Sometime in the past, I read an interview with Michael Card and he was asked a question about contemporary praise and worship music. Somewhere in his answer, there emerged the comparison of the current contemporary music scene to an industry, and the music emerging from it was the product.

Art. Creation. Industry. Product. Useful categories for thinking about evangelicalism these days.

Sometime in the late 1800’s, the printing and publishing business began to mass produce certain products of evangelicalism, most notably sermons and devotional literature. Evangelical churches, freed from the restraints of state church parochialism, began to come into their own in the United States as “church growth” churches, with largeness the primary evidence of health. By the postwar era, the apparatus of a denomination like the Southern Baptist convention became industrial in scope, turning out literature, pastors, resources, programs, training and denominational “products” of every kind in the cause of denominational triumph.

As we approach the end of the first decade of a new millennium, evangelicalism itself is morphing increasingly into a marketing and growth enterprise. The open emulation of business and marketing methods is now old hat. Churches mass produce themselves like Mcdonald’s franchises. The “worship product” that Card referred to is undeniably real. Exhaustingly so.Continue reading “Art, Industry and the Evangelical Resistance”