Yesterday, USA Today reported that Rolling Stone magazine has turned down an ad from a Bible publisher. A company called Zondervan, apparently the largest publisher of Bibles in the nation, wanted to buy a full-spread advertisement to reach out to “spiritually intrigued 18 to 34 years olds.” This is a demographic that is supposedly buying religious and spiritual books as if their life depended on it—except for the Holy Bible. Citing some obscure policy against religious advertising, Jann Wenner’s godless people decided to pass. We can see the inter-office memo now:
“We regret to inform you that our spiritual director, Satan, sees a conflict of interest in advertising your book with us. This would be a little like NBC agreeing to ads for ABC. We’re sure you can understand that. We were crazy to consider this in the first place, although we are not in the habit of turning down money from anyone. That smacks dangerously of morality, and how far in the world we get with morality? Not very far, indeed!”
We’ve joked about all the strange human behavior we’re seeing that might be signalling the end-times—but actually, it all comes down to that hoary boogeyman, the “emboldened religious right.” There is something both reassuring and disturbing about Rolling Stone’s seemingly random enforcement of what they admit is an “unwritten policy.” On the one hand, it feels like tit-for-tat: You cannot simultaneously condemn the godless youth culture and its secular overlords, and co-opt them in your ad campaigns. On the other hand, why is the “embattled left” so uncomformtable with traditional religion?
Christians, for their part, should take a good long look in the mirror and realize that their sur-name is not as blameless as they might like it to be. The extended family, from radical protestants to insane evangelicals, has made the whole country jumpy. Regular people who prefer to take their spirituality with a heavy chaser of secular realism, want no part of “organized religion” because it harbors too many hippocritical, hateful people. Soon it will be neceessary to clarify just what kind of Christian you are—just as we now expect practicing Muslims to disavow fundamentalism.
Up until now, it’s been a sort of one-sided story of conservative Christians strong-arming their views onto a nervous public, with the complicity of conservative media owners. It was a mere six weeks ago that two television network refused to run ads for the United Church of Christ which made it clear that this progressive denomination was, unlike the louder sects of the self-righteous, open to gays and lesbians and minorities. Last year, the International Bible Society successfully inserted the Gospel of Luke into the Houston Chronicle. And just a few weeks ago, the Colorado Springs Gazette accepted the entire New Testament as an insert.
The Bible is the world’s best-selling book ever, and it is copyright free. It is free money to anyone who wants to publish it. Of course, the marketplace has been flooded, and there is some question as to whether supply has not exceeded demand . Still, there is something tawdry about advertising the Holy Bible—a method of indirect evangelizing that falls somewhere between street-pamphleteering and the siren-call of the personal injury lawyers. There used to be gentleman’s agreements that certain aspects of our lives were to be held above the shimmy-shake of the ad-man’s solicitations. But of course, those times are long gone. Where would Jesus advertise?
It is gratifying that people seem to be getting unfortable with pushy religious sorts. Our nation was founded on religious freedom, but more important than that, it was founded on religious dissent. A magazine that is nothing without dissent—or at least the marketable perception of dissent, the cornerstone of rock ‘n’ roll—probably cannot afford to be associated in the minds of its readers with the opposite of dissent, which is blind faith.
But a thoughtful person admits there is something unsettling about Rolling Stone’s decision. Any publisher can refuse advertising for any reason (although they may not be able to avoid law suits when they do), but their actions suggest that they think there is something wrong with reading the most important text of Western Civilization. If more people read the Bible for themselves, free from the insane interpretations of greasy-haired bullies in pulpits, on soapboxes, and on cable TV, the scales might fall from their eyes, and they might see how the good name of Christianity (and, by the way, Judaism and Islam—people of “The Book,” you know) is being destroyed by the self-righteous forcing it into the secular world, which does not tolerate absolutism very well or for very long.
Still, we’re troubled. We wonder if this whole dust-up somehow invalidates that ordination we received years ago through one of Rolling Stone’s classified ads.
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