Rapture Ready!

Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture

Daniel Radosh

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780743297707
• eBook ISBN: 9781416593751
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

What does it mean when a band is judged by how hard they pray rather than how hard they rock? Would Jesus buy "Jesus junk" or wear "witness wear"? What do Christian skate parks, raves, and romance novels say about evangelicalism -- and America? Daniel Radosh went searching for the answers and reached some surprising conclusions.

Written with the perfect blend of amusement and respect, Rapture Ready! is an insightful, entertaining, and deeply weird journey through the often hidden world of Christian pop culture. This vast and influential subculture -- a $7 billion industry and growing -- can no longer be ignored by those who want to understand the social, spiritual, and political aspirations of evangelical Christians.

In eighteen cities and towns throughout thirteen states -- from the Bible Belt to the outskirts of Hollywood -- Radosh encounters a fascinating cast of characters, including Bibleman, the Caped Christian; Rob Adonis, the founder and star of Ultimate Christian Wrestling; Ken Ham, the nation's leading prophet of creationism; and Jay Bakker, the son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and pastor of his own liberal, punk rock church.

From Christian music festivals and theme parks to Passion plays and comedy nights, Radosh combines gonzo reporting with a keen eye for detail and just the right touch of wit. Rapture Ready! is a revealing survey of a parallel universe and a unique perspective on one of America's most important social movements.

1

As goods increase, so do those who consume them

An affable middle-aged man in a bargain-basement pirate costume—striped pantaloons and puffy shirt, vinyl boots and plastic sword—is going to save your immortal soul.

Not directly, of course. Jesus Christ will handle the actual salvation, as he has for some two thousand years. But Hugh Sparks is going to play a key intermediary role. Sparks is going to ensure that in the year to come, Christian bookstores across America will carry his company’s new line of Jolly Roger auto decals, with messages like “Christian Pirates: Bound to the Code” and “Dead Man for Christ.” These stickers will then be purchased by some of the 100 million Americans who shop in Christian stores, so that one day, when you are driving down the highway, you will see one on the car ahead of you. Perhaps you will have just watched the latest Pirates of the Caribbean sequel, and you will think to yourself, Why, yes, being a Christian is a lot like being a free-spirited rogue who sails the seven seas in search of adventure. By tapping into the pirate zeitgeist, the Christian in the car in front of you will have planted a seed your heart, and then one day—Blam! You’re saved. And the next thing you know, you’re buying a Christian decal to put on your car.

That’s the plan, anyway. It’s what brought Sparks to booth 2101 at the 2006 International Christian Retail Show in Denver, Colorado. Americans spent more than $7 billion on Christian products in 2006, according to a survey by market research firm Packaged Facts.^* Not long ago, virtually the only places to buy Christian books, music, and gifts were Christian bookstores—the ones served by this trade show. These days, roughly half of all Christian goods are bought at stores like Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com. With the attention from mainstream retailers, sales of Christian products jumped 28 percent between 2002 and 2005. Laugh at the pirate all you want, but Christian retailing is serious business.

Nearly five hundred companies had come to display their wares at the Denver trade show, which is usually called CBA, after its organizer, the Christian Booksellers Association. They ranged from newly minted mom-and-pop operations to multimillion-dollar publishers with decades in the business. Together, the 9,133 people attending this show shape the practice, principles, and politics of American evangelicalism in profound and underappreciated ways. According to a 2005 survey by The Barna Group, more people consume Christian mass media, such as radio and television, than attend church. Broaden that to include all Christian entertainment and commodities, and the influence of pop Christianity on the body of believers is even more pronounced. “For some people, these media complement their church experience,” says pollster George Barna. “For others, a combination of these media forms a significant portion of their faith experience.” That’s the kind of thing that really makes you think—especially when you meet the children’s video star Squiggz, a six-foot purple cockroach.

The cavernous exhibition hall of the Colorado Convention Center was a tempest of color, noise, and networking. CBA lasts for five days, and some people still only see a small fraction of it. It is an atmosphere that jolts you with adrenaline the moment you enter the door—so many “God is totally awesome” T-shirts, so little time!—and then leaves you utterly spent three hours later, forcing you to refuel with a cup of coffee from the sandwich counter, which is called, appropriately enough, Sub Culture.

For longtime CBA attendees, the big story this year was the new respect and attention Christians were getting from mainstream companies, especially book publishers. Secular publishers such as Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette competed with the traditional Christian houses for retailers’ attentions. “People are recognizing that the Christian community is a viable market,” said Andy Butcher, the editor of Christian Retailing magazine. “There’s money out there.” Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life has sold more than 25 million copies since its release in 2003, making it one of the bestselling hardcovers of all time. Books in the Left Behind series, which portrays the end of days following the Rapture, when God will sweep believers up to heaven, have sold more than 65 million copies.

In reality, Christian books have been selling well for many years, but since mainstream bestseller lists don’t count books sold through Christian stores, few publishers paid attention. Even now, most people outside the Christian publishing industry have no idea that scores of Christian writers, such as romance novelist Karen Kingsbury or inspirational speaker Beth Moore, regularly outsell the authors on The New York Times lists.

For a newcomer like me, the books section of the CBA floor was overwhelming. There were scholarly texts, breezy advice books, and even manga, Japanese-style comics. I picked up a book for ten-year-olds called Why is Keiko Sick? and read the back cover. “Through the story of Emily’s friend Keiko, who has been diagnosed with leukemia, children learn how the Fall in the Garden of Eden and man’s sin are responsible for sickness and death in the world.” Remind me never to get cancer around these folks.

I made my way back to the more accessible gifts section. Gifts is the official industry term for any items that aren’t books, music, or videos. The unofficial term, used widely, if discreetly, is Jesus junk. The phrase covers a range of products. The fussy knickknacks that have graced suburban homes for decades are as popular as ever—ceramic “Footprints in the Sand” wall plaques and nativity-scene snow globes. For the people who buy these, there is no such thing as being too corny. The slogan of one company is “Our gifts aren’t perfect…just for givin’.”

I was more interested in the first-time exhibitors’ booths. These are the people who have dreamed up some gewgaw—or had it given to them by God, as they often say—and are convinced that it’s the blessed tchotchke the world has been waiting for. Sometimes, they’re right. In 2004, a gray-haired couple from rural South Dakota introduced His Essence: candles that smell like Jesus (from Psalm 45: “All your robes are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia”). Since then they have sold more than fifty thousand. Products aspiring to such success in 2006 included Virtuous Woman perfume and My Loving Jesus Doll, a sixteen-inch plush savior designed to comfort the lonely. “We targeted them to children,” the maker told me, “but we also found seniors are buying them.” Sometimes, God will give two people the same idea, just to watch them fight it out. BirthVerse, a line of birthday cards with a different Bible passage for each day of the year, was going head-to-head with Happy Verse Day.

At one table I met a neurosurgeon who had been inspired to create a line of products featuring a character called Smiling Cross. This was, as it sounds, an anthropomorphic cross with its horizontal beam bent up into a cheery smile. Apparently the traditional symbol of Christ’s agonizing death by torture was just too depressing. For the first time, I had the experience of seeing devout Christians embrace something that I, as a non-Christian, found sacrilegious. It wouldn’t be the last.

The largest subset of Christian gifts is apparel. Christian T-shirts are the uniform in which evangelicals under thirty suit up for battle, and the companies that make them are constantly scrambling to come up with slogans and designs that appeal to today’s youth, generally to embarrassing effect: “God is my DJ” “Jesus has skills” “I’m like totally saved.” The marginally more ambitious shirts attempt to impart a lesson: “Life would be so easy if everyone read the manual” “Friends don’t let friends go to hell” “Modest is hottest.” The tangled rationale of that last one—we can persuade girls to dress in a way that does not attract sexual attention by telling them that doing so will attract sexual attention, especially if they wear this form-fitting shirt—begins to hint at the tension in bending Christian messages to pop-culture forms.

As I walked the blue-carpeted aisles of the convention center, I mentally assembled a head-to-toe “witness wear” outfit: a baseball cap with the Intel logo altered to read “Jesus inside” holographic glasses that project the word Jesus almost everywhere you look (a redundant trick in this setting); a polyester Ten Commandments tie; a leather iPod case embossed with a cross; an old-school “Smile, God loves you” fanny pack; Jesus fish cuff links and belt buckle; black leather gloves with more crosses; dress socks with more fish; and “Follow the Son” beach sandals, with die-cut outsoles that imprint the words Follow Jesus in the sand when you walk.

Christian women have the option of accessorizing their outfits with jewelry, but only if they like shoddy costume jewelry. At least that’s what I thought until I reached the large showcase of Bob Siemon Designs. Siemon, I discovered, is the most popular maker of Christian jewelry and one of the few with genuine artistry. While most of the trinkets I saw were cheap and gaudy, Siemon’s work is clean and modern. A few years ago he designed a collection to promote The Passion of the Christ; his rough-hewn nail pendants could be the most elegant icon of Christianity since the cross itself, or at least the Jesus fish. The gulf in quality between his work and everything else I’d seen was so noticeable that I had to ask him about it.

“There’s this mediocrity that goes on in Christianity,” he said. “They’re focused on making money and not serving people. When I was nineteen, I walked into a Christian bookstore, and I looked at the jewelry and I said, ‘Look at this crap.’” That was in 1970, and he’s been going against the grain ever since. To Siemon’s surprise, his success—he now employs 150 artists and craftspeople—has not converted other retailers to his high-end approach. “This is really the Christian discount industry,” he told me. “The mentality is: How can we make it cheap, cheap, cheap?”

Much of the gifts section bore him out. Apparently there is an insatiable demand for the timeless message of the gospel slapped onto anything made out of plastic. Key chains, cheerleader dolls, kazoos. Want a “Jesus erases sin” pencil eraser? No problem. Good News Tattooz? Got ’em (temporary only). You won’t find many WWJD bracelets, however; pop culture is ephemeral, and that trend was played out years ago. I sorted through a basket of refrigerator magnets. “One Way: Jesus.” “Rapture Ready!” I picked out one that said “Pray for America.” The fine print on the back said “Made in China.”

Many of these products were supposed to be Christian alternatives to popular non-Christian toys. At times I could see the logic behind this approach. Life of Faith historical dolls took off after the religious right denounced American Girl for donating money to Girls Inc., which was declared a front for abortion-loving lesbians. But I was stumped by Praise Ponies and Rainbow Promise Rings (“Moods change, but God’s promises don’t”). Was there something Satanic about mood rings or My Little Pony?

The ne plus ultra of Jesus junk—the product that Christians themselves are most likely to bring up when they want to acknowledge how cheesy Christians can be—are breath mints that come wrapped in Bible verses. They’re called Testamints. I had heard about Testamints even before I began my exploration of this parallel universe—David Letterman had made jokes about them—and I was eager to find the guy responsible.

Unfortunately, he’d gone bankrupt. Blame poor management, not consumer rebellion. The candies had been wildly popular, and a rival company, Scripture Candy, had been trying desperately to buy the name for years.^*

Scripture Candy has had modest success with its less catchily named Scripture Mints, but it thrives on specialized holiday candies, and not just the predictable Easter jelly beans. Standing in his lively booth, founder and CEO Brian Adkins showed me his Valentine’s Day candy hearts—just like the Necco originals, except instead of “Be mine” and “UR a QT” they said “Try God” and “Love the Lord.” “Valentine’s is big,” Adkins explained, because kids give out candy to their classmates, so “you can get a Christian message into schools without getting into trouble.” Halloween is even bigger, because handing out Faith Pops makes witnessing to the neighbors so easy. “It’s the only time people actually come to your door,” he said. “You can take the pagan holiday of Halloween and reverse it.”

Such clandestine proselytizing was a recurring theme at the CBA show. The pitch for Gospel Golf Balls—Top-Flite balls imprinted with Bible verses—was “Now when you lose a golf ball you will be sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ!” A pastor’s endorsement added, “This golf ball is the most effective outreach tool I have ever seen in golf,” raising the question of how many golf-based outreach tools there are. Does someone make a Cleansed by His Blood ball washer?

Despite how all this may sound, many of the entrepreneurs here were sophisticated about business. The woman who created Oil of Gladness anointing oil was inspired not by a message from God so much as market research. “There’s only one other competitor,” she said when I asked how she came up this particular item. “Also, I wanted a product people would need to use and buy again.”

The most savvy dealers focused not on individual products but on building licensable brands. Perhaps due to the success of the Superman and Spider-Man movies, several companies were trying to start Christian superhero lines. One had created a team of heroes called E-force, around which it hoped to build comic books, action figures, and other kid stuff. The members of E-force were Moses, Samson, and Queen Esther. Instead of robes and sandals they wore vibrant capes and sexy skintight leotards. Also, Moses could fly and shoot laser beams from his staff. When I noted that E-force seemed to be missing a member, the company representative explained that the team members were selected by careful research. “ Parents want Jesus,” he said. “Kids get bored by that.”

Since E-force didn’t yet have any supervillains to fight, perhaps they could tangle with the Almighty Heroes, another line of young, buff Bible action figures. Almighty Heroes were the brainchild of Don Levine, the seventy-eight-year-old legend who in his youth had created G.I. Joe. “I wouldn’t do military figures today, not with what’s going on overseas,” he told me. “In today’s world, the timing is right for Almighty Heroes.” I fiddled around with a Noah figure, who for some reason came equipped with a sword and bow. Then I turned back to Levine. “So, um, you are Jewish, right?”

“I’m Jewish,” he confirmed, catching my drift. “But c’mon: There are twelve million Jews in the world and two billion Christians. That’s the kind of niche I like.”

Over and over, two conflicting ideas about what Christian products should be seemed to play out on the CBA floor. I noticed this most starkly when looking at children’s games. Some were so heavy-handed and tragically uncool that the only people I could imagine enjoying them were Rod and Todd Flanders. According to the box for Salvation Challenge,

The players get saved by landing on Calvary and making the salvation call, “Jesus save me.” After getting saved the players enter a race to see who can be the first to give all their cash to missionaries.

Games like this, which turn the acquisitiveness of Monopoly on its head, suggested that Christian children were (or ought to be) fundamentally different from other children, with different interests and dispositions. Other games, however, implied that Christian kids were essentially the same as any others, at least at first glance. Redemption was a fantasy card game that could easily be confused with Magic: The Gathering. In one aisle, two preteen girls slipped off their shoes to hop on the electronic pads of Dance Praise, a Christian pop version of the mainstream video game Dance Dance Revolution. Pushing the limits of this assimilationist philosophy of Christian entertainment was Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a computer game based on the novels. I played for a few minutes, taking control of a team of Christians fighting the antichrist’s one-world government in post-Rapture New York; my weapons were prayer when possible, a tank when necessary.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul writes, “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” Purveyors of Christian pop culture invoke this passage frequently to explain their ministry to skeptics. Just as Paul said, “to the Jew I became like a Jew” and “to the weak I became weak,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Colophon
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• In the beginning
• Chapter 1: As goods increase, so do those who consume them
• Chapter 2: The new Jerusalem
• Chapter 3: He will act deceitfully
• Chapter 4: To each province in its own script and to each people in its own language
• Chapter 5: For many will come in my name, claiming, “I am he,” and, “The time is near”
• Chapter 6: And books were opened
• Chapter 7: Children will see it and be joyful
• Chapter 8: How awesome is the Lord
• Chapter 9: For their rock is not like our rock
• Chapter 10: Celebrate a festival to the Lord
• Chapter 11: Let them praise his name with dancing
• Chapter 12: Our mouths were filled with laughter
• Chapter 13: Give me a man and let us fight each other
• Chapter 14: Let a search be made for beautiful young virgins
• Chapter 15: Train the younger women to love their husbands
• Chapter 16: The opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge
• Chapter 17: Their visions are false and their divinations a lie
• Acknowledgments