Are we in a religious revival?

[Beet]

The great revivals of the 18th and 19th centuries, now this

Onward, Christian shoppers
Dec 1st 2005 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition

Corporate America has spotted the elephant in the room—religion


THE Walt Disney Company has long been a bogeyman of the religious right, thanks to its penchant for organising “gay days” at Disney World and offering benefits for same-sex couples. Yet on December 9th legions of Evangelical Christians will queue up to watch Disney's “holiday” blockbuster, its $150m production of C.S. Lewis's “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”. The bogeyman has turned into a bearer of Good News.

The reconciliation between Evangelical America and Disney is the latest example of a bigger trend—the reconciliation between religious America and corporate America. Many of America's biggest media companies are pushing into the religion market. At the same time, many of America's “faith-based” companies are pushing back, into the mainstream.

The first big company to spot the potential of the religion market was Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins, which brought Zondervan, a religious publisher, back in 1988. Now almost all the big publishing houses have religious lines, most of them acquired in the past few years: Random House has WaterBrook and Time Warner has Warner Faith. EMI and Sony have both acquired Christian music labels. Hallmark Cards bought the Arkansas-based DaySpring, America's largest producer of Christian greetings cards, in 1999. NBC has hired Amy Grant, a heroine of the Christian music world, to present one of its prime-time programmes on Friday evenings, “Three Wishes”. Not so long ago, people who wanted to buy Christian diet books or Christian detective stories had to go to specialist Christian stores. Now you can find them at your local Wal-Mart—along with a whole library of other Christian books.

The reason for corporate America's new-found interest in religion is simple: the market is booming. Packaged Facts, a market-research company, estimates that the “religious products” market was worth $8.6 billion in 2003 and will grow to $8.6 billion in 2008. Christian radio has seen its market share expand from 2.2% in 1999 to 5.5% today. The Association of American Publishers reports that the market for religious books grew by 37% in 2003. The definition of religious books is vague—but religious publishing is undoubtedly growing much faster than the industry as a whole.

Even if the religious bit of the media industry is still relatively small, it accounts for a disproportionate share of the “mega-hits”. The “Left Behind” series of novels on the end of days has brought in $650m. Bantam Dell, a mainstream publisher owned by Germany's Bertelsmann, has reportedly paid Tim La Haye an advance of $45m for the next series. “The Purpose Driven Life ” by Rick Warren, an evangelical preacher, is the best-selling hardcover book in American history, with more than 25m copies sold. Christian blockbusters are dragging a huge flotilla of other Christian products in their wake—from “praise the Lord backpacks”, in camouflage colours, to Christian dieting books such as Don Colbert's “What Would Jesus Eat”.

Hollywood has been slower to react, thanks to a combination of institutional lethargy and cultural blinkers. But Disney's support for C.S. Lewis's children's classic reflects a realisation that the industry needs to learn how to tap into what insiders call “Passion” dollars. Mel Gibson's “The Passion of the Christ” has grossed $370m so far despite being in Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin and despite the lack of a major Hollywood distributor. Its success sent shock waves through Hollywood.

The reason the religious market is booming is simple: religious America is booming. John Green, of the University of Akron in Ohio, calculates that there are 50m Evangelicals in America. He argues that Evangelicals are growing as a share of the population. They are also getting richer, in part because the Evangelical heartland of the South is booming and in part because richer people are joining the cause. Jane Friedman, the head of HarperCollins, adds that the surge in religious books is matched by a surge in spiritual books, as an ageing baby-boom generation looks for “meaning”. This can be seen in everything from the success of religiously-flavoured books like Dan Brown's “The Da Vinci Code” to the popularity of New Age gurus like Deepak Chopra.

The religious market comes with a ready-made distribution channel in the form of churches (America has more than 330,000 of the Protestant variety alone). Larry Ross, the head of A. Larry Ross Communications in Dallas, Texas, which specialises in the religious market, points out that films based on the “Left Behind” series became hits without ever being screened in cinemas; churches showed them. Religious Americans also do much of the marketing themselves, spreading the message by word of mouth. Mr Gibson promoted “The Passion” by talking to prominent religious figures, who then encouraged their flocks to purchase large blocks of tickets. “The Purpose Driven Life” became a best-seller because it became a staple of church sermons and church study-groups.

Greg Stielstra, formerly Zondervan's chief marketing man (who has to his name 88 best-sellers, 20 number-one best-sellers and eight books that have sold more than 1m copies), calls this “pyromarketing”. Rather than promoting people and goods through mass-market media such as television, pyromarketing relies on “consumer evangelists” who spread the word among like-minded people.

Pyromarketing to Christians has worked best in the media, but it can apply to a huge range of businesses. Marian Salzman, a New York-based advertising guru, points out that there are Christian real-estate networks, banks, financial advisers and dieting circles. As customers, she says, Christians are particularly interesting because they are “incredibly loyal” and will go out of their way to patronise a Christian business. Across the South it is common for Evangelicals to mark professional advertisements with a cross in order to attract the custom of fellow Evangelicals.

One company warmly approved of by Evangelicals is Chick-fil-A, a chain of chicken restaurants whose management is so devout that it closes all its restaurants on Sundays. This is not a strategy that would be recommended at the average business school. But it has proved no bar to the success of Chick-fil-A, which racked up sales of $1.74 billion last year across the United States. The company is now one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in America, but proclaims that its “first priority...has never been just to serve chicken. It is to serve a higher calling.” Its story is explained by the company founder S.Truett Cathy, in his book, “Eat Mor Chikin: Inspire More People.”

[Inverted Things]

Packaged Facts, a market-research company, estimates that the “religious products” market was worth $8.6 billion in 2003 and will grow to $8.6 billion in 2008.

uhhh... that's not growth.

Anyways, yes the US is in the middle of a religious revival.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I can't wait to see opebo's reply to this.

The answer is likely yes, but with a trend to social liberalism as well.

[TheresNoMoney]

I don't think so. It's just that religion has become politicized and as a result, gotten more attention in the press.

[Beet]

Packaged Facts, a market-research company, estimates that the “religious products” market was worth $8.6 billion in 2003 and will grow to $8.6 billion in 2008.

uhhh... that's not growth.

Anyways, yes the US is in the middle of a religious revival.

I believe that was a typo, though it's hard to say which is the final figure and which is the initial figure.

[opebo]

I can't wait to see opebo's reply to this.

Here it is - the horrible infestation is on the increase, yes.  What concerns me is will it spread to the educated classes or remain a problem among the proletariate, who would be prone to other demogoguery anyway.

[MODU]

Revival?  Hmmm . . . not the word I'd use.  It's just that the intolerance towards Christianity over the past 15 years is ending, swinging the pendulum back to their side.  This has been going on for a few years now, but now that the pendulum has momentum, the change is easier to identify since more people are getting involved.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

There was never any severe intolerance toward Christians and considering Christians are the extreme majority in this country, it would be very difficult for any such to become any sort of a threat.

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

The percentage of americans identifying as religiosu has dropped by more than 10% since 1990.

[Gabu]

The percentage of americans identifying as religiosu has dropped by more than 10% since 1990.

100% of Americans identified as religious?

The most recent estimate puts 10% of Americans with no religion.

[Beet]

The percentage of americans identifying as religiosu has dropped by more than 10% since 1990.

100% of Americans identified as religious?

The most recent estimate puts 10% of Americans with no religion.

Well, having a religion is more of a cultural thing whereas being religious is quite different.

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

The percentage of americans identifying as religiosu has dropped by more than 10% since 1990.

100% of Americans identified as religious?

The most recent estimate puts 10% of Americans with no religion.

Um, No. The Christian part of the population has gone down from 88% to 79%. The percentage of people who aren't religious at all is 15%. IT jumped from 8.4% in 1990 to 15% in 2001

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States

[TeePee4Prez]

No.

[Alcon]

Alabama less religious than California?  Seems like these Census estimates are a little questionable, mayhaps.  Wouldn't congregational adherents ignore home practice?

[opebo]

There was never any severe intolerance toward Christians and considering Christians are the extreme majority in this country, it would be very difficult for any such to become any sort of a threat.

Yes, it would be similar to intolerance towards white people.

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

Alabama less religious than California?  Seems like these Census estimates are a little questionable, mayhaps.  Wouldn't congregational adherents ignore home practice?

California has lots of immigrants coming in who keep to the religioons of their old countries so of course it have more religion than alabama.