This Is My Body, Spiced With Cool Ranch Seasonings for You

So Doritos has decided not to air this Super Bowl ad, in which a desperate priest revives his congregation by adding trans fats and artificial coloring to Holy Communion. Here's the commercial:



I doubt that Doritos ever seriously intended to air this (it's among a number of potential ads they placed on their website and rejected, including 2 gay-themed ones), but it's still a piece of work. First off, notice the ways in which the filmmakers took care to cover their asses: they never say the priest's denomination. They never say they're serving Holy Communion, despite the recognizable aspects of the ritual. They know that most audiences will assume that the troubled church is Catholic, and that they're swapping out the wafers and wine during the service.

And part of me admires the sheer gall of that. But obviously, this commercial is incredibly problematic for anybody who respects religion. Let's look at a couple of the not-so-funny things that are being mocked here:

- Lack of church attendance. This is a major issue in many Christian churches throughout the country, especially when we're talking about mainstream Catholics and Protestants. (The mega-churches are doing just fine.) In terms of the Catholic church, the problem of shuttering churches is directly tied to a drop in faith and funds after the molestation scandal. Ha...ha?

- Holy Communion = Dullsville. See, here the thing -- Holy Communion is a ritual. It's not supposed to be exciting, it's supposed to be contemplative. The whole reason that Catholics use those wafers in the first place is to emphasize that Holy Communion is not about food, but about something greater. It's also a sacrament, based directly on Jesus's last act before he was tortured to death for humanity's sins. Go on, laugh.

The group that created this ad doesn't think they're making fun of churchgoers, but they are. I'm all for finding humor in religion, but not for mocking a two thousand year old ritual that harms no one, has given great comfort to many, and encourages deep spiritual contemplation. American culture, as a rule, does not encourage spiritual contemplation. That is part of the reason that more people don't go to church, and part of the reason why more people should. (Side note: for a contemporary look at Holy Communion, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion by Sara Miles is an incredible meditation on the subject by an atheist-turned-Christian.)

Incidentally, here's another rejected Christianity-themed ad, this by a guy named Richard Belfry who sells shirts that say "Jesus Hates Obama." Yep, that's his whole business: selling shirts that say "Jesus Hates Obama." Why does Jesus hate Obama? His website doesn't say. In fact, Belfry has been making the press rounds, saying that of course Jesus doesn't really hate Obama. Lighten up, people! It's a joke! It's funny because Jesus obviously has the same political beliefs as you! And if Jesus was here today, he wouldn't be healing the sick and lame -- he'd be protesting Obamacare!



Sigh. I just want to be the funny blogger, guys. Why are you making this so hard?

The Birth of Jesus, Told 4 Ways

This Christmas, God Spam is taking a Rashomon-like approach to the Nativity story (but without the rape and murder and creepy fortune teller). Here are four different videos describing the birth of Jesus, as told by...

...Social networking:


...Sincerely adorable New Zealand children:


...Lovably inaccurate American kids:


... And tongue-in-cheek Christian cartoonists:



The Christmas story comes out of years of church tradition and theological controversy, but you can get a nice run-down of what the Bible actually says here. In the words of writer Phyllis Tickle: "The Virgin Birth is so beautiful that it has to be true, whether it happened or not."

Merry Christmas from all one of us at God Spam!

Gotta Have Faith: Lewis Black

"Gays didn't need to ask if they were gay. God told them. And if God told them, that's all you need to know, 'cause He's God and He wouldn't have made people gay unless He thought it was right. How do I know this? Because He's God and He's smarter than you. And if you don't like what I just said, tough. That's the God I believe in and that's the way He thinks. Maybe your God will have some thoughts someday."  

— From I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas, in which comedian Lewis Black expresses a message of divine love and acceptance in the most ornery way possible.  Crankiness notwithstanding, the book actually has a lot to say about the ways in which our culture celebrates and interprets the Christmas season. (And if you're interested, here's an interview I did with Lewis Black when the book hit shelves in November.)

The New Christianity Meets the Liberal Media

Jay Bakker, whose name I shall follow with the obligatory "son of Jim and Tammy Faye," gets an excellent profile in this week's New York Magazine.

Image: Kenneth Cole via Killing the Buddha

 I've mentioned Jay before on God Spam -- he's the founder and New York City pastor of Revolution, a church that seeks to embrace individuals (mainly the young, liberal, counter-cultural variety) who feel rejected by traditional Christianity. Here's how writer Alex Morris sums up Bakker's unexpected ministry:

But as I’m sitting there, close to the back and beer in hand [note: Revolution NYC meets at a bar], it occurs to me that maybe the opposite of faith isn’t doubt. Maybe the opposite of faith is certainty, a comforting belief in your own rightness. To a greater degree than most Evangelicals may care to admit, Jay Bakker’s open-armed ministry is an extension of what his parents created. Jim and Tammy Faye were much more tolerant than other televangelists; in 1986, Tammy Faye famously interviewed a gay minister who had been diagnosed with AIDS. But theirs was a theology of aspiration—believing is easy, and believing leads to success—and it didn’t encourage its followers to doubt their faith or themselves. This, it seems to me, is what Jay is offering: a Christianity that allows for, and is even sustained by, failure.

I'm going to repeat that last line, because I love it: "A Christianity that allows for, and is even sustained by, failure."

Promotional image from Revolution NYC

An interesting detail: Morris refers to Bakker as part of the Emergent movement. I'm not surprised that he says Bakker won't use the term himself; among Evangelicals (of whom Jay, however liberal, is one), "emergent" is considered a sort of half-boast, half-pejorative, like "hipster."* Be that as it may, this is the first time I've seen the emerging church given attention in a major New York City-based publication. I've been wondering when the Emergent movement would start making its way over to the East Coast, and this could be the first harbinger.

* I don't know why this is, exactly, although there's a certain teen-like brattiness that can come with the rejection of the mainstream church. For example, Emergent Church icon Tony Jones once told me in so many words that my lovely Brooklyn church is doomed, because we follow the Presbyterian bylaws and meet in a historic church building. 

**  And yes, if were wondering, "liberal media" in the headline is indeed supposed to be tongue-in-cheek; I have two (non-religion-related) articles in the same issue of the magazine.

This Week, On the Happy Fundamentalist Mormon Polygamy Hour...

Husband Kody's first three wives think his fourth wife is a ho because she kissed him before they were married. God, I love Mormons.

Christine O'Donnell and Eddie Izzard Argue About God

Vintage "Politically Incorrect" clip in which the Senate candidate explains that, if she were hiding Jews in her attic during WWII, God would save her from having to lie to Hitler. And then Eddie Izzard and Bill Maher make fun of her.

God Spam in The Village Voice

The Village Voice's news blog featured God Spam this weekend in a piece about Jacob Isom, of "Dude, you have no Quran" fame. The article, by Leslie Minora, specifically focuses on the merchandise I whipped up in honor of Mr. Isom. You can read the story here.

From the interview: Watkins, a freelance writer and the daughter of a minister, says she started her quirky religious blog because she's "always been really fascinated by the intersection of pop culture and religion...[this type of blog] didn't exist, and I wanted to read it." Isom seems the personification of the very intersection Watkins explores.

I wouldn't say he's exactly at the intersection that this blog explores. If David Isom had grabbed the Quran while singing a verse from the lost Gospel of Thomas to the tune of "Bad Romance," then we'd be talking.

However, The Voice is absolutely correct that David Isom's story has a special appeal for me. Ironically, I had deliberately avoided covering the Amarillo Quran-burning story at first, for the same reason that I won't write about the Westboro Baptist Church: both stories center around a small group of bigots whose message distorts the Christian faith, and who are ultimately powerless except in their ability to get media attention. I do not want to feed that particular beast.

But I am not the mainstream media. By the time the book-burning was actually scheduled to take place, the nation's entire freedom of religion apparently hung in the balance of one deluded pastor and a park grill. The Unitarian Universalists, God bless 'em, mobilized en masse to stop this event from taking place. And then one shirtless stoner thwarted the entire event by doing the most practical thing imaginable: taking the holy book away. And since apparently no one had a back-up Quran (which I do, in fact, find hilarious), everybody just went home.

With one spontaneous act, David Isom brought this clash of faiths down from the ideological clouds to a very human level. And that's the element that's so often missing from press coverage of religion stories: the fact that the participants are individuals, and even if they all believe basically the same thing, they no doubt have very different reasons. No one was hurt that day in Amarillo; no individual freedoms were lost. In the end, there was just a man who looked down and realized he had no book to burn.

Footnote: I am 99% certain that God Spam is the point of reference for this article from the Amarillo Globe-News, as no one else to my knowledge is selling "Dude, You Have no Quran" hats. That article's reference to hats and T-shirts was also featured in The Week. And as a result of all this publicity, I have sold... 3 shirts! And no teddy bears. Come on, guys, Thanksgiving is coming. That's the traditional holiday of meme-themed plush toys.