Shopping for God: How Christianity Went from In Your Heart to In Your Face Review

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Shopping for God: How Christianity Went from In Your Heart to In Your Face Review"This is not a book about God" (p. 1).
Thus begins James Twitchell's book, Shopping for God. "Essentially, this book is about how religious sensation is currently being manufactured, packaged, shipped out, and consumed" (p. 3). It is about "... buying and selling..." the religious experience. "...[We] are doing a robust business in supplying valuable religious experiences for shoppers at reasonable prices" (p. 2).
Sam Harris and others might counter that this price is too high, but that's a subject that can reviewed in their books.
Twitchell uses a lot of examples in this well-written book. He brings up the evolution of the religious braggart in the entertainment industries (note Mel Gibson's impact with The Passion of the Christ). He discusses the development of the Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson types (did Robertson really state of liberal professors, "They are racists, murderers, sexual deviants, and supporters of Al Qaeda -- and they could be teaching your kids" (p. 8)).
Radio, television, books, and the internet... these are all fertile ground for the planting of of the seeds of religious dogma. "Just about every American -- 96 percent, in one poll -- believes in God" (p. 22). Twitchell proclaims that there are over 2000 religious groups in America today.
And there is extreme competition for market share.
People are shopping, and religions are branding. Twitchell discusses the marketing strategies in this Church Growth Movement. There is competition for your soul.
Here's an example that I missed: the United Church of Christ's infamous "bouncer" campaign in 2005. The television ad goes like this. All types of people are denied entry to a church by a tough bouncer. Fade to black. The a narrator states "Jesus didn't turn away people. Neither do we" (p. 160).
Mormons, Lutherans, Baptists, Episcopalians -- even Unitarian Universalists (the Uncommon Denomination... we're here if you need us, but we're not going after you) -- they all have marketing campaigns.
This evolution of marketing programs has led to the development of Megachurches. Twitchell discusses these, and their growth, in some detail.
Twitchell concludes, "How religion allows us to make either meaning or mincemeat out of this shrinking world remains to be seen" (p. 291).
Apatheist -- that's what Twitchell calls himself ("... a disinclination to care all that much about one's religion and an even stronger disinclination to care about other people's" (p. 33)).
This was an interesting, not so flattering, overview of the religious world we live in in America. We line up to belong. I have no idea whether people pretend to believe, try to believe, or truly believe. Twitchell just argues that it seems like every time you turn around, someone is throwing it in your face. And nobody seems to be complaining.
As Rod Serling might say, ""There is nothing wrong with your television set..." Our minds are not our own.Shopping for God: How Christianity Went from In Your Heart to In Your Face Overview

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Big Book of Illinois Ghost Stories (Big Book of Ghost Stories) Review

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Big Book of Illinois Ghost Stories (Big Book of Ghost Stories) ReviewThis is a great book! A lot of the stories are ones I never read before. Very entertaining and highly recommended!Big Book of Illinois Ghost Stories (Big Book of Ghost Stories) Overview

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Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson Review

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Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson ReviewHardcover-3 page Forward by Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone Magazine (RS) and Thompson's friend, 8 page Introduction by writer Paul Scanlon, 561 pages of text, and Acknowledgments page. The book contains no photographs or other reproductions, except the cover photo. Interspersed throughout is a very small sampling of correspondence between RS publisher Wenner and Thompson, which helps somewhat in tying the various pieces together.
Depending on how you view this book, it may simply be a money generating effort, or as a kind of loose, alternative biography of Hunter Thompson and his (early) years at RS, as seen through excerpts of his writing. If (like me) you've read all of Thompson's writing over the years-including his books and articles published in RS-you may not glean much in the way of information about Thompson's life and/or writing. But for some reason, it's still fun to read Thompson's take on America and the legal/political machine-and the people involved-during some intense years.
This is a look, using Thompson's writing and some correspondence between Wenner and Thompson, at the "Hunter Thompson era" at RS. Is it interesting? Yes-especially if you're new to Thompson and the many articles published in RS over a number of years. It's no accident that Thompson's name is listed at the bottom of the masthead of RS (along with Ralph J. Gleason), because in the early years of the magazine, Thompson helped define a new style of writing, in a new type of magazine, for a new generation-primarily those who came of age in the late 1960's/early 70's. During his years at RS (especially), his articles were looked forward to by many people. I still remember pouring over his pieces (like many others) as they appeared in the magazine, all these years later. And this overview of his writing brings back those uncertain, exciting times. If you weren't there during that era, this book will give you a glimmer of what things were like "back then".
This overview begins in 1970, and Thompson's slightly weird run for sheriff of Aspen, where he lived in his "fortified compound". From there we read a good piece on the murder of Ruben Salazar by a Los Angeles sheriff's deputy, who shot a tear gas bomb into a bar where Salazar was sitting, killing him. Thompson's crazed trip to Las Vegas, to a law and order convention is also here-with some of that long articles best writing. Of course no book of Thompson's writing would be complete without his twisted look at politics in the early 1970's. His writing on politics is really the meat of this book. From McGovern to Nixon to Clinton-politics, as seen through Thompson's strained, slightly delirious eyes-is laid out as political writing had never been done before. The book effectively ends with a piece on George Bush, who Thompson despised about as much as he did Richard Nixon. In between is a lot of demented, twisted writing-writing that nonetheless seemed to open up and shine a light on"the American dream" as never before.
But this book is also a biography, as such, on Rolling Stone Magazine, and the generation who were fast becoming aware of the political scene in America. Thompson was given the title, head of the "National Affairs Desk" at RS, and he used that title (and quite possibly some weird substances) to go wherever the story might take him-and to some places only in his mind's eye. But that's what made Thompson's writing so electric, so alive, so pertinent, and sometimes so unalterably twisted. There's a reason that Thompson was included in the recent (well worth reading) book "Deadline Artists-America's Greatest Newspaper Columns". His writing speaks to people about something important-and his inclusion in that collection, along with many other of our greatest columnists, is certainly secure and proper.
If you've only read his book on the Hell's Angels, this collection of writing will be an eye-opener. This is a good book for anyone wishing to know more about Thompson's writing, and about those years (1970-2004) of great change in America covered in the book. And it took a new kind of magazine (with Ralph Gleason's help and encouragement) like Rolling Stone, who steadily published Thompson's work, to the delight of a new generation. If you come across something appealing-then investigate the entire piece in the pertinent book-you'll find more of the same, and then some. Thompson was unique-from his early boyhood to his days in the Armed Forces, to the era this book covers. The book "Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson", is a biography worth reading, if you want to know what made him tick. He had a way of distilling things down to their basic components, and then shining a clear light on what he found. This book is a fine example of that. That, and the fact that America could use a writer of Thompson's caliber today.Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson Overview

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