Marketing religion

At Pilgrimage of the Heart blog,
commenting on Everyone Is A Marketer, Even Obama,
I wrote…

It's precisely the use of marketing tactics instead of evangelism that has emptied the gospel of Jesus Christ of its power, substituting instead spiritual gimmickry and holiday magic. It's really no different today than it was in the Middle Ages, just the details are different.

Now, we try to wow the world and make converts with the tactics and technology we have today. In the 600's through the 900's, the Orthodox Church (Byzantium) wowed the barbarians with a magical and high tech display in worship, enchanting them into becoming Christians by the bundle. The Catholics did similar things with the native Americans. The churches and ministries of today are just doing what has always been done, just in a different way. Marketing we call it, or gospeltainment, or whatever, but it's always the same.

Not following Jesus, not standing aside to let the Holy Spirit convict hearts, even if they are only one by one, we blunder and bustle our way through, or try to, into the killing fields of religious experience. Bonhoeffer was right. We bore the world to disgust by our trafficking in cheap grace. May God have mercy on us now as always.

Christ, how long must we wait?