up into a larger space that is decorated in neutral colors and
covered with beige carpet. There are two coffee bars (operated by the church’s “Brew
Crew”) with gourmet, flavored creamers, as well as a breakfast center and a bookstore.
You are invited into the “theater” (not sanctuary) with your coffee, as long as the lid is
on. The reclining chairs are comfortable, not like pews or benches, more resembling
theater seats, with drink holders on each chair. There are no windows in this space, and
none of the stained glass that is so familiar in churches of other denominations. The floor
of this inner space is graded down towards the stage, which has two large screens that are
used to show film and television clips, PowerPoint presentations, websites, and song
lyrics.
Not only is there entertainment to consume during the service but, as the website
indicates, you can get your hair cut, work out, and get your oil changed at certain times of
the month in the church by Christian businesses that donate their time and services.
Thus, The Orchard is a great example of a church that incorporates the forms of
consumer culture. The Orchard does not appear to be an isolated case: as now there are
many evangelical “mega-churches” that exhibit what can be described as a consumer
setting, with bookstores, food courts, and commercial businesses like Starbucks that
operate within them.
The heavy use of secular media in the church services, in conjunction with the
secularist architecture, prompts the question of why the evangelical organizations we
have observed have chosen to appropriate the forms of mainstream American consumer
culture. As noted earlier, there are certain benefits to modern churches that recognize and
respond to the culture of hyperconsumption that surrounds individuals outside the church
environment. But isn’t there also a danger? Religion and media scholars (such as
Hendershot, 2004 and McDannell, 1998) discuss whether the blending of the secular and
the profane results in a lessening of religious influence. Hoover (2003, 2001) in
particular sees the vague ‘spirituality’ that has proliferated in the mass media (the
television show Touched by an Angel being the prime example) as representing a dilution
of religious principles and the loss of churches’ control over the meaning of religious
symbols. While Moen (2001) argues against this secularization theory, his consideration
does not include the wholesale appropriation of secular what we have detailed here. It is
important to consider the question of whether this blending of private and public
represents a concession on behalf of evangelical churches that wish to remain relevant.
Why Wal-Mart? Consumer Culture and Evangelical Churches
As we mentioned earlier, Wal-Mart is a constant topic of reference in the churches we
have observed. Consider the following quotes from various church services:
“I don’t know if you’re aware that we have moved from being a child-centered
culture to being a child-dominated culture. Just visit Wal-Mart and see what you see
there.”
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“As many of you know, we are gift-wrapping at Wal-Mart this Christmas season.
This is a great opportunity to spread the good news about what we’re doing here at in
church.”
“The peace that Jesus can give you is better than any present you can buy at WalMart”
“I was at Wal-Mart the other day to buy an Xbox for my son: How many of you have
an Xbox?”
“Welcome to All-Mart!”
“I was in the parking lot at Wal-Mart and saw some trash. I didn’t have to pick it up,
but I did, because it was the right thing to do.”
These constant references to Wal-Mart made us wonder if there some active,
intentional association being made between these churches and Wal-Mart. With some
research, we found that Wal-Mart has a long history of association with religious
organizations. The company was founded within the small religious community of
Bentonville, Arkansas and bases many of its practices on religious grounds. As Sellers
(2005) notes in Christianity Today: “Wal-Mart has a tradition of tailoring its service to
churchgoing customers,” using the example of the store selling only the sanitized
versions of hip-hop CDs based upon the wishes of evangelical groups. The company also
donates large amounts of money to conservative campaigns which, in the case of the
Bush and Reagan administrations, supports evangelicals’ stances on abortion and gay
rights. In addition, Wal-Mart also supports religious campaigns commercially, by
stocking media produced by religious organizations (such as Veggie Tales and other
Christian books and paraphernalia), but in doing so it is also making the religious
products more available to the consuming public, and so also functions partly as
proselytizer. Ultimately, the close-knit ties between churches and Christian companies
like Wal-Mart create a symbiotic, mutually-beneficial, relationship in which church
members support Wal-Mart financially, in exchange for the company upholding various
“moral values.”
CONCLUSION
In bringing mainstream, secular culture into the church and using the strategy of
proactive consumer power to achieve church goals, evangelical churches appear to
recognize the political power of consumer choices in the American capitalist system.
Through looking at the media in contemporary churches we are working towards a theory
of the role of religion and media in current American politics. Specifically, we argue that
the use of secular, popular media by religious organizations in the U.S. has strongly
facilitated the involvement of these organizations in American public life.
One way that the media shape the tenor of Church services today, at least those we
have recently witnessed in researching this paper, is by alluding to the collective
consumerist identity, which is morally conservative and almost always white and male,
that popular mass media products like classic films or popular television commercials
often invoke. In addition, bringing the world of classic Hollywood into the church setting
reminds churchgoers of their common identity as consumers and prepares them in
important ways to be mobilized as Americans, perhaps in a political sense. The sketch
“Welcome to All Mart” functions similarly. In fact, the repeated references to Wal Mart
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that we’ve witnessed underscore our argument that the national organizations writing
liturgy for the grassroots Churches that form the focus of this study are extremely and
consciously aware of addressing their audience as a workforce occupying a particular peg
in the American social structure. Their attempt at reassuring poorly paid service workers,
lower income consumers, and their particular frustrations, is also an overt political move.
The fact that the Churches are mobilizing Americans’ knowledge of and identification
with consumer culture is underscored by their holiday proselytizing in consumer settings
like Wall Mart, where church members volunteer to wrap packages during the Christmas
holidays.
As Putnam and others argue, religious organizations are great repositories of social
capital in that their members form dense and extensive social networks that often serve to
organize their lives. When media is introduced into these networks, it facilitates their use
for all sorts of purposes, among them the recent political mobilization we’ve witnessed.
The church phenomena contrast sharply with our observations of political talk and
media use in other settings, like the fast food restaurant with which we began this
discussion. In that case, the near absence of media referents and national political talk
coincided with the men involved invoking a sense of identity that was distinctly local,
though similarly white and male to the churchgoers. While the Arby’s group was also
politically mobilized in a sense, as indicated by the visits from the mayor, they were less
susceptible to modes of address that invoked national collective identities, as we found in
the churches.
This comparison perhaps raises more questions than it answers concerning the
developing relationship between religious identity and the rise of a conservative political
establishment in this country. But we hope with this data to lay the groundwork for a
broader, more comprehensive discussion of these issues that we plan to present in future
work.
1
This project was funded by NSF grant DST IIS-04838803 entitled
References
Churches with Thousands of Members and a One-Stop Mentality Becoming More
Popular. ABC news report, retrieved on 7 December from
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Business/story?id=617341&page=1. Originally released 27
March 2005.
Bacevich, A. (2005). Onward. The New American Militarism. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. pp. 122-146.
Buddenbaum, J. (2001). The media, religion, and public opinion: toward a unified theory
of cultural influence. Religion and Popular Culture. Iowa State University Press. pp. 1929.
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Buddenbaum, J. (2002). Christian perspectives on mass media. Religion, Mobilization,
and Social Action. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers. pp. 81-94.
Cooperman, A. (2004). Churchgoers Get Direction from Bush Campaign. July 1. P.
A06. Retrieved on 18 January 18, 2006 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/articles/A19082-2004Jun30.html?referrer=email.
Hendershot, H. (2004). Shaking the World for Jesus. University of Chicago Press.
Hoover, S. (2001). Religion, media, and the cultural center of gravity. Religion,
Mobilization, and Social Action. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers. pp. 49-60.
Hoover, S. (2003). Religion, media and identity: theory and method in audience research
on religion and media. Mediating Religion. New York: T&T Clark, Ltd. pp. 9-20.
Jelen, T.G. (1993). The Political World of the Clergy. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.
Ludden, J. The Evangelical Vote and the Election. Retrieved on 25 January 25, 2006
from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4156923 .
Mazur, E., and Hammond, P.E. (1998). The market paradigm and the future of religious
organizations. In A. Shupe and B. Misztal (eds.) Religion, Mobilization, and Social
Action. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers. pp. 67-84.
Moen, M.C. (1998). The New Christian Right in the Twenty-First Century.” In A.
Shupe and B. Misztal (eds.) Religion, Mobilization, and Social Action. Westport,
Connecticut: Praeger Publishers. pp. 183-196.
Morgan, D. (2003). Protestant visual piety and the aesthetics of American mass culture.
Mediating Religion. New York: T&T Clark, Ltd. pp.107-120.
Schultze, Q.J. (2001). Touched by angels and demons: religions’ love-hate relationship
with popular culture. Religion, Mobilization, and Social Action. Westport, Connecticut:
Praeger Publishers. pp. 39-48.
Sellers, J. (2005). "Deliver Us from Wal-Mart? Christians are among those sounding the
alarm about the ethics of this retail giant. Are the worries justified?" Christianity Today,
2005-MAY.
[A prime example of this is the recent popularity of the Chronicles of Narnia movie by
C.S. Lewis, which has overt religious references. Leaders of American churches became
aware of this, and started to offer bible groups for children that usedthe movie as the
main theme. This was also seen in the movie “The Passion of the Christ,” in which
churches held viewings for the congregation.]
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The Lone Ranger symbolizes western mentality that we can do it all by
ourselves, but… God’s plan is for a family. We need to drop our
individualism and become part of the body of Christ. In Rick Warren’s
book (Purpose Driven Life) he actually calls them “Bunny” Christians –
you know, they’re “hopping all over the place.” People don’t like
commitment because they are self-centered.
"What was once easily understood as a line between private and public has been or is
being erased as a result of forces at work in contemporary religion and contemporary
media. What has emerged in place of an old dualism between the private and
the public, between the religious and the secular, and between the sacred and the profane
is a less definite space where those distinctions exist in a state of fluidity and flux"
So the media is turning into a marketplace, concomitant with the rise in autonomous
religious seeking (p. 51) from a variety of different media sources. This is interesting in
the sense that evangelical churches like the Vineyard appear to treat their congregation
exactly like that, as consumers seeking the best church to suit their needs. It is an
organization that is clearly trying to sell itself and its services (hair cuts, gym workouts,
coffee bar). The clergy admit this, referring to the sanctuary as a “theater” and the
service as a “show.” Hoover believes that this new “marketplace” means that “the ways
of being religious have moved out of the protected sphere of religious institution and
tradition and into the open ground of the symbolic marketplace” (p. 51). “The emergence
of a new religious marketplace has arisen at the same time as the emergence of a new
media marketplace” (p. 58).
In terms of commercialism: “These ways of doing religion – popular, material,
commodity based – represent more and more of what American religiosity is today. And,
they are gradually moving the center of religious culture into the center of media culture”
(p. 54).
This may be one reason why evangelical churches have saturated church services with
media references (making service more like a “show” than a traditional sermon), but
another might be that the messages are thought to be clearer when using the vehicle of
media. Groundhog Day was a very popular movie that was viewed by millions of
Americans: to use the movie itself to represent religious values might seem like a stretch,
but during the service it was an effective tool to learn how to live a life “with purpose.”
Buddenbaum notes:
Buddenbaum (2000) notes that political messages that churchgoers receive from their
pastors have an effect on their use of mass media and on their political opinions (p. 27).
Specifically, she theorizes that specialized sources (such as religious leaders in church)
affect agenda setting by the mass media by providing additional resources for evaluating
information and forming opinions (Buddenbaum, 2000. p. 28). Seen in this way, the
mass media hold less sway in terms of agenda setting and priming for those individuals
who receive political messages from religious opinion leaders. In discussing evangelical
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organizations (the focus of our study) specifically, Buddenbaum (2000, p. 25, citing
Jelen, 1993) notes that “the belief within Conservative Protestantism of an inerrant bible
(a cornerstone belief of evangelicals) coupled with a rhetorical style that links a specific
Bible verse to each statement gives a normative dimension to clergy pronouncements that
is much more conducive to political mobilization than the liberal Protestant emphasis on
individual autonomy and reason.” When media - both old and new - is added to this
rhetoric, the churches can send very powerful social and political messages.
1. Explicit political talk (about war, abortion, George Bush),
2. The framing of issues (war is not as important as abortion) and the clergy's impact for churchgoers on
agenda setting by the mass media (the congregation may pay less attention to messages in the mass media
because they've already been told what is important and how to think about it - priming). I put this section
into the paper, based upon new reading:
The use of secular culture in the church goes against what Hendershot states about
evangelicals, to be “’in but not ‘of’ the world” (p. 11). What our research indicates
is that evangelicals now recognize that many individuals are noe ‘of’ the world as
well.
“My Apology
As the Senior Pastor and chief vision caster of our church, I am responsible for what is
communicated. Therefore I take full responsibility for confusing and/or offending some of you in
regard to this message. I specifically ask your forgiveness if any of the following apply:

You thought I came across as arrogant

You thought I was making light of other views

You thought that the Vineyard was changing its historical approach to debatable issues by
stating a position which every person attending the Vineyard must accept or no longer be
welcome

You thought I had changed to “exclusive doctrine” which is now mandatory in the
Vineyard”
Important link from Washington Post: http://www.allhatnocattle.net/7-104_what_would_jesus_do.htm
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