Studying the Faithful Consumers

If someone had created a stock market for spirituality in the 1990s, all of the prime indicators would have gone off the charts.

That made sense, the experts told Beliefnet.com CEO Steven Waldman. The economy was on fire and this new wealth caused many people to ask big questions. Times were good, yet they felt empty. They went shopping for answers.

Then the nation plunged into recession, while signs of interest in spiritual matters kept increasing. That made sense, said the experts. People were struggling and, thus, they turned to faith for comfort and insights. This trend intensified after 9/11, even if the impact didn't last in traditional pews.

So what's the bottom line? Faith is not a niche-market trend.

It's true that the look and feel of "mainstream" American religion is changing, in part due to people searching on the World Wide Web. "Organized religion" may be in a recession, but the rest of the "spirituality" numbers continue to add up, up, up.

"Wall Street considers a trend that lasts 10 years to be significant. This one has lasted 10 millennia," argues Waldman, in a research paper he calls "The Faithful Consumer & The Spiritual Marketplace." He recently cranked out a 13th draft, trying to keep up with the latest data.

"While philosophers have studied the faithful soul and politicians have courted the faithful voter, the marketing and business communities have so far ignored The Faithful Consumer. This is a big mistake."

In the wake of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" – with its $600-million-plus payday – there has been increased research into the size of the "Christian marketplace" for goods and entertainment. Waldman is, of course, interested in these numbers because the vast majority of Americans tell pollsters that, to one degree or another, they consider themselves Christians.

What is harder to document is the broader spiritual market. The sprawling Beliefnet.com website – with 4.5 million subscribers to its digital newsletters – is thoroughly interfaith, with cyber-homes for everyone from evangelicals to pagans, from Orthodox Jews to feminist Mormons, from smells-and-bells Catholics to progressive Muslims. I should mention that I am the editor of the GetReligion.org site that is linked to the Beliefnet.com through its "Blog Heaven" forum.

It's relatively easy to document what is happening in bookstores, radio networks, CD sales, cable television and magazines. What is harder, said Waldman, is to factor in the economic clout of spiritual consumers in areas such as education, health care, charity and even the travel industry.

However, he has arrived at what he considers a very conservative estimate of total spending in the "spirituality sector" of the economy – $225 billion a year.

People of faith are not part of a strange trend far from the mainstream, he said. They are the mainstream. What Waldman calls the "Faithful Consumer" is the normal consumer, part of a demographic group that is larger than the sectors called "women," "Baby Boomers," "singles," "teens" or any of the usual ethnic groups.

Some marketing professionals seem afraid to talk about these numbers, in part because religion is often controversial and this demographic is so hard to pin down. Are "Faithful Consumers" people who believe in God or the gods? Are they united by their broader spiritual concerns or divided by their narrow, specific dogmas? Are they prickly true believers or blowing-with-the-wind seekers?

These days, the safe answer is "all of the above." Americans love to shop.

So far, 18 million consumers have bought "The DaVinci Code" by Dan Brown, with its head-spinning blend of historical speculation, Gnostic legend, goddess worship and anti-Vatican polemics. Another 20 million-plus have embraced the up-beat, easy-going sermonettes of evangelical superstar Rick Warren.

It's safe to say that some people bought both. This is America.

"There are people out there who do things like that, even though that confounds all of our stereotypes," said Waldman. "We may not be able to understand some of the spiritual choices that people make. But you know what we can say? We can say that they cared enough about matters of the soul to buy these books and read them. ...

"People are out there searching and if all we did was wake up the business world to that reality, we would have accomplished something."

The popes and evolution, part II

It would be hard to name two more radically different men than the late Pope John Paul II and New York Times columnist Frank Rich.

Nevertheless, the acerbic culture-beat scribe did his best to say something positive when biding the pope farewell. At least, said Rich, John Paul II had seen the light on the "core belief of how life began."

"Though the president of the United States believes that the jury is still out on evolution," he wrote, "John Paul in 1996 officially declared that 'fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a hypothesis.' "

America's newspaper of record underlined this in its obituary, claiming that the pope believed "the human body might not have been the immediate creation of God, but was the product of evolution, which he called 'more than just a hypothesis.' "

Thus, the cultural powers were flummoxed when Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, an editor of the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, wrote a recent New York Times essay that included this statement: "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense – an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection – is not."

Schonborn emphasized 1985 remarks by John Paul about the "evolution of all things" in which he said it is impossible to study the universe without concluding there is "a Mind which is its inventor, its creator."

John Paul II continued: "To all these indications of the existence of God the Creator, some oppose the power of chance or of the proper mechanisms of matter. To speak of chance for a universe which presents such a complex organization in its elements and such marvelous finality in its life would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the world as it appears to us. In fact, this would be equivalent to admitting effects without a cause."

In the wake of Schonborn's essay, a circle of scientists petitioned Pope Benedict XVI seeking a clarification. The letter was written by Case Western Reserve University physicist Lawrence Krauss, author of an earlier New York Times essay on the compatibility of Christian faith and Darwinian orthodoxy.

"The Catholic Church," the letter said, must not "build a new divide, long ago eradicated, between the scientific method and religious belief." It was especially crucial to reaffirm that "scientific rationality and the church's commitment to divine purpose and meaning in the universe were not incompatible."

Part of the problem is the 1996 papal address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, with its familiar quotation that "new knowledge leads us to recognize that the theory of evolution is more than a hypothesis."

The question is whether John Paul said "theory" or "theories." According to official translations, the pope said: "Rather than the theory of evolution, we should speak of several theories of evolution. On the one hand, this plurality has to do with the different explanations advanced for the mechanism of evolution, and on the other, with the various philosophies on which it is based."

The pope then rejected all theories arguing that humanity is the product of a random, unguided process of creation. Thus, he said that "theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man."

At the time John Paul II spoke these words, the National Association of Biology Teachers had officially defined evolution as an "unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable, and natural process ... that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments." Critics said this definition veered beyond science into theological speculation. Thus, in 1997 the association's board reversed itself and removed the words "unsupervised" and "impersonal."

This is still the crucial issue today, said Michael J. Behe, author of ``Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution.'' He is a Catholic who teaches at Lehigh University.

"The problem is that people can't agree on what 'evolution' means," he said. "Common origins are not the problem. What the church has never accepted is the idea of a blind, random, meaningless process of creation. The church cannot accept that, because that would be atheism."

The popes and evolution, part I

Editor's note: The first of two columns.

Vatican watchers pay close attention to the sermons a pope preaches during the historic rites that immediately follow his election.

Yet few flinched when Pope Benedict XVI made the following comment on the origin of human life during the Mass marking the inauguration of his pontificate.

"The purpose of our lives is to reveal God to men," he said, in St. Peter's Square. "And only where God is seen does life truly begin. ... We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."

That sounded innocent. But a direct statement about evolution later inspired howls of outrage when it appeared in the sacred pages of the New York Times. Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, a member of the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education, said he was trying to stop what he believes are media attempts to plant Rome firmly in the Darwinist camp.

"The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world," he wrote. "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense – an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection – is not."

Scientists – Catholics and non-Catholics alike – on both sides of the Darwin wars said it was crucial that Schonborn claimed to have written his essay after consulting with Pope Benedict, at that time an influential cardinal. The new pope, he told reporters, shares his concern that many are confused about the church's stance on an "unguided," "random" approach to evolution. It was also significant that the cardinal was, in part, responding to a Times essay by Case Western Reserve University physicist Lawrence M. Krauss, who posited the compatibility of Christian faith and Darwinism.

In that May op-ed, Krauss wrote that the Roman Catholic Church "apparently has no problem with the notion of evolution as it is currently studied by biologists. ... Popes from Pius XII to John Paul II have reaffirmed that the process of evolution in no way violates the teachings of the church. Pope Benedict XVI, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, presided over the church's International Theological Commission, which stated that 'since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism.' "

The problem, according to Schonborn, is that this quotation is only part of the commission's statement on philosophical questions linked to Darwinism. In particular, its statement warned that a much-quoted – and misquoted – 1996 letter on science by Pope John Paul II cannot be "read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe."

The commission's verdict was especially blunt: "An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist."

Once again, stressed Cardinal Schonborn, the crucial distinction for Catholic believers is that they are not supposed to embrace versions of Darwinism that teach that evolution was and is an impersonal and random process.

Thus, he noted, the doctrinal bottom line is stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom. It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance."

What infuriates the church's progressive wing, according to liberal Catholic critic Andrew Sullivan, is the possibility that this public effort to argue that God guided evolution represents another initiative by traditional Catholics to join forces with cultural conservatives.

"Now we have Benedict in charge and the rush back to the Middle Ages, already seen in fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Protestantism, looks as if it is going to be endorsed in the Vatican," wrote Sullivan, in an online commentary. "I expected reactionary radicalism from Benedict. But this kind of stupidity? ... And so we return to the 19th century."

NEXT WEEK: What did Pope John Paul II say and when did he say it?

Did the Disney boycott do anything?

Once upon a time, there was a magic kingdom of family entertainment that was loved by values consumers from sea to shining sea.

But an evil leader entered the castle and things went amiss. Mighty were his deeds, though he was small in stature. Then a throng of angry Southern Baptists appeared at the gates waving Bibles. Some even began to have second thoughts about paying the mini-mogul to help them raise their children.

In time the evil one fell, although people inside the gates insisted that all was well. And so it came to pass that the kingdom remained profitable, although its image was tarnished.

That's the Rev. Richard Land's story, more or less, and he's sticking to it.

The Hollywood establishment says the Southern Baptist Convention's eight-year boycott of the Walt Disney Co. did little or no financial damage to the media superpower. Thus, the recent vote to end the boycott was of little consequence.

Disney never repented. Investors yawned. The end.

But the president of the convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission has responded to this stark verdict with a question: Does Disney enjoy the same public trust it did eight years ago? He believes the answer is "no."

"There are lots of entertainment companies and I think they're all pretty much the same," said Land, who has both a soft Southern drawl and a doctorate from Oxford University. "But for most of our people, Disney used to be different. Disney was supposed to be a cut above the others. We expected better from Disney.

"Today, Disney is the same as everybody else. I think that most of our families now treat Disney no differently than they do other companies out in Hollywood. The boycott helped knock Disney down a notch."

The June 22 resolution claimed that the boycott "communicated effectively our displeasure concerning products and policies that violate moral righteousness and traditional family values." In the future, it said, Southern Baptists must "practice continued discernment regarding all entertainment products from all sources."

Boycott organizers concede that Disney continues to extend employee benefits to homosexual couples and holds "gay day" festivities in its theme parks. However, they say Disney has made subtle efforts to be more gracious to religious believers, such as cutting its ties to Miramax. It also helps that, in December, Disney is teaming with Walden Media to offer a movie version of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis, one of the most beloved works of Christian fiction ever written.

"We still have concerns about Disney," stressed Land. "But Disney has done its share of listening. ... Still, I don't think there was any way that the boycott would have ended without the departure of the princeling of darkness."

That is Land's nickname for Disney CEO Michael Eisner.

Eisner's dramatic exit – after a no-confidence vote by disgruntled shareholders – was a crucial moment. According to Land, the infighting that haunted the final Eisner years even inspired after-hours calls to Southern Baptist headquarters in Nashville. At Disney, executives have offered no public reaction on the end of the boycott.

"I have had enough off-the-record talks with some important people at Disney to know that they thought the boycott was biting them in some places that hurt," said Land. "But these people inside Disney also convinced me that the cancer in the body was Eisner and that, once he was gone, we would see more signs of improvement."

But for Southern Baptist leaders, said Land, the critical question is not whether the boycott affected Disney, but whether it affected life inside Christian homes. There is evidence – he cited sobering prime-time ratings and box-office statistics – that millions of Americans are having second thoughts about the media they consume.

The bottom line is that American families have more media options, from TiVo to Podcasting, from home theaters to interactive video games. The question, said Land, is whether they will make wise choices.

Satellites and fiber-optic cables can carry filth as well as faith.

"If Jesus is the Lord of our lives then he is supposed to be the Lord of our entertainment lives, as well. It's easy to forget that," said Land. "But that's what I hope Southern Baptists took away from the boycott. That's what this was about."