If Religion Has to be Sold

No doubt, one can look at State Churches and find a dozen or so reasons to dislike their story.

Yet, one good thing about State Churches, one very good thing: they have to advertise ... they just were (yes, yes, yes; I know all about how they were used by the State, and all other things that our Protestant forebears rejected). But here's the point: they didn't advertise, they didn't try to sell, and is there not a kernel of truth here for us to ponder?

Here in America, sans State Churches, we have churches competing with one another, and if it's bad enough among mainline groups, it's out of hand with evangelicals.

From the get-go, whether it be the original Anabaptist Movement or today's evangelicalisms and megachurches, it's all about salesmanship, promises and outlandish promises, about health and healing, prosperity and personal development, salvation and eternity ... all trying to sell themselves to the public, all boasting that "my church is bigger, better and brighter than your church."

We know, frighteningly so, how self-centered most of us are, so any effort at "selling religion" will have to appeal to self-interest, which means religions has to be skewed away from God to the believer, from the power of obedience to God's love (deliverance from the self) to the poison of fulfilling one's desires.

As for preachers: with their odd evangelical hair styles, it's all about eye-candy ... with preachers strutting across the stage like bantam-weight roosters in heat ... supported by the latest tech and music.

No wonder so many evangelicals have gone for 45 - with his evangelical hair and his trophy-wife on arm, private jets and gold-plated everything. He speaks in soundbites that sound great and mean nothing.

If religion has to be sold, it immediately loses some of its value, and the more it's sold, the more it cheapens itself.

So, whatever might be wrong with the State Churches, they didn't have to sell themselves, and perhaps, in the long run, they're better off, then and now ... as Christendom changes and the church loses its place in history.

God will provide, I have no doubt ... the Spirit of God is irrepressible ... and is always at work.

And as long as the Spirit works, Christians don't have to advertise, and preachers don't have to strut, causing a sharp decline in hairspray sales and eye-liner products.

We just have to be faithful to the Gospel!