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It’s not what you think

by Scott McNutt

Profiteering prophets are nothing new. From the medieval Catholic Church’s indulgence-hawking (basically, a “get-out-of-hell-for-a-fee” card) that Martin Luther mightily protested, to televangelist Oral Roberts’ 1980s scam, fleecing his flock of $9.1 mil by claiming God had contracted a hit on the preacher unless He got His payoff, holy rollers in dough have always prospered.

But back in September, the local daily ran a series of articles on “God’s Business,” about the growing overlap between Christianity and capitalism (http://web.knoxnews.com/special/godbiz/; registration required). The articles highlighted a number of ambitious cash-through-Christianity schemes. Although the daily didn’t say that these developments worried anyone, no doubt some God-fearing window-shoppers view with alarm the increasingly busy intersection of “Church Avenue and Commerce Street.”

To such Christians, questions might occur. Those questions might be, if this is an intersection, why do the roads appear to be going the same direction? How far can the boulevards of business and faith travel together before they converge into a familiar path, the one that’s paved with good intentions? Will their growing traffic stream pour straight down the Highway to Hell? In short, how much can Christianity merge with capitalism before bringing shame to its essential values?

To which I must reply, churchly capitalists haven’t come close to the limits of crassness. So onward, good Christians, into the marketplace, with nothing to fear! In service of the lucre, pious shopkeepers must be ever mercenary!

Wait a minute. That wasn’t quite as inspiring as I’d hoped. How ‘bout, “In the stock market of the Lord, Christian sellers must ever eye the bottom line.”

Errrr, OK, here we go: “In the seduction by mammon, Christian shoppers must always teeter on the edge of the abyss.”

All right, never mind the inspirational slogans. The point is, churchgoing captains of industry haven’t begun to plumb the depths of how low they could go to make a buck on the back of the Lord. So don’t worry.

For instance, secular entrepreneurs always harp on turning apparent adversities into opportunities. And recently, Christendom has received the Lord’s bounty of embarrassments, which, in greedy hands, could be exploited. So, if Christian opportunists had already traveled too far down that well-known path, one would expect to see a lucrative tollbooth built upon the following items.

A Sept. 27 dispatch from the Associated Press reported that “Greek Orthodox and Franciscan priests got into a fistfight at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Christianity’s holiest shrine, after arguing over whether a door in the basilica should be closed during a procession.”

Gauche as fisticuffs might seem for the City of God, a bit of judicious marketing would make this brouhaha palatable in the City of Man. If Christian hucksters wanted to make a boodle on the battling bishops, they could easily have claimed it was staged to promote a new version of “Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots,” aptly retitled “Rock ‘Em, Clock ‘Em Clerics.” But no such toy has appeared, good Christians, so relax.

And consider this Aug. 12 AP report, about 8-year-old Haley Pelly-Waldman’s first communion. Haley is gluten intolerant, so she can’t eat normal wheat-based communion wafers, which have gluten in them. A rice wafer was used in Haley’s ceremony. However, Haley’s mother was informed that the rite was invalid because the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy had previously declared that communion wafers “which have no gluten are considered invalid matter for Mass.”

If Christian commerce could really sink no lower, some enterprising Catholic soul already would have convinced the Church to market an ecumenically authentic WWJD, that is, a Wholly Wheatless Jesus Diet. But let your spirit, holy or otherwise, rest easy, true believers, because Holy Mother Church doesn’t go in for fads; as of this writing, little Haley remains sacrament-less.

There are plenty of other episodes mortifying to the faith that a clever marketer could transform into gold, were he so base. The whole cloud of pederasty looming over the Catholic Church? Sell it as a network TV movie of the week. The widening Anglican divide over ordaining gay priests? Turn it into a game show. The increasing friction between conservative and less-conservative Baptists? An obvious candidate for a reality TV series.

But again I say, let your hearts be glad, all ye faithful, let your voices burst forth in song: Traffic at “Church and Commerce” has not reached this pass.

Yet.

November 4, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 45 © 2004 Metro Pulse