Media Matters for America released a new study claiming that the religious right is given more airtime on news programs than their more liberal counterparts. Depending on the news source, conservative exposure is 3 to 4 times greater than that of liberals.

As the study says, this should not surprise anyone. The researchers state “Religion is often depicted in the news media as a politically divisive force, with two sides roughly paralleling the broader political divide: On one side are cultural conservatives who ground their political values in religious beliefs; and on the other side are secular liberals, who have opted out of debates that center on religion-based values.” This is so even while the majority of Americans do not attend traditional religious services. (Many surveys say weekly attendance is approximately 45%, while more recently others claim that number is closer to 25%.)

What the study does not say is that religion is presented in this way because it makes for good television. Who wants to watch two people agreeing with each other? It’s like watching paint dry. Far more interesting is someone who is screaming and yelling, even if the people in the audience don’t agree with the person on screen. This is why Fox was so successful — they took a position and screamed it through every means at their disposal. Love them or hate them, you knew what they stood for and you knew where you stood in relationship to that.

Here however is the conundrum: you can’t have a legitimate political debate on television because it’s not particularly interesting. However, 70%+ of Americans get their news and information from television. While you might say, someone should come out with an alternative to Fox. Watch Fox, watch the alternative and let people decide for themselves who has the better argument. Not a bad idea, but unfortunately unsuccessful. When MSNBC brought Phil Donahue — the ultimate liberal — on board, they made him book 2 conservatives for every liberal. MSNBC didn’t have the conviction to go as exceedingly liberal as Fox was conservative.

I see little hope for balancing the weight of conservative voices on television, but I’m certainly open to suggestions.

Religion in American culture is not always marketed by banging us over the head with it. No one is standing with a gun pointed at you saying, “You must worship God. You must pray to the Holy One.” Rather, religion is part of the fabric of our culture. It is understood by the majority of Americans to be a commonsense part of the way we live.

Cultural hegemony is a term academics use to explain the power one group has over another — power gained not through the use of force but through passive acceptance. We are so surrounded by religious and spiritual thoughts and symbols that we believe that this is the way the world is — it could not possibly be any other way. When one is in this environment, it is difficult to imagine one’s self outside of it.

We see religion in almost every area of our lives. A great example, coming off the last post, is the entrance of religion into the weight loss marketing segment. Not only was the Weigh Down Diet on TV (The Tyra Banks Show), it was the cover story on the April 2007 edition of Good Housekeeping. (As a reminder, the Weight Down Diet is based on praying to God when you feel the urge to eat.) The GH story did mention other weight loss programs like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig. However, the cover displayed someone who lost 102 pounds on the Weigh Down Diet, and the article began with a 2-page spread featuring two women who had used this God-based program. Getting the cover and the beginning of the story gives this diet program prominence — an implied endorsement — over the other programs listed. Moreover, this diet program was the only one that had two people as representatives of the diet’s success. All others showed only one. These subtle messages imply that the weigh loss program with God attached is somehow better than the secular versions — an example of hegemony at work.

Women are not only targeted through diets. Every month, Rick Warren — pastor of one of the country’s largest megachurches and author of The Purpose-Driven Life — has a column in Ladies Home Journal. Each column is about something any woman might find useful — 5 steps to peace, The Joys of a Simpler Life, The Love Kids Really Need. All good ideas. However, within every column, there is a mention of God or a Bible citation. This creates the assumption that religion is the accepted — perhaps even the preferred — means to a better life.

It is these insidious forms of religious marketing that make the more blatant forms so successful. Any marketer will tell you that you want to take the path of least resistance when getting someone to purchase your product. If people already accept God, what better way to sell a product than to make God your endorser.

Tyra Banks, the arbiter of all things cool to females 12-24 (and slightly older), recently did a show called, “Church of Thin.” (While it originally aired May 10, it is repeating today.)

On this show, Gwen Shamblin — dietician-cum-pastor — promotes the virtues of eating what God wants you to eat. More important than what to eat is how to eat. First, you must never eat unless you are hungry. Second, you should make sure your food is exactly the way you like it. Third, take small bites and sip liquid between mouthfuls — Gwen recommends coffee or Diet Coke (I was beginning to think she has a product placement deal with Coke she mentioned them so often!). Throughout, you should be checking in with your body to see if you are full. Most of all, Gwen claims that portion control is the most important part of the Weigh Down diet plan.

As someone who first went to Weight Watchers (WW) at age 13, I am very familiar with diets and diet strategies. WW, too, would tell you that portion control is of the utmost importance. The difference is that WW also tells you to eat healthy foods (Gwen does not) and to exercise (Gwen says do this only if you feel like it. Now, come on! When was the last time you felt like it?)

What Gwen stresses is good psychology. First, check in with your body. Not a bad idea. However, the problem with most people who are overweight is that they eat too much because they are emotional eaters. Food is an addiction. No different from drugs or alcohol, food is a means to alleviating the pain. Gwen’s answer to this is to shift the focus to God. If you want to eat, pray first. If you are struggling, talk to God. Whatever the issue, talk to God.

In fact, if you go to the refrigerator and start eating when you are not hungry and you have tapped into God, God will intervene so you cannot eat. One member of her church said God would make her baby cry wherever she would go to the pantry when she wasn’t hungry; another told a story of how a whole carrot cake fell out of her hands and onto the floor so she couldn’t eat it. Whether it is true or not, these women believe it to be true and it has helped them lose upwards of 100 pounds.

The Weigh Down diet and the Remnant Fellowship (Gwen’s church — she is not ordained and has had no ministerial training) are great examples of the marriage of the secular and the sacred. Weight loss is a perennial marketing bestseller. American’s spend $30 billion — that’s with a “b” — on weight loss products and programs every year according to the Food and Drug Administration. If you can’t get people to go to church, use a deep-seated need to get them to have a relationship with God. Simultaneously, the church sells books and tapes to teach people the program. (Gwen told Tyra that she doesn’t take money from people at the church, but she did not say how she does earn a living — something Tyra did not follow up on.)

What secular weight loss programs might learn from this is that they need to find something very specific to focus people’s attention on when they are losing weight. Obviously, you don’t have to pray to God to lose weight. Perhaps teaching people to slow down and take a minute to reflect before they grab the next bag of chips could be equally effective.

Gwen and her group have been accused of being a cult. While I don’t know the group well enough to say, something one of the members said had me thinking that it was. A man and his wife had loss a significant amount of weight and decided to move to Nashville in order to attend the Remnant Fellowship because he wanted to be closer to God. I kept wondering why he couldn’t do that at the church down the street.

Note: Religious books follow what is popular in the secular market. See amazon.com for a listing of other faith-based diet books.

Last night, NBC Nightly News did a piece about virtual religion called “Give me that online religion.” In it reporter, Don Teague, presents the 3D online world of Second Life.

For those of you who don’t know, Second Life is an online virtual world where you can find just about anything that you find in the real world — including religion. There are churches and temples and mosques, among houses and towns and even X-rated material. One of the most developed of the churches in this area is Life Church. Parishioners can go into the virtual church as the avatar of their choice and watch the same church sermon they would see in multiple locations throughout the United States.

Two key points that Mr. Teague glossed over in his report (and I readily admit I understand that this might be due to time constraints):

1) Life Church is the new wave in media churches. The very “church” itself is is not one church but 11 different locations throughout the US. They send the same message via satellite to all of their locations with each separate location customizing additional live services around the mediated portion. Moving this mediated church into a virtual space (particularly given their young demographic) was an obvious progression of who this church is.

2) Mr. Teague interviewed Elaine Heath, who is an ordained minister and professor at Southern Methodist University. She claimed that people have to be in community to have a church. Anyone who has studied media and religion over time knows that for many people that is just simply not the case. Since the time of radio, people have used media to find new forms of religion. It is a way to try out new faiths; a way to sample a new belief system. While many people do turn to church or other religious institutions for community, particularly given the break down in so many other areas of our culture (this is why megachurches are so successful), for some people it is just about the message.

One man interviewed for this piece created an avatar that was an animal, some sort of cheetah I think. He said going to the virtual Life Church dressed in this way was the only time he felt accepted at church. I don’t know if that says more about him or about the state of brick and mortar churches.

Spiritual content goes in cycles when it comes to broadcast TV prime time. (I specifically say spiritual as opposed to religious because vague belief systems get higher ratings — think Touched by an Angel.) Some years God and his minions are unavoidable; others the networks take at the very least an agnostic attitude toward content. Which one will it be next year? Is spirituality in an up cycle or a precipitous downfall? To find out, we’ll take a look at the new schedules that were announced last week at the broadcast network upfront presentations – million-dollar dog-and-pony shows where they present their fall lineup to advertisers. (See metacritic.com for a night-by-night schedule grid.)

While angels are not in evidence, Sci-Fi programs are definitely hot for next season. This is, of course, a reaction to the overwhelming success of NBC’s hit show, Heroes. In fact, all of the shows that I would categorize as spiritual fall within this genre.

On Monday nights, NBC has a reworking of Quantum Leap, a show where physicist Sam Beckett jumped from time period to time period entering different people’s lives (and bodies) to make things right in the world. The new program is called Journeyman. In this show, a reporter jumps through time to change people’s lives for the better.

On Tuesday, CW has Reaper, a show about Satan’s 21-year-old bounty hunter. We can only imagine what this show will be like as it is being directed by Kevin Smith, film director most known for Clerks. He is also the director of Dogma, a film about two renegade angels — this (interestingly) is not listed on CW’s show description page. Also on Tuesday is New Amsterdam on Fox. This show is about an immortal NYPD detective. Wednesday nights on ABC we have Pushing Daisies. This Sci-Fi selection is about a baker that can bring people back from the dead to help solve their murders. This is also a romance, by the way.

CBS’s Friday night gives its first 2 hours over to “the other side.” Returning in the 8PM slot is Ghost Whisperer, a show about a medium who helps people by talking to the dead. (This show is co-executive produced by celebrity-medium James van Praagh.) This will be followed by newcomer, Moonlight, which is about a private investigator who also just happens to be a vampire.

Surprisingly, there is religion on the schedule, well sort of. The CW has scheduled Aliens in America about a Pakistani Muslim who is an exchange student in Wisconsin. This show sounds like a typical high school angst comedy. We’ll just have to wait and see how they handle the religious aspect of the comedy and how much they can use Islam for laughs. (Albert Brooks tried it and failed, so I don’t have a lot of hope for this.)

Of the 29 new shows on the schedule approximately 25% of them fall into this spiritual/Sci-Fi category. I would also remind folks that while shows may not be dedicated to religion or spirituality, religious and spiritual content readily appears in popular programming — the football players in Friday Night Lights pray before a game and every Sunday night, the Cold Case murder victims appear to Detective Lilly Rush. Overall, I’d say that’s a pretty good showing — but it won’t beat out reality.

The Presidential elections are about 18 months away and already the news channels and nightly news programs are falling all over themselves to inject religion in the political process.

Larry King did an hour last week under the title of “What’s God Got to do with Politics?” The panel included Jim Wallis (God’s Politics), David Kuo (Tempting Faith), Barry Lynn (Piety and Politics), David Gergen and Reverend Albert Mohler, Jr. president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The concensus — if we want to believe them — is that religion shouldn’t matter, but morality — or as Wallis says “the moral compass” — should.

You have to ask, then, how does the media get to a candidate’s moral compass without talking about religion? Mitt Romney is likely to say his faith determines his morality, as will every other candidate. But it’s going to be different when Romney says it then when someone else does it.

Moreover, since the last election, Democrats have been falling all over themselves to show that Republicans aren’t the only party with access to the Almighty. One important example of this was the opening of the new Lakewood Church in Houston in 2005. Notably Nancy Pelosi was a visible presence at this — the grand opening of the largest megachurch in the country. Another example was Barack Obama’s attendance at the Saddleback conference on AIDS in 2006. We can expect to see more of this sort of crossover between Democrats and megachurches over the next 18 months.

So while the pundits say religion doesn’t matter, or at least shouldn’t matter, maybe someone should tell the candidates — and the media.

I just started reading the New York Times bestseller, eat, pray, love, by Elizabeth Gilbert. In the book, she says that when people ask her what kind of God she believes in, she says “a magnificent God.” That got me thinking, if there are different Gods, then maybe those Gods need different kinds of marketing.

Now, I’m not talking here about marketing religion — that’s something else completely. What I’m talking about is giving God a makeover. For example, when I was researching the Kabbalah Centre, I found that they never use the word “God,” instead they use the word “Light.” This is because “God” has so many negative connotations for people. The Kabbalah Centre must be onto something here, given their success. So if we don’t call God “God,” what else could we call Him/Her/It? Higher power seems to work for a lot of people. Divine essence, maybe? Loving Father still seems to be popular.

Those are all fine, but what if we wanted to do an extreme makeover on God. What words would convey the correct meaning, the correct feeling? Would we need to make Him younger? Would He still have a physical form? Would He be a She or something else entirely? Could God be branded?

The conclusion I have come to is, no. That would be an impossible task. God is different things to different people and mass producing an idea of God just simply wouldn’t work. Brands are understood through the myths that are created around them — they are the storytellers of our culture. When it comes to God, the myths are too old; too embedded in the psyche. Quite frankly, it would take a miracle to re-imagine what God it. As I say in my upcoming book, Brands of Faith, it is religion’s ability to take us outside of the commercial culture that gives it its unique quality. Maybe it isn’t religion that does that, but God or simply faith, that thing that leads you to believe in something beyond yourself. Certainly something to think about…

In the wake of Jerry Falwell’s death, many people will be writing about his founding of the Moral Majority and its impact on politics. That is only right and fitting.

But Jerry Falwell was more than a preacher, or a televangelist, or a politician. He was a marketer who made it ok to be a born-again Christian. In creating the Moral Majority, Jerry Falwell made it ok to be enthusiastic about your faith. He made it ok to insert politics into the pulpit. He made it ok to tell others to believe what you believe. And while this group was unlikely to have been the majority, there were certainly plenty of people in the 1970s who wanted the 1950s — or at least an idolized, Ozzie-and-Harriet version of the 1950s — to come back. God willing, Falwell was going to try and get it for them, by attacking the Supreme Court’s decision on school prayer and more importantly by going after Roe v. Wade. It was that want, that need, that sold the Moral Majority.

Also, in letting people know it was ok to be an evangelical, Falwell did the one thing any marketer wants to achieve: He opened the door for evangelicals to do what they do best — sell their religion to others.

The other key thing that Falwell did (and it is what televangelists always do) was that he developed a database. Before email and the internet, religious databases in conjunction with the pulpit helped to get out the message, get in the money and get out the vote. Importantly, snail mail can do what email cannot — it can communicate with people who already agree with your message while making sure that message is not communicated to the opposition. Even now, those databases are the envy of the Left.

Love him or hate him, Jerry Falwell was the source of much debate and a hard-core Conservative until the end. While I certainly did not agree with his politics, I did admire his ability to promote his beliefs.

Last night Anderson Cooper presented a story of a BBC reporter screaming at a Scientologist. The reporter was filming a documentary about the “religion” and he got very angry with his subject when the discussion moved to whether Scientology is a cult. (As of post time, the CNN story was not available. Footage of the reporter screaming is on YouTube) If you’ve had any interactions with this group, you can understand why the reporter would feel this way.

The first time I encountered Scientology was when I was an undergrad in Boston. Walk down Boyleston Street any day of the week and there was always someone there with a clipboard. They would ask the seemingly innocuous question, “Would you mind answering a few short questions?” And you would say, “sure, no problem” thinking the questions were on the clipboard. After you’d said, “yes,” however, they would invite you down the street to take the test at their headquarters. When you’d protest, they continued to say that it will only take a few minutes, come on, come on. Once you took the test, they — of course — would have all of your contact information and someone from the church would repeated call until you came in and started taking classes. (The test, by the way, was a survey wherein they determined all the things that are wrong with you and why you so desperately needed to join the church.)

This is a great example of marketing religion. Scientologists are nothing if not super salespeople. They have a perfect target audience — college students away from home for the first time who are very vulnerable to suggestion; They intice prospects with a simple questionnaire that leads to getting people into the store, and finally, they develop a database of all potential customers who can be followed up with telemarketing.

My encounter with Scientology occured in the late 1970s. Since then they’ve added celebrity spokespeople as a key means of attracting young people — Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Kirsty Alley, to name a few.

All of this has worked incredibly well for a faith that was created by a sci-fi writer. L.Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, is quoted as having said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “If you want to make a million dollars, create a religion.” In his case, he was obviously right.

By the way, they wouldn’t let me take the test, because I was 17 — I’ll let you guess why.

Have a Scientology story? Let me know.

Welcome to the launch of Brands of Faith, a blog devoted to discussing all things related to marketing and religion.

I think you will find as you join me on this journey that there will be too many things to talk about, rather than too few. Just this weekend there was Mitt Romney on 60 Minutes, a cover story on the New York Times about faith-based groups receiving government funds, and “Seeing and Believing: The Power of Faith,” a 2-hour special on ABC’s 20/20. For today, we’re going to talk about this last one.

It should be no surprise that ABC scheduled this program in May, which is sweeps month — one the 4 times during the year when the networks are particularly concerned about ratings. During those four important sweeps months, the television networks air programming that they expect will generate the largest number of viewers — the American Idol finale, the Survivor finale, and, of course, anything to do with faith or religion.

As statistics have shown (quoted in the show and elsewhere), 90% of Americans believe in a higher power (note that the show was about “faith” and not “religion”). That’s a very large prospective audience for a show. Not only that, the network covered their bases by including a segment on atheists, so there was something for everyone. In addition to the atheism piece, the program covered cloistered nuns, a shyster faith healer, The Secret, and scientists who are trying to determine if we are hardwired to believe in God, among a number of other topics.

Now all of this is fine and frankly not a lot of people are at home watching television on Friday night, but really what was the point? What did they want people to think about faith coming out of this program? They did so many segments on so many different areas that no topic got any in depth coverage. The segment on The Secret was positively inane; and the segment on “faith healer,” Peter Popoff, was right out of the 1980s televangelist scandals.

And yet, this show proves the point: where religion and marketing meet we get snack packs of sound bites, not juicy ideas to ponder.