Religions as Brands, Brands as Religions

In today's Wall Street Journal, Naomi Schaeffer Riley comes down hard on James B. Twitchell's Shopping for God: 

Mr. Twitchell manages to reduce this profound idea to the dictates of basic consumer theory. Sacrifice, he says -- not least, tithing -- signifies value. The more you sacrifice, the more you visibly value the product for which you are giving something up, and the more you show other people that you value it, too. "Why do true believers sometimes puncture themselves, walk on their knees until they bleed, fast until they are skeletal or join a monastery and go mum?" Mr. Twitchell asks. "Brand allegiance."

And so on.  I'll spend some time with Twitchell but I basically buy Schaeffer's point that:

...consultants can only do so much, and the point of church outreach surely has less to do with improving "brands" than with saving souls. Mr. Twitchell concludes by noting that, "in the Land of Plentitude, the customer is king." Thus he asks: "Why should religion be different?" The answer to that question comes from another book.

And I'd add only this -- Twitchell is spending his time trying to turn religions into brands.  Whereas most of my friends in the marketing disciplines spend their days trying to turn brands into religions.

Feel like something is broken here?

Just possibly -- on both sides of the equation.

More thoughts on this soon.