Pitch It, Baby
The ultimate shopping mall.

March 6, 2001 11:40 a.m.

ith the Earth tilting toward spring, the mind turns to large subjects: rebirth, Ft. Lauderdale, and the eventual return of bikini season. Regarding the latter, a son asked the other day about where we were going for summer vacation. Certainly not to a Florida theme park, including the new Holy Land Experience, which has been much in the news lately. If ever caught at one of these parks, even dead drunk, instructions have been left to convert me to chum and give — not sell — the goo to local fisherman.

That said, Florida theme parks do seem to succeed not only in entertaining their customers, but in raising controversy. Disneyworld has drawn bitter denunciations from the likes of James Dobson because of its policies toward homosexuals. The French version has been severely criticized by its host country for its supposed vulgarity, though Americans know an cultural inferiority complex when they see one. The French have been living off the bidet for far too long: They know it, we know it, and they know we know it.

The Holy Land Experience, a relative rump of a park, has raised its own issues of taste and propriety. A smattering of Jewish activists, most prominently, has denounced the park as "bad for Jews" because, in the explanation of a critical rabbi, it may seduce non-practicing Jews into converting to Christianity. As famed journalist Matt Labash recently reported, the Jewish Defense League in fact refers to all attempts at conversion as "The Quiet Holocaust." The JDL goes so far as to assert that evangelical Christians, particularly Southern Baptists, are trying to "Love Us To Death." Some Christians, meanwhile, see the park as yet another gross commercialization of their religious heritage. The libertarians are no doubt disgusted beyond words, but confine themselves to chuckling.

With all due respect to these critics, whose right to carp is sacrosanct, they are way out of line. Americans are always trying to pitch some product, service, or idea to anyone with a dime to spend, and the people who run the Holy Land, LTD are no exception. Attempting to intimidate them by alleging impure and even murderous motives is an anti-American assault on freedom and commerce — major sins indeed.

Denouncing religious pitchmen has a long and honored history, and the rabbis make a valid point that some nations and peoples have taken the job far too seriously. But this is modern America, and to suggest that Baptists harbor Nazi-like animosities is an abominable smear.

Yet there no doubting that the Baptists are pitchmen, and like most other pitchmen they look for easy marks. People without religion — especially young people — are especially prone to a pitch in times of personal crisis. A former job took me in close contract with members of a religious cult centered on a fellow we called the Korean Lunar Deity. To the undoubted horror of many members' parents, the cult offered something they didn't — answers to the Big Questions of Existence. The lesson here is that if you don't want your kids taking up an alien religion, teach them the one you prefer (and good luck with that, by the way). If you don't teach them any at all, don't be surprised by what they might drag home some day.

Of course, Christians don't only target Jews. They try to convert one another. Pentecostals have been poaching Catholics with great efficiency in some parts of the world, while in America, Evangelicals have been poaching Catholics and mainline Protestants. Catholics, meanwhile, have been pulling in some disaffected high-church Prots, while the Unitarians continue to make their subtle appeal to Sunday golfers (who appreciate less strenuous church-attendance policies). Meanwhile, the Mormons are marauding far and wide and we can expect Islam to eventually reap a major harvest, which may give the JDL something real to worry about.

These denominations, sects, etc. don't like being poached. They complain about spiritual arrogance, and there is certainly truth in the assertion. Catholics will argue that they in effect hold the deed to Jesus Christ, which is hotly disputed by some Protestants, who insist that they have the deed in their own safe. As one with family members in both these camps, and in the no-God and Jewish camps as well, it all begins sounding a whole lot like a shopping mall the day after Thanksgiving.

Which is as it should be. As a practical people, Americans believe that if something's not worth selling, what the hell good is it? They also understand that if you fail to sell, you eventually go out of business. All of which leads to some interesting theological twists and inventions. At the same time, a teeming marketplace can also punish the trendy, as any good Episcopalian can tell you.

Religious pitchmen aren't the only ones vying for souls. Secular pitchmen hold dominating if not monopoly positions in the education and entertainment industries, which has inspired its share of complaints. Many of those complains are also overstated. All those "shows about nothing" can convince even the dullest kids of the extreme hollowness (and shallowness) of a totally secular existence. Like some religious tracts, they're double-edged swords that can deliver their deepest blow to those who deliver them to your door.

Our family will skip the theme parks this year. Yet while we have some deep disagreements about religion, I think we can agree that anyone who is converted by one really did have it coming.