Having successfully packaged deodorants, cereals and shampoos, some Americans have moved on to marketing God. Bumper stickers reduce the gospel to a clever phrase. T-shirts offer glow in the dark solutions to life's deepest questions.
Mugs bear evangelical mantras to sanctify caffeine addictions.
Most see this trend as just another manifestation of an overheated consumer economy. Willard, a theologian, author, and philosophy professor at the University of Southern California, is deeply concerned about what he says is happening in American churches. God 'scans' it, and forgiveness floods forth. It comes as little surprise, then, that people feel unsatisfied with this imitation of God's grace. Willard says more and more thoughtful Christians are leaving churches because the churches lack depth.