There’s a new blog about religion and politics, specifically the 2008 election. (You got to like a site that puts up Republican Jesus–see below.) There’s several well respected academics writing for the site so it’s worth a perusal. Check it out at www.spiritual-politics.org

I was cleaning off my desk and found an article about GodTube I had clipped to write about from the Tampa Tribune.

Couple of things were in there I hadn’t seen elsewhere even with all the publicity. GodTube is planning to produce its own entertainment programming–not religious programming, entertainment programming. It doesn’t say but we’ve got to assume it will be of the faithful variety. But what exactly? I’m very curious. Also, is that this still in the works given the recent expansion plans? We’ll just have to see.

The other statistic that I loved was that on Sunday mornings GodTube reaches more people that Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church. Now if we figure that Joel’s reaching about 50,000 congregants by now, that’s not huge by Internet standards, but it’s nothing to sneeze at either. Remember we’re talking about Sunday morning (and they have 4 million unique viewers a month).

Ok, unless something REALLY fascinating happens, I’m off this topic for a while.

For my Italian friends and friends with Italian friends, Brands of Faith is being translated into Italian with a publication date of 2009. In Italian, the book is called Il business della fede and you can find out more information at the publishers Web site, Odoya.

I just love this cover art. Well done!

Gawker commented on the Times piece.

Their take on it is that “The whole operation is of course destined to implode when the new hedge fund investors push for less censorship to goose traffic and ads for items a bit more risque than “Bible software and degrees from online universities…” While I appreciate this Gawker’s insights on a lot of topics, on this I must disagree. There are lots of advertisers out there looking for a “safe environment” to put their advertising, and God knows, they can’t find that on prime time anymore.

Today, I was quoted in the New York Times in an article about GodTube.

A London hedge fund is investing $30 million on this site that is the evangelical equivalent to YouTube. But, there’s a new element that makes this site particularly appealing (and one I’d invest in if I wasn’t a woefully underpaid academic). They have added social networking to the site. Think of it as YouTube meets MySpace for Christians. It’s brilliant!!!

And that’s what I told the reporter. He did quote me correctly (more or less), but he didn’t capture my pithy insights (which I will outline here) and he didn’t name the book!!! (Ok, that was probably the editor, but I’m still not happy about it.)

Here’s why this is a good investment:

1) Television is a lousy medium to present religion. The Internet is perfect for it. No one knows this better than Oprah. While she was castigated for including spiritual content on her TV show, by having opt-in spirituality she knew she would get an interested audience. At last count, 2 million people which is more than a lot of cable TV shows.

2) Evangelicals are a passionate audience. They care about the content and will tell others. As I noted in Brands of Faith, word of mouth advertising is nothing more than evangelicalism and this is word of mouth marketing par excellence.

3) Advertisers buy based on engagement, not just numbers. Engagement is simply how engaged is your audience with the material. For example, TV shows like Heroes and Lost have the highest levels of engagement because they have very loyal audiences. Committed Christians are almost by definition an engaged audience.

4) Disney is advertising the new Narnia film on the site. You know they researched the site THOROUGHLY before putting advertising on there. (NewsCorp has Fox Faith, maybe Disney will buy this?!?!?) PBS is also advertising on the site.

5) The Internet attracts a younger audience (nothing new here). However religious groups have been ineffective in reaching this group through traditional methods. Marketing rule #1: get your audience where they are. Enough said.

6) Evangelicals have a tradition of buying books and forwarding them to others. I wonder if this site will become a model extension of that practice. (Anyone doing research on this?)

7) The social networking aspect of the site is planned to be done through local ministries. This does two things: 1) it enables churches, particularly small ministries, to have a significant presence online with technology they could never put together themselves, and 2) the pastors act as unpaid spokespeople within their own church for the site a la the Passion of the Christ model. (Yes, that last picture is of Deborah Norville, and I will leave it to you to visit her ministry page.)

GodTube is not about selling popular culture. It is about selling Christianity. And just as members of the CBA use t-shirts and Jesus tattoos to sell “The Book,” this is yet another tool in the evangelical arsenal.

Excuse me for not posting so much of late. I’m working on a new book, and it’s also the middle of academic conference season so I’ve had my hands a bit full lately. To catch up, in the next short while I’ll be writing about Oprah (sorry, but she’s just a wealth of information in this area–she’s got a new webcast called “Soul Series” that starts tomorrow), GodTube which is back in the news, lots of religion in prime time, some new statistics about the growth of the Christian retail market, and my newer work which I loosely call the corporate takeover of the social gospel, otherwise known as corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Today, I’ll give you a preview on some of my recent thinking about Dog:The Bounty Hunter, a reality series that was the number one show on A&E until last year when the show was unceremoniously pulled because of a scandal–more on that in a minute.

Right about now, you’re probably think “What does Dog have to do with religion?” Well, a lot actually. But let’s start with a little background. For those of you who haven’t seen the show, Duane “Dog” Chapman is a bounty hunter based in Hawaii. He gained international notoriety when he brought convicted rapist Andrew Luster, heir to the Max Factor fortune, back to the United States from Mexico to serve out his prison sentence.

Dog, the show, is incredibly formulaic: they open at the Chapman house where all the very blond youngest kids are running amok, then they cut to the bond office where Dog and his crew review information about the fugitive they are hunting on that particular episode, they chase after the fugitive, Dog and sometimes his wife Beth have a heart-to-heart with the fugitive in the back seat of their SUV, they take the fugitive to jail, and Dog tells everyone what a good job they did.

Ok, so here’s the religion part–Dog is the redemption story told on multiple levels. Every episode is a parable, a mini-version of the return to good. The fugitive is out of control, his or her path becomes crossed with Dog (God?), and once in his presence they are (most times) moved to change their ways. While we don’t see what happens to all of them in the end, many episodes show people who were helped by Dog particularly users who successful got off drugs.

On the level of the metanarrative, Dog the man is the ultimate redemption story: he is an ex-con-turned-bounty-hunter-turned-born-again Christian. He is the Prodigal Son returned home to serve his Father after going so terribly astray. Dog began as a member of a biker gang and was jailed for in Texas for first-degree murder. He was also a drug user so he readily sympathizes with those he captures. (We also learn that Beth’s first husband was a heroin addict so she too is on a mission to save the lost, because she could not save her husband.) Dog was given a second chance by a judge and he used that chance to turn his life around. He became a bounty hunter, and it is now his job to give a second chance to others.

This redemption story also plays out of the level of the show itself. Dog: the Bounty Hunter was pulled from the A&E schedule after one of his sons (he has 12 children!) recorded Dog during a telephone call saying that the son’s girlfriend was “the N word.” The son then released the tapes to the tabloids. A&E had no choice but to pull the show off the air because of the backlash. That was in November of 2007. What was interesting to me, however, was that the network never pulled the Dog page from their Web site. I suspected that was because they hoped the show would come back. According to the MySpace page of Baby Lyssa, yet another of Dog’s children, the show is back in production. It looks like Dog is going to be redeemed yet again.

All of this is very interesting, but what initially drew me to this topic was the subtle and not so subtle use of religion in the show. The show uses the headline “In Dog We Trust” for promotional purposes, which certainly blurs the line between man and the divine. More importantly, however is the constant presence of prayer in the show. Here is this posse dressed in leather (see above) all of whom swear like drunken sailors, yet they circle up to pray before going out on a bounty. Yes you read that correctly, they pray and then they swear a blue streak. Sometime they even circle up and pray after the capture with the fugitive as part of the group. Here’s an example:

Dog: “We’re second chance people. I was given a second chance. I know what it is to give a second chance. Everybody grab hands…Dear Lord. Thank you very much for us catching Patty even though she don’t like it very much. But she needs you now. A lot. Keep her safe Lord in jail and put her in a rehab. And God bless Patty. In Jesus name. Amen.”

I guess that’s where the appeal comes from. It just doesn’t get more simple or straightforward than that.