Cool -- or Real?

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The Wall Street Journal has an article on "The Perils of 'Wannabe Cool' Christianity" which, like the Paul Graham article I discussed the other day, is about advertising, this time by churches.

There are two things I find interesting about this one so soon after the Paul Graham piece: (1) It touches on an issue somewhat related to an important problem faced by legitimate cultural activists: How do we pique interest in our message in as much of our potential audience as possible? (2) Christianity, based on faith as it is, has no way to appeal to the minds of its audience, so its advertising will necessarily be misleading. Bearing this in mind, can we still learn anything from the experiences of churches that try to promote themselves as trendy to a young demographic?

I think we can, and to do that, we have to consider the marketing tactics adopted by these evangelical churches as well as what (in generic terms) they are trying to sell. The following two paragraphs give a sense of the marketing approach:

There are various ways that churches attempt to be cool. For some, it means trying to seem more culturally savvy. The pastor quotes Stephen Colbert or references Lady Gaga during his sermon, or a church sponsors a screening of the R-rated "No Country For Old Men." For others, the emphasis is on looking cool, perhaps by giving the pastor a metrosexual makeover, with skinny jeans and an $80 haircut, or by insisting on trendy eco-friendly paper and helvetica-only fonts on all printed materials. Then there is the option of holding a worship service in a bar or nightclub (as is the case for L.A.'s Mosaic church, whose downtown location meets at a nightspot called Club Mayan).

"Wannabe cool" Christianity also manifests itself as an obsession with being on the technological cutting edge. Churches like Central Christian in Las Vegas and Liquid Church in New Brunswick, N.J., for example, have online church services where people can have a worship experience at an "iCampus." Many other churches now encourage texting, Twitter and iPhone interaction with the pastor during their services.
Setting aside the inherent problems of attempting to package deal today's somewhat diluted forms of an ancient mystery cult with what are commonly regarded as the benefits of modern, rational civilization, there could be pitfalls inherent to such an approach even for proponents of a rational philosophy.

One could, for example, end up looking patronizing or phony to the target demographic. To wit:
"And the further irony," [author David Wells] adds, "is that the younger generations who are less impressed by whiz-bang technology, who often see through what is slick and glitzy, and who have been on the receiving end of enough marketing to nauseate them, are as likely to walk away from these oh-so-relevant churches as to walk into them."

If the evangelical Christian leadership thinks that "cool Christianity" is a sustainable path forward, they are severely mistaken. As a twentysomething, I can say with confidence that when it comes to church, we don't want cool as much as we want real.
There is nothing necessarily wrong with a marketing attempt that keeps up with the latest trends (to the extent that they aren't irrational), or of (appropriately) applying new technology to the problem of getting a message out. In fact, both things are good and necessary.

That said, Wells knows of which he speaks: There is a mass exodus of the young from such evangelical churches once they become independent adults. Why is this happening after all these attempts to aim specifically for this audience? What -- again, aside from and on top of peddling irrationality and discounting misapplication of technology or badly executing modern styles -- could they be doing wrong?

Part of the answer lies in what kind of product they're attempting to sell -- a comprehensive way of understanding the world in order to lead one's life. These marketing attempts are all about appearances. The target audience wants to hear a specific worldview. They might even be willing to listen to an entire lecture or two without interruption, or overlook the fact that the speaker isn't a dolled-up metrosexual. This last is what I think author Brett McCracken is driving at when he says, "[W]e don't want cool as much as we want real."

So I think several types of problems can arise that one can generalize beyond just marketing attempts to the young: (1) To target a demographic, one necessarily makes hypotheses about that demographic. Done badly or taken beyond a certain point, this can seem patronizing or phony. (2) Too much emphasis on catering to what some demographic (presumably) wants at the expense of what one has to say can dilute one's message, or even seem so far from it as to look like an attempt to put something over.

Either of the above can put off the very people one is trying to reach before one has really said anything.

-- CAV

11 comments:

Snedcat said...

Yo, Gus, you quote the following about making Christianity cool: "For some, it means trying to seem more culturally savvy. The pastor quotes Stephen Colbert or references Lady Gaga during his sermon, or a church sponsors a screening of the R-rated "No Country For Old Men." For others, the emphasis is on looking cool, perhaps by giving the pastor a metrosexual makeover, with skinny jeans and an $80 haircut, or by insisting on trendy eco-friendly paper and helvetica-only fonts on all printed materials." Amateurs. For cool you need one of your church's priests a gay man and the other a woman, and make sure drinking's socially acceptable. Then you've got cool--Jesus-in-Ray-Bans cool. Oh, wait, that's the Episcopalians. Never mind.

Seriously though, I get very tired very quickly of Christian numb-brains hijacking commercial slogans for their malign Christian purposes and really wish some large corporation would sue a church for copyright or trademark infringement. It'd be commercial suicide, alas, but how it would warm the cockles of what passes for my heart!

Gus Van Horn said...

Hah! Somehow, your comment reminded me of a past package deal known as "muscular Christianity."

Perhaps we similarly have here "intelligent Christianity," as a sort of last gasp.

Mike said...

Basically, if one watches the movie "Saved" (2004), one will have a pretty clear understanding of the metes and bounds of this particular issue.

This article stirred a memory I had from when I was around eleven and my local Catholic parish started its youth movement. They had a bunch of mixers and pray-ins and such, the typical sort of social indoctrination. They branded the entire thing with a catchphrase: "Catch the Fever!" It was on posters and tee shirts and so forth.

I remember thinking, "What the F-?! That is the most ridiculous religious catchphrase I could possibly imagine! How does that even begin to connect with Christ? Or did they misspell 'fervor,' in which case I am apparently in the presence of illiterates?"

Of course, the whole hoopla died down and it was back to the usual Sunday grind of sit-stand-kneel-Lord-Have-Mercy, to which I stayed guiltily attached for many years.

Mike said...

@Snedcat,

Funny you should mention that. Check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_Tree

As you said, they don't go after the religious tortfeasors because of the social PR cost. Nintendo in the 1980s was a very savvy litigator in the video game industry. They won a BUNCH of long-odds cases. They could have made life difficult for Color Dreams/Wisdom Tree, but in the end chose to just ignore them instead.

Technically, CD/WT legitimately reverse-engineered the 10NES lockout chip, so it wasn't a case of breaking contract, but of using the NES BIOS in violation of licensing terms of adhesion. That's hair-splitting, I know.

Word verification: "bastro" -- n: a bistro owned or operated by an individual whose parents were never married.

Gus Van Horn said...

Mike,

Your word verifications almost deserve a Twitter channel of their own.

Your thoughts on youth programs in more traditional churches afraid of losing "soulshare" to trendier sects mirrors my own limited experience with the same thing and makes my point pretty well. If you're used to the idea of a comprehensive worldview, something like this can easily you the wrong way. Conversely, if you're not, I suspect that the fun will fade away in time and, unless some aspect of the bait integrally has something to do with that worldview, you'll end up pretty much where you started.

Gus

Dismuke said...

Part One (the pesky post limit is back and I do NOT have time to edit downward)


Whenever I hear about institutions trying to recast themselves as "cool" I always think of a line in The Fountainhead that went something to the effect of: A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack.>

The same thing is applicable for a quest to be "cool."

Most people can remember some kid in high school who was visibly desperate to fit in with and be regarded as being part of the allegedly cool, trendy set - and the harder he tried the more pathetic he looked to everybody, most especially those whose approval he was trying to win over.

In the long term, uncool but authentic ends up having more staying power than does fake cool.

Of course, some fads and trends are either harmless or even beneficial with their fashion value depending mostly on their novelty. For example, Facebook and Twitter - both of which have actual benefits. But even here, that novelty is very passing. In a few months/years, they will either be as forgotten as GeoCities or as passe as Myspace or a commonplace, taken for granted tool such as google or hotmail.

As for other, more cultural types of trends - well, sometimes it is impossible to "fit in." Imagine being a geeky academic at a truck drivers' convention/social gathering or a white guy from Nebraska at a family reunion of a large, extended inner-city black family. No matter how hard you try, you won't fit in - because you don't fit in. But that doesn't mean that you would not be able to find interesting people and enjoyable conversation at such a gathering. But the way to do it is not by trying to fit in but rather by regarding the people in attendance as individuals and finding common ground with some of them on that basis.

Of course, to do that, one must be respectful of the group's context. A geeky academic at a truck drivers' convention who carries an air of superiority and condescension is NOT going to go over well.

Dismuke said...

Part Two


I think that is the key to marketing towards various groups that have a certain cultural common denominator. Assuming that the group is NOT evil (for example, jihadists, racists, neo-nazis, communists, etc), simply acknowledge the context and then, appeal to common ground that may exist within specific individuals within that group and establish a NEW context for further communication based on that common context.

Most people move between contexts on a constant basis. The trendy 20 something in a nightclub most likely behaves very differently when he is at work, when he is at family reunions and when he is engaging in longstanding hobbies such as hunting or soccer that might have little to do with the nightclub world.

BTW - a good example of someone who I think is highly effective at communicating and marketing to diverse groups is Rush Limbaugh. I have know people with very advanced academic degrees to farmers with high school educations who have been Limbaugh fans and who find the program to be intellectually stimulating. On the surface, the farmer and the academic might not have much in common. But if, in the end, they both depend on and value living in a free country and on the prosperity brought about by a free economy, they actually have quite a LOT in common - and thus Limbaugh's polemics against the Left have a common appeal. But imagine the disaster if Limbaugh consciously made an effort to specifically appeal to either of those demographics.

As for trying to appeal to the trendy and the faddish - well, that is precisely what Obama was able to do. Look how that has worked out for him. It made him President. But his mistake was that he figured it would continue to be there for him to use when he took office.

If you ever find yourself the beneficiary of a fad or trend, better plan for how you will remain relevant for the day when you are no longer "hot" and "in-style" - because that day WILL come.

As for the churches, there is actually a LOT of opportunity for them given the sewer our pop culture is in. Sure, kids may rebel against their religious upbringings. And some of them will be fortunate enough to discover or figure out rational alternatives. But to the degree that they seek such things from Left dominated pop culture with nothing to offer but rage and nihilism, the young people will eventually find it lacking and seek an alternative. And what alternative is there in today's culture against such nihilism? Religion is certainly the most visible - and the one that most people have familiarity with. So many will either "rediscover" their religious roots or morph their rebellion into a religious form such as various New Age type groups. If I were a church, I would not be targeting those who are heavily into pop culture - I would be targeting those who HAVE been heavily into it and found it lacking.

Lynne said...

It makes me wonder if the Pope tweets now.

Like Mike, the description of the cool pastor reminded me of the movie Saved.

Gus Van Horn said...

Dismuke,

Ditched your part 3 since it was wholly contained by part 2.

I almost never really, completely fit in, but over the years, I have found that that has been a blessing in disguise in the long term, because I learned some time ago that authenticity has staying power, as you say.

Your remark about religion having opportunities due to the sad state of our culture is on the money and echoed part of this post that I cut out about home-grown jihadists, but I've dicussed that before here.

Lynne,

OK. That's now two "regulars" who basically recommend Saved. That goes into the Netflix queue now, for the next time I'm in the mood to see it.

Gus

Steve D said...

“As a twentysomething, I can say with confidence that when it comes to church, we don't want cool as much as we want real.”

And since a church by definition can never be completely real this attitude is to our advantage.

“types of problems can arise that one can generalize beyond just marketing attempts to the young”

In the final analysis the battle for a rational philosophy if it is to be won will be won one mind at a time.

Gus Van Horn said...

"And since a church by definition can never be completely real this attitude is to our advantage."

Quite true!

"In the final analysis the battle for a rational philosophy if it is to be won will be won one mind at a time.

Agreed. Attempting to pitch Objectivism at a specific demographic makes little sense to me, personally, beyond, attempting to show how it can tackle problems uniquely experienced by members of that demographic.

But in the end, that really boils down to emphasizing that they're individual human beings with needs solved in the same, essential way as the problems of other human beings.