Jesus Heals Cancer: A Tale of Media Hype and Church Marketing

A certain church made national headlines last week with a billboard advertising Jesus' medicinal properties.

This has not gone unremarked, e.g. Dr Mark Keown (he of the remarkably poo coloured blog) has pontificated at length.  Now for the record, I do believe that Jesus heals cancer, but it it is also rather evident that he does not always heal cancer, which means those of us who believe he does heal need to be sensitive in how we express that in public settings - this sign manifestly fails to do that. But I am not wanting to blog about that, because, well, it is just a bit obvious.  Instead I want to ask two questions that don't seem to have been asked by anyone but that bug me no end.

1. Why is this a national news story?  This was not a national advertising campaign, but one billboard on one church in one town.  Local community newspapers are actually very good at reporting positive church events, if a church does a working bee or organises help for a local school or runs a special service for asylum seekers or some such the local paper will be happy to say what is going on.  The national media couldn't care less, and why should they?  But when a local church does something questionable, why should it appear on the national TV news and in the national papers?  Am I missing something here?  This is not a story of national importance, it is a local issue and the only reason it has become a national story is because the national news media has hyped it up into one.  Why is that?

2.  The second thing is that for me this billboard not only disrespects those who are suffering from cancer but also implies rather directly that Jesus only heals cancer at this particular church.  Now this suggestion has created some hostile reactions on facebook where I first mooted it, but let me explain:

The billboard proclaims, I quote, "Church, but not as you know it" - claiming other churches are not like this one.
And in what way is this church different from the ones I know (i.e. any other church I may have been to)?
Answer: This church is different because in this church "Jesus heals cancer."

We are so used to churches appropriating inappropriate marketing methods from the commercial world that we don't even notice where such comparative advertising leads us, but it actually leads us to denigrate God's people who sincerely worshipping him in the other churches around the town.  Why is it that this church feels that Jesus healing cancer should be or could be their unique selling point?  Do they think that Jesus isn't at work healing in other churches with different styles and pattern of worship?  Do churches in this country need their own advertising standards to help those churches who struggle not to embrace comparative commercial and insensitive advertising to stick to a standard that doesn't lead them to slander the bride of Christ?

I'm just asking.

Let me know what you think :-)

Does God Cause Spontaneous Combustion?

The first recorded case of spontaneous combustion in Ireland has provoked retired professor of pathology Mike Green into some theological speculation, saying he doubted spontaneous combustion could be explained by divine intervention on rather surprising grounds.

I think if the heavens were striking in cases of spontaneous combustion then there would be a lot more cases. I go for the practical, the mundane explanation.

Apparently God can't be doing it because it doesn't happen often enough. Only things that happen infrequently need mundane practical explanations.

Confused yet? :-)

Why Are Stupid Christians News?

Now I know the media has a general bias against Christians, fair enough, but there is something sinister about the desire to publicise every stupid Christian group they can find.  This month we had the idiots from California and not long before it was the idiots from Florida.  Now I have no desire to defend such stupidity but why should it be international news?  Do they say of every madman, murderer and fraudster in the news who isn't a Christian, "and of course this man never went to church" as if that has anything to do with his madness?  Why then does peoples' idiocy, which would otherwise not be newsworthy, suddenly becomes worthy of international attention because they are a "pastor" in the USA?

*headslap*

A Short History of Biblioblogging

Jim Davila has kindly made available his SBL paper, give it a read.  Some highlights

But my experience remains that the legacy media by and large is determined to ignore the implications of the new mass individual media and the increased scrutiny and accountability it generates. Journalists who are not experts in anything continue to pontificate and editorialize with a sanctimony that is increasingly intolerable to their audience, with the result that that audience is steadily shrinking.

Let me next say a little about what biblioblogging has done and continues to do for the field. First, it has made possible the rapid dissemination of information on new discoveries and other matters of interest – as well as dissemination of accessible specialist commentary on such matters – to a vastly enlarged audience.

Second, blogging helps to put a personal face on biblical scholarship by allowing scholars to speak with an informal public voice different from the voice of academic publication. Even the most academic of academic blogs is a much more personal expression of the author's thoughts than any academic peer-review publication.

As you can't comment on his blog feel free to do so here!

weekend reading

• Ramachandra nails the hypocritical western media for their sins in exacerbating Muslim Christian relations
• Finally a call for posts for September's Biblical Studies Carnival
• Jim calls for posts on masturbation, how can I refuse?
• While Mike Bird with some help from John Piper reminds us of the benefit of memorising scripture

Another bumper day on the web

• Marc Cortez gives a salutary lesson in statistics, as it seems rumours of the Web's demise have been greatly over exagerated
• Cynthia Neilsen on the dehumanization of slaves in the USA
• Steve Douglas writes to a friend struggling with faith
• Jim West shares a Michael Crichton quote on reading the news
• Ali tries to work out how to argue against homosexuality without being a jerk
• the Biblical World on the women in Paul's life
• and don't miss the majestic plastic bag, i have a song about this, but i won't sing it for you today cos i have lost my voice :-(