Have you noticed that when you’re out to eat and order a Coke, the wait staff will often says, “Is Pepsi OK?”  That’s because they’ve been trained to make it clear that Coke and Pepsi are separate brands.  In trademark law, the owner of a brand has a responsibility to enforce the brand’s identity.  If someone is selling a different product under the name of your brand, you can lose the trademark to that product if you don’t take legal action to enforce the trademark.

Yes this branding metaphor has roots in a consumer culture.  In such a culture trademarks are important. Samsung can’t make and sell something called an iPhone.

Is this a legitimate metaphor to use when talking about communicating the gospel?  I think so.  We are called to communicate the gospel in the language of the culture in which we find ourselves.   We may pretend that we don’t like being in a consumer culture–even as we consume more than any other people in the world or the history of the planet. But here we are, all of us profoundly affected by this consumer culture.

Brand = Name = Reputation

And there is a concern in Scripture that corresponds to the consumer culture concern for trademark.   A person’s most precious possession is his or her name.  God goes to great lengths to protect the integrity of his Name.  Using his name in vain is, in the language of our culture “trademark infringement.”

A name is something that often precedes a person.  You live you life and gain a reputation, and people who don’t know you personally have heard of you.  They know your reputation.  Your name precedes you.   They are inclined to receive you or not, based on your name.

Like it or not, Christianity has a name in our culture–a reputation that precedes it before people engage it personally.  And this reputation powerfully affects whether people are inclined or disinclined to receive it.

Why shouldn’t it be so?  Jesus himself said, “Ye shall judge them by their fruits.”   Isn’t it fair to judge a religion by the reputation that those who carry the name Christian have?   We certainly judge other religions by that standard.

Who Establishes the Brand Identity in the Public Sphere?

So what is the most powerful force in American Christianity over the last thirty years?  Evangelical Christianity, hands down. All the sociological surveys indicate that it is so.  Politicians cater to it and it pays when they do. This means the evangelical Christians have a powerful impact on the reputation of Christianity in this place.

As insiders, we can believe all the good things about this movement that we want to.  We would be justified in doing so.  The warmth of the people, the concern for missions, the good deeds that go unnoticed all over the world, the money given to good causes, the volunteer hours for good deeds.  It’s all there and it’s real.   But alongside all that is another public face that powerfully affects our reputation in this place.  His reputation too.

For decades evangelicals were known for avoiding involvement in the public square. They didn’t vote as much as other groups.  It wasn’t cool to be involved in politics.  Then something shifted in the 1970’s.  A number of very high profile evangelical and fundamentalist leaders decided to get involved in the public square.

What was the name of the first multi-denominational organization devoted to this?  The Moral Majority, named by a political operative named Paul Weyrich.

Is this how Christians are to be known in the public square? As the Moral Majority?  Wouldn’t it be great if we were known as moral people? But is it wise or biblical or representative of the Spirit of Jesus that we should call ourselves, “The Moral Majority”?   Especially when President Nixon used the term “The Silent Majority” to refer to all those who supported his policies, while he was busy breaking the law.  That was the cultural precursor to the term, “Moral Majority.”

What if instead of calling ourselves, The Moral Majority, we called ourselves, The Friends of Sinners, or The Broken Majority?

The Moral Majority waxed and waned and was replaced by another organizition: the Christian Coalition.  But the Christian Coalition was a politically conservative organization made up of Christians.  Is that the reputation of Jesus we want to promote?  Jesus the Conservative? Jesus the Liberal?  Jesus the Libertarian?  Jesus the Socialist?  Jesus the Facist?  Jesus the Republican? Jesus the Democrat?

This organization waxed and waned and was replaced by Focus on the Family–founded by Dr. James Dobson as a resource for marriage relationships and parent-child relationships, etc.  But over time it became increasingly political, and when the Christian Coalition tanked, it formed a political arm called The Family Research Council, another politically conservative organization made up of Christians.   Against abortion, gay marriage, gun control, the science behind global warming–the usual hodgepodge, some good, some bad, some debatable, depending on your point of view.

While this was happening over the course of ten, twenty, now thirty years, most pastors in evangelical churches–myself included for too long–didn’t notice how powerful the cultural impact was becoming.  We were like the frog in the pan of water that rises slowly to a boil. We were convinced of the dangers of a secularity that wasn’t as tolerant as it claimed to be.  We felt marginalized by a residual disdain for faith in some institutions–the secular university for example.  We felt like a minority group within society, even as we were becoming something very close to a majority.   And we were and still are concerned about abortion on demand through six months of pregnancy and with a broadly defined “health” exception well into the ninth month, right up to birth, as the  law of the land–the most libertarian approach to abortion in the world, perhaps, the least legal protection for unborn life, less legal protection than many European nations.

And there were very shrewd politicians who took advantage of us.  Richard Nixon being the first, but not the last.  He even snookered Billy Graham, our chief spokesperson.

The Religious Right

And we became allied with that movement called “The Religious Right.”  By we, in this context, I mean mainly white, suburban evangelicals.  Talk about a branding problem!  By an unfortunate coincidence when the brain hears “right” it doesn’t just think, the opposite of “left.”  It thinks the opposite of “wrong.”  Put this together with the first evangelical-fundamentalist political organization of note, The Moral Majority.  Is it any wonder we gained a reputation as self-righteous, as people who proclaim themselves to be righteous?

And slowly but surely we began to lose effectiveness in the one thing we were commanded by our true founder to do: preach good news to every nook and cranny of creation, including the one we find ourselves in.  People on the outside of our faith stayed away in droves.  Yes, we gathered our own into larger and larger churches.  Along with them came people who didn’t mind the reputation that we had gained in the wider culture, or were willing to ignore it. But many others bothered by the reputation that preceded us in their perceptions of us wouldn’t be caught dead in an evangelical church. And not because they are disinterested in Jesus of Nazareth, whose reputation, remarkably remains pretty good as soon you make the obvious point that the founder isn’t always well represented by the followers.

Colorado Springs, We Have a Problem!

Now we’ve got a problem and a big one: a branding problem.   And we have a problem in our own communities, because perfectly devoted and wonderful believers also happen to be politically conservative, rather than politically liberal if forced to choose between those labels. They are conservative for many different reasons–a distrust of big government, a belief that we need to reemphasize personal responsibility, etc.

How do pastors say, “The Religious Right” doesn’t represent all Christians, without sounding like they want to replace the Religious Right with the Religious Left?  Especially when many evangelical Christians have been socialized not to consider that there might be a difference between Christian and conservative or between Christian and liberal?  That this might be a very complex combination of identities, sometimes overlapping and sometimes not.   Pastors who object to the identification of Christianity with the Religious Right are branded by many conservative believers as liberal, outsiders, bad people, traitors.    So we tend to keep our concerns to ourselves.

The fog is lifting, but it’s still a real mess, and pastors don’t like messes.  But there’s a lot at stake: the name of Jesus for starters.  And we will answer to him for how we face this problem, which we cannot do by minimizing it.

A trusted listener later said, “Ken, you seemed like you were getting a little pushy there with that liberal-conservative thing.” I can see that. I did feel like I was pushing something, trying to dislodge it in fact, like a car in a handicap parking spot without a sticker.

Funny thing about this business of standing up addressing matters of spirit. It’s kind of a slippery business, or can be. The pushiness of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Or some things just need the heave ho when they are in the way? Or neither. Or both? Messy business, religion.

Starting a new sermon series in the new year on happiness…what got me thinking: several different women who when asked, how are you doing? replied, blessed! or I’m having a blessed day….people I don’t know, just running across in the course of a day. They’ve got some secret, these women. (The image was created by Jeff Hill.)