Affinity Marketing and Religion in a Therapeutic Culture

Public Relations Quarterly, Winter 2004 by Badaracco, Claire

The recent movie The Passion produced by Mel Gibson employed affinity marketing to target fundamentalist Christian audiences. These are the publics in a nation divided into a blue-state-red-state demographic during an era of faith-based government initiatives. These are the publics who are also readers of Timothy LaHaye's Left Behind series, a twelve novel, multi-media series for adults and children published by Tyndale. The popularity of the series based on a fundamentalist reading of the Bible, particularly about the second coming of Christ and the role of the Middle East in the last days, has raised questions among some distinguished historians, such as Paul Boyer, about the extent to which the fictional imagination of fundamentalist and evangelical Christian denominations might blend with historical truth to influence public opinion, and the popular attitudes that may shape political realities. According to recent conversations held at the annual American Academy of Religion convention with the writers of Gibson's Passion, who said they had intended to portray a "macho Jesus," the multimillion dollar blockbuster has them thinking about a sequel - and none of it subject to a tithe!

The unprecedented profitability of these two products, the film by Gibson and the novels by La Haye, have raised the bar for marketing religion in a therapeutic culture that fuses politics and fiction. Some argue that American religion for many has become another therapeutic aspect of the economy of choice, acquisition, and "logic of exchange," according to Dr. Keith Maedor, professor of both Religion and Medicine at Duke Univeristy. Given the better than 600% return on investment realized by Gibson in just the first four days after rolling out his film ($24 million invested: $134 million earned in the first four days, with an additional $100 million in the next two weeks, reaching $300 million with European distribution), the question of media and religion in a therapeutic economy of consumption has reached a high water mark. In the past decade, the LeHaye books (second only to Harry Potter in sales), targeted congregational believers in churches which use media heavily to engage worshippers. Both Gibson and LeHaye use multimedia spin-off products and the standard branding techniques merchandisers employ: building the consumers' affinity with the personality of the producer. Yet there is an ideological distinction when the affinity commonly associated with the icon or logos worn by the consumer is a sign of loyalty with not only the style of the merchandise but to its ethos. In the case of Gibson and LeHaye, the affinity with the Christian ethos and a literalism about Christian Biblical history implies a political perspective about world events. In the case of Gibson, the political subtext implied was a fear of religious violence and the lack of historical clarity about the Holocaust. The question that these marketing triumphs pose is ideological and ethical in its consequence: do these products incubate the prejudicial attitudes that exacerbate conflict among religionists stemming from a perception of God as therapeutic? From the standpoint of social psychology, the phenomenon of the zealous or "born again" person of any faith is suspect.

As with many recovering from alcoholism or addictions, one obsession replaces another: the enemy is often the former self, the one 'left behind' just in the nick of time, before meeting the ultimate therapist who restores order in the individual's personal life, so to speak. Mediated, that is when the psychological is translated through the mass media, it is changed for popular consumption and so what was once personal and local becomes global. Film and popular books seem to be the most effective medium through which to globalize therapeutic choice, and Gibson's Passion and LeHaye's Left Behind series are cases in point. In one, flagellation and sadistic persecution of the former self is the obsession, in the other, the former or inferior or prior sinner self in the past is evaporated rather than remembered, and the mediated self supplants the earlier or flawed person. The failed self is forgiven by the successful version of the later self, according to a psychological context.

All marketing strategies are based on astute environmental scanning. Though these productions are framed as personal expressions of belief, they are examples of the "manufactured consent," discussed by Noam Chomsky in many of his books. A clever amalgam of advertising and public relations tactics, the selling of religion in America has ideological repercussions. Consider the environment in which affinity marketing of products currently thrives:

* The French ban Muslim headscarves in schools, along with the wearing of crosses and other religious symbols to emphasize the role of tolerance in a national identity rooted in secularism or "laicite," an historical response to the cultural domination of the Catholic church in the nineteenth century. This has given rise to the backlash among Muslims, particularly among young women who have taken on the scarf as a political statement and it has put on the front page the divisiveness among Abrahamic religions in Europe.