The Vacuous Mind of the American Christian

An old school-like video, but a new spoken word exploring the mindlessness of Christianity in America:

The Plight of Family Christian Stores® : Who's To Blame?

A month or two ago, Scott Bailey (from Scotteriology) wrote a post discussing his reticence towards the “Godtube” website. One of the reasons he did not like the site was because he did a number of searches, typing in some of the most influential names and important events in the history of God’s people and his searches turned up nothing. Piggybacking on Scott’s Godtube search, I decided to take the same list and search for each item on the Family Christian Stores® website. Before you read the results of each search (they are listed below), read the store’s comments from the “About Us” section of their site:

"Family Christian Stores® is America's leading specialty retailer with over 300 locations and over 5,000 employees in 37 states dedicated solely to the $4.3 billion Christian retailing market. Family Christian Stores® sells Christian products and church supplies through its chain of stores and via the Internet. Merchandising categories include Bibles, Books, Music, Childrens, Gifts, Apparel, Software, Cards, Church Supplies and DVD's."

Here are the results from my product search of one of America’s leading Christian retailers, some humorous (especially the first one), and others, well, just frustrating:

+Kant – 171 matches but none meaningful, however result #1 was: “Can’t Nobody Do Me Like Jesus” – The Crabb Family CD
+Tillich – 0 Mathces, but there appeared an image of a Mercy Me album
+Barth – 108 Matches nothing meaningful but the #1 link was to the propsperity preacher's album titled: “Bishop Eddie Long’s choir”
+Bultmann – 0 Matches
+Schleiermacher – 0 Matches
+Hegel – 3 Matching records: 1. “The Great TV Turn Off,” 2. “Pickle Pizza,” 3. “The Stinky Sneakers Mystery”
+Ritschl – 0 Matches
+Kierkegaard – 0 Matches
+Neibuhr – 0 Matches
+Rauschenbusch – 0 Matches
+Intertestamental – 2 Matches but, of the Life Application Study Bible
+Septuagint – 0 Matches
+Qumran – 2 Matches: “Adventures in Oddysey” Cartoon
+Sadducee – 1 Match: V. Matthews, Manners & Customs in the Bible
+Essene – 21 Matches, none relevant but #1 entry is a picture of G. W. Bush
+Synoptics – 0 Matches
+Mishna – 0 Matches
+Talmud – 0 Matches
+Second Temple – 2 Matches, #1: G. Jeffrey: The New Temple & the Second Coming
+Atrahasis – 0 Matches
+Ancient Near East – 0 Matches
+Justin Martyr – 1 Match: The Apologetics Study Bible
+Marcion – 1 Match: The 1-Year Children’s Bible
+Diaspora – 0 Matches

What does this tell us? Well, probably not what we would immediately think. If you are like I was, you’d probably say that these results reveal that the store is only another cause of American biblical illiteracy. But not so fast… One of my close friends is actually a manager of a Family Christian Store®. When I spoke with him about the store not carrying items such as the ones listed above, he responded, “Is that the store’s fault or the Church’s fault? You know that our stores are stocked on customer requests right?” Actually, I didn’t know this. But what this tells me is that if the Church is the drive behind what Family Christian Stores® stocks and sells, then it is the fault of American ministers more than anyone else.

Indeed, how many ministers do you hear in any given Church on any given Sunday quoting Tillich or Kant? Hardly any! Does your preacher teach about the Talmud or the Mishna or the Intertestamental period? If you are a preacher/teacher, do you? Secondly, are these things, where they are spoken of, being taught so as to make congregants more interested in them or more turned off by them? Really, these questions get to the heart of the issue: American ministers need to be better about teaching and they also need to stop keeping the most influential resources of Christendom to themselves and to make them known to the laity.

So, next time you walk into Family Christian Stores® and see Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen and Rod Parsley books lining the shelves, perhaps you need to shirk, not at the store, but at your pastor/preacher. To those of us who are teachers/preachers, may we take the time to share our history with our people and may we tease their minds into active thought, instead of watering everything down, arrogantly or foolishly thinking that they don't want to and just can’t handle the deep truths of theology, Scripture and life! If we want these stores to change, the change needs to start with Church leaders who value good, Christian education.