One of many evangelical billboards which have sprung
up lately in my city...
I have stated several times in this blog that I am a Bible-believing Christian who seeks to follow the New Testament. However, that does not mean that I support everyone and everything that is called "Christian" nowadays in the United States. One of the assertions which I have made in this blog over the last five or so years is that the sort of "Christianity" embodied in white American evangelicalism has nothing to do with doing to others what one would wish to be done to oneself, nor does it have anything to do with loving one's neighbor or providing material help to those who are in material need. Rather, the words and deeds of white American evangelicalism show that these evangelicals have simply made themselves into a tool for amassing secular earthly economic, political, and cultural power. White American evangelicalism has become an expression of national and ethnic narcissism, a mere civic religion designed to bolster the power of one particular tribe and to justify the bloody deeds which that tribe has done in its bid to Make Itself Great. (Maybe it was never really anything more than that!)
One of the ways in which white American evangelicalism has made itself a political tool is by its evil marriage to the Republican Party and to those political parties to the right of the Republicans. The white American evangelical/Protestant church has repeatedly asserted over the last several decades that the Republican Party is the party of "godliness" and that it is the duty of Christians to vote Republican, to salute the Flag, and to be rabid patriots. Thus it has been interesting to see the appearance of billboards such as the one pictured at the side of one of the streets in my town - especially during this election season. Like the spread of smallpox pustules, the growth of mold colonies, or the sprouting of mushrooms, these billboards have become ever more numerous during the year and a half from the time I first noticed their appearance until now.
Most of these billboards are at least as shrill as the one in the picture, although a few outdo even this. I am thinking of one such billboard next to a freeway in my town, which reads something like "Where are you going? HEAVEN or HELL?" I can agree in the abstract with some of the messages of these billboards. For instance, I do believe that Jesus is alive and ascended to the right hand of God. However, I cringe when I hear this statement shouted shrilly from a billboard. To me, the greatest evidence of the risen Christ is that those who claim to be His followers are being transformed into decent people. Being shouted at by a billboard is very much less than convincing - especially when so many of the shouters who pay for such billboards have been caught in all kinds of scandals and have backed all sorts of really creepy political candidates.
But shouting billboards do tell us one thing. They tell us that the shouters likely have lots of money. To shout from a billboard for one month costs around $1200 for a small billboard of the type typically seen next to a four-lane urban street. If you want to keep shouting and you want to use the same billboard, monthly costs after the first month run around $1000. That means that to blast a message from a billboard for an entire year costs over $12,000. Multiply that by fifteen or twenty billboards and you can see that someone somewhere is paying serious folding money to do his shouting! And the cost increases even more if the shouter uses large, multi-panel billboards for his shouting. I don't have an exact figure for the number of billboards now being used for the religious billboard blitz in my town, but I can imagine that the cost for this year alone will run at least $500,000. If the same sort of billboard blitz is taking place elsewhere in the U.S., that means that the backers of this campaign have deep pockets.
Yet that money may largely be going to waste, as the burgeoning number of exvangelicals, "Nones" and churchless Christians in America indicates. I for instance have not gone to church since March 2000. It may be that American evangelical civic religion is turning into a broken weapon.
