Dave Porter's List: Mediated Religion

• Given the trend in distancing religion from religious tradition, are these abstract church logos and websites—composed of scribbles, dots or lines—an attempt (even if a subconscious one) to avoid seeming “too religious”?
• We hear names that are cryptic, apparently prompting intrigue. And being fairly generic on the face, these church names might designate some difference from old-fashioned traditions and “organized religion”: Warehouse 242, Journey, Willow Creek, etc.
• A church will get “brand recognition” from its logo
• Essentially, when you use modern branding, you assure potential church visitors that this thing—your church—is fresh and in style.
• But how does something as anonymous as a brand identity or logo reach and affect people?
• Granted, many forms of Christian propaganda are semi-anonymous; a sermon or a tract, for example, is sent out as a blanket message. But those explicit mediums can be responded to and critiqued with some accountability. But the logo, however, is cast into the world as some kind of subliminal message. It is not even a message as much as a “sense”—almost a sort of eternal icon.
• While your logo comforted them, the gospels might frighten them.
• The crucifix is the most sober logo yet depicted. It declares that, even if God were among us, we would respond with torture and murder.
• So, we might urgently ask then, why the recent and pervasive fashion in not depicting the Son of God being tortured? Why the move toward abstract logos and branding?
• In other words, our efforts to make our message a little more attractive, a little more sexy, a little more marketable may result in a message that doesn’t mean anything at all.

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