Christ the Gift
As Christians, we must consider not just the messages of our marketing initiatives, but the message of marketing itself.
Review by Matt Miller
In Marketing and Christian Proclamation in Theological Perspective, Emily Beth Hill contrasts the word of marketing, which offers tailored messages to construct the person as a consumer, with the word of God, proclaimed (in Martin Luther’s words) “for you” as an unanticipated gift of salvation. Rather than offering “a subversive account of marketing,” Hill draws upon ten years of work experience in market research to build a sober account of how marketing attempts to understand consumers and orient their desires towards products and services for sale. Placing this account into conversation with Luther’s theology of the Word, Hill concludes that “marketing is a word of the law” that constructs human beings as consumers, enslaving us to a project of self-creation. In contrast, the Word of the Gospel sets us free: “God alone can be for us as the only source of life and the one who truly knows who humans are and what they need.”
Hill grounds her understanding of marketing as a word of the law in a historical review of American marketing practices from the colonial era to today. Drawing on the work of Brad Gregory, she defines American consumer identity as “the goods life,” in which one’s consumptive powers form much of one’s identity: for instance, she cites Joshua Fields Millburn’s wry question: “What espresso maker defines me as a man?” In the American project of self-creation, consumer goods become an indispensable adjunct in establishing an identity as an upwardly mobile, self-made American person. Tracing the history of “the goods life” through the early creation of the consumptive American dream through the patriotic consumerism of the World Wars, Hill notes that marketing has been central to American identity throughout our national life.
However, she sees the role of marketing expanding with the creation of modern market research methods, producing a form of branding that echoes Luther’s proclamation of the Gospel in its claim to be marketing “for you.” With tools such as in-store loyalty programs, digital tracking, and brand development, “marketers have the desire to know you without your direct participation and knowledge—and are increasingly able to do so in very concrete ways.” Though these individualized marketing messages claim to be “for you,” tailored to the customer’s exact needs, brands act not in the consumer’s interests, but for their own, to create a consumer base leading to profit. Marketing does not just enable the flow of goods and services as a neutral technique, but actually “constructs consumers” for the market’s own ends. “As people are surveilled and surrounded with individualized communication to make their message true ‘for you,’ the market constructs them as enterprising consumers; or to use theological language: human beings are created and formed by the words they hear and the words to which they respond,” Hill writes. Rather than a value-neutral management technique, modern marketing “for you” in fact encourages human beings to think of ourselves as consumers and thus “to look to ourselves” as creators of our own identities as “consumer citizens.” This self-created identity as consumers explains why Hill identifies marketing as a word of the law, because “if one can be self-made, a pressure and expectation exist to actually do so—to rise up and make something of oneself.” If we must be self-creators, we are enslaved by the law of our own desires; if we cannot make a satisfying consumptive identity for ourselves, we have nobody but ourselves to blame.
Even those Americans relatively conscious of the ills of consumerism struggle to conceive of ourselves apart from our goods
In contrast to the word of marketing that defines human beings as consumers, “the reality of Christ ‘for us’ (pro nobis)” liberates because we are not abandoned to our own products of self-creation. Drawing upon Luther’s theology of the Word, Hill analyzes the importance of Christ’s promeity, his for-us-ness. She writes, “For Luther, the knowledge that God is for us and loves us does not lead to an otherworldly asceticism. Rather, reconciled to God in Christ human beings are reoriented to the creation around them and recognize what God has provided as gifts, not to hoard, but to be thankful for and to be given away in love and service to their neighbors in whatever situation God has placed them.” Whereas marketing “for us” leads to an enslavement to ourselves through our manufactured needs, Christ “for us” sets us free to accept the unanticipated gifts of God, most especially the gift of Christ himself. Rather than meeting felt needs, Christ offers us a gift we could never have anticipated when we were lost in the darkness of our own minds—deliverance from sin and death. Accordingly, Christ offers a word of freedom through the Gospel that sets us free from human laws such as those created by the modern marketing regime.
Hill’s theology of the Word ought to call into question the use of marketing techniques in churches and Christian organizations. If, as Hill argues, these techniques can never be neutral but serve as a word of law, the use of marketing techniques by churches risks compromising our testimony to the free gift of the Gospel. Those adopting a consumer identity—subject to marketing surveillance, characterized by felt needs—lose sight of the freedom offered by Christ “for me” and pursue a different gospel, one of “upward mobility and self-expression through consumption.” All too easily, a church can advertise itself as a way to meet felt needs for meaning, community, or spiritual uplift—thereby becoming a component of the consumer’s self-creation in pursuit of “the goods life.”
At the same time, Hill points out, “Americans do not know life apart from their identity as consumer citizens in the United States” and “the church in the United States no longer knows itself apart from marketing.” Consumer identity has risen to what Charles Taylor calls a “social imaginary,” an unstated vision of the good life that compels us toward a certain way of living even as we remain unaware of it. Even those Americans relatively conscious of the ills of consumerism struggle to conceive of ourselves apart from our goods: if we are minimalists, or try to buy sustainably, these are nonetheless identities structured by consumption (or lack thereof). In contrast, Hill encourages practices such as hospitality as means for individual Christians to form themselves in response to the gift of Christ rather than the law of the market.
Equally, the employment of certain marketing techniques by the church seems inescapable—good luck welcoming visitors if your church lacks a usable website. We must remain aware, however, that digital tools and modern communication techniques reflect the interests and profit motive of their creators, those of the consumptive economy. A church streaming its services on Facebook or employing digital advertising to promote itself enters the content economy and may imply falsely that the promeity of the Gospel is another word of the law like that of marketing—a form of surveillance and self-creation that yokes us tighter to our roles as consumers. If we are to preach the freedom of Christ “for me,” then we must do so by proclaiming the Christian’s freedom from digital marketing’s word of the law, not just in word but in deed. While church websites or even presence on social media may be inescapable, churches and Christian organizations should hold these tools loosely, recognizing that the Word we proclaim is not a message of self-creation and consumer fulfillment, but the gift of Christ himself.
Matt Miller teaches writing at College of the Ozarks in southwest Missouri and writes A Habitation. He has more than a decade of experience as a copywriter and marketing strategist.
Marketing and Christian Proclamation in Theological Perspective was published by Rowman & Littlefield in June 2021. You can purchase a copy on their website here.
