Church, Inc., continued

Thinking more about the connection between the church and commerce. A friend of mine wrote me the other day and suggested that most Christians "generally galled/nauseated at the commercial marketing which has accompanied" the Passion. I don't know about that. What I read suggested that Christian Bookstores were doing a brisk business on this kind of item and I am skeptical that non-Christians are flocking to the store to buy this kind of stuff. So, I am not sure that "most" Christians are anything but apathetic about it.

The most recent item to cross my blog was this controversy over an ad campaign in Liverpool where a company used a topless girl hanging on a cross as a part of their ad campaign. The campaign was clearly inspired by the Passion mania. My comments initially were something like, "I told you so," and I think that still stands. I can hear my friend asking, "how is this the Church's fault? After all, as the article shows, many church leaders are mad about this and refer to it as blasphemous." Yeah. I know.

The problem is that the church has no standing here. Kind of reminds me of the story of the famous German pastor, Martin Niemöller, who supposedly commented that when the Nazis first rounded up the communists, he did nothing because he wasn't a communist, then they came for the Jews, trade unionists, Catholics, etc., but he didn't speak up because he wasn't any of those things. Then the Nazis came for him and there was no one left to speak up. Of course, what we are speaking about here is not as grim as Nazi Germany, nor should anyone think I am correlating the horror of that with the triviality of this ad. But the principle remains that you should speak up for principle whether it is about you or not. And that is what the church has not been terribly good at. It has not been as active to speak out on religious freedom issues when those under attack are from other faiths, and has not stood up for respect for other images and icons.

More later.