February 2008
Satellite Theater
By Shamrock McShane

Shopping for God

Shopping for God, the new book from University of Florida professor of English James Twichell, is just what you¹d expect from an apatheist.

The same is true of the art of farce in the theater, where the idea is to give the audience exactly what it expects — but never when it expects it.

The Hipp, in its latest offering, The Dead Guy, has discovered the joys of theater replete with bar and soft porn, packaged as reality TV, concealed in plain sight amid the product placement. It's all happening on the same stage that presented Doubt and called the Catholic Church on the carpet for abuse.

The theater rose out of religion, but the two were one in the beginning. The story around the campfire has been branded on our consciousness, which is just the unconscious burning through.

Capitalism is by far the greatest production scheme ever devised. We can produce more than we'll ever need. This applies to our spiritual needs as well as the temporal.

Materialism includes spirituality. At this point in history it even has a price on it. Just as a materialist may dismiss spirituality out of hand as that which does not exist, you still must grant that belief in spirituality exists as sure as day, with all its many and varied repercussions.

Belief is the manifestation of God in the world. Whether God exists or not is beside the point. It has no effect on the price.

Twitchell discovers a church that is melding, morphing, seamlessly, back into entertainment, with a purpose.

"We know catchwords are at the heart of branding," Twitchell writes. "They don't have to be true, but they have to be evocative. So, if Maytag is dependable, if FedEx is fast, if Volvo is safe, if Coke is the Real Thing, then the megachurch is purposeful."

So, how did Christianity go from in your heart to in your face?

Do a history of it, a critique of everything. See what produced it.

Thorstein Veblen nailed it with his theory of the leisure class. Over–production happens to every commodity.

We can't buy it all.

Little fish are eaten by big fish. Finally there is just Wal–Mart. That goes for religion too.

So, that's the good news. Don't sweat religion. Might as well Stop the War on Terror, which makes no sense anyway. As not a few generals have pointed out, terrorism is a tactic. Declaring war on terror makes as much sense as declaring war on night attacks. Besides, Muslims, Christians, and Jews will eventually work it all out anyway.

Why? Because there's money to be made. In the here and now. Which is all anybody really cares about anyway. Nobody really cares where Jews, Christians, and Muslims spend eternity. Presumably they're all free then and there to go their separate ways, if they wish, if they can. Who knows?

Twitchell won't go that far. He examines only this unique aspect, the marketability of ersatz Christianity in the United States of America, acknowledging that Roman Catholics, Muslims, and Jews per se don't traffic in such transparently mundane, not to say tawdry and selfish affects. Then again, they don't seem to have to worry about going out of business either.

Capitalism turns everything into a commodity and when it gets done selling everything else, then it sells itself, it sells selling. Everything is a commodity — religion, you, me, Twitchell, God. And our job is to shop till we drop.

"Does the small church on the corner operate like a gas station?"

You betcha.

What is the bottom line? Dickens' Macawber had it right in David Copperfield: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

Twitchell sees clearly the yoke between his own commodities (teaching and writing), and the God Shop.

"I am a schoolteacher. I teach literature. In many ways I am like a minister. My job comes directly from the church … From matriculation through graduation, we mimic the catechism of church life."

Twitchell writes with crystal clarity a prose that draws you along like a powerboat pulling a skier. Consider this brief history.

"When a cult hits paydirt, it becomes a full–fledged religion. Recall that Christianity began as a fierce sectarian movement within Judaism. With the missionary efforts of Saint Paul, it became a cult movement within the larger Greco–Roman world. A hundred years after the death of Jesus, there were only seven to eight thousand Christians in the world. Christianity has never been so vibrant as when it was combative, edging over into the pagan beliefs of the Romans. One wonders if the same vitalization process is now occurring as Islam is edging up against it. But also realize this: when you have a plentitude of fungible suppliers, cults are inevitable as a marketing position."

Shopping for God spends a month of Sundays on a church–going trip to nearby Keystone Heights before heading south to Orlando, a Dante–like descent that plummets to Faith World. If you are saved or born again, or perhaps just truly religious, your soul may be filled with blessedness. However, if you're an apatheist, it'll make your head spin.

Twitchell explains early on, "I lift this coinage from a recent Atlantic Monthly article by Jonathan Rich. It means 'a disinclination to care about one's own religion and an even stronger disinclination to care about other people's.' This is not atheism, agnosticism, skepticism, and all the rest, because the apatheist believes religion has an important place in every culture. And that place should be protected an made safe."

Sea of Commodities

When we shop, we are king, we rule.

Consumers have rights.

We live in a world of over–production. We are drowning in a sea of commodities.

Religion is just another commodity, and so are you.

We learn from Twitchell what we should have already known, that when everything becomes a commodity, you have to find your niche.

"Motivational psychologists call the process constructing discontent. We are persuaded not so much to buy the product as to remove some dissonance and reestablish a perceived equilibrium. It just so happens that the product stand foursquare in the path of recovery from the contrived affliction. To be sure, this is nothing but a protection racket, as the company selling you the relief is also the one creating the deficiency."

Freud called it civilization and its discontents, and the Church calls it original sin, but in the theater, that's entertainment.