Easy Sunday: Jesus, the Advertising Executive.

America, 1925: A Jesus to fit a time and place.

CEO

Near the height of the prosperity and enthusiasm of America's boom-time Roaring Twenties, Bruce Barton wrote a best seller, The Man Nobody Knows. It redefined Jesus. Barton's Jesus wasn't the weakling one heard about at Sunday School, the one depicted by Michelangelo. 

The Jesus Barton described was a man's man -- strong, aggressive and bold. He was worldly. Persuasive. Commanding. The business of God was business. Jesus led a sales organization. He preached sound business techniques. "The big rewards come to those who travel the second un-demanded mile." Exceed expectations.

I present a bit of history not as insight into Jesus, or Christ. The book and its success are insight into one strain of America's use of religious tradition. Religion is plastic. Over the centuries Western culture has put Christianity to use. President Calvin Coolidge said "the chief business of the American people is business." In an America devoted to worldly success and winning, Jesus was a capitalist CEO preaching the techniques of prosperity.

From Barton's The Man Nobody Knows:

He had no defense but his manner and tone, but these were enough. In any crowd and under any circumstances the leader stands out. By the power of his faith in himself he commands, and men instinctively obey.

This blazing conviction was the first and greatest element in the success of Jesus. The second was his wonderful power to pick men, and to recognize hidden capacities in them. It must have amazed Nicodemus when he learned the names of the twelve whom the young teacher had chosen to be his associates. What a list! Not a single well-known person on it. Nobody who had ever made a success of anything, a haphazard collection of fishermen and small- town businessmen, and one tax collector—a member of the most hated element in the community. What a crowd! . . .

If he were to live again, in these modern days, he would find a way to make them [his works] known—to be advertised by his service, not merely his sermons. One thing is certain: He would not neglect the marketplace. . .

Clothes and clocks and candlesticks; soup and soap and cigarettes; lingerie and limousines—the best of all of them are there, proclaimed by their makers in persuasive tones. That every other voice should be raised in such great marketplaces, and the voice of Jesus of Nazareth be still—this is a vital omission which he would find a way to correct. He would be a national advertiser today, I am sure, as he was the great advertiser of his own day. . . .

Ask any ten people what Jesus meant by his “Father’s business,” and nine of them will answer “preaching.” To interpret the words in this narrow sense is to lose the real significance of his life. It was not to preach that he came into the world, nor to teach, nor to heal. These are all departments of his Father’s business, but the business itself is far larger, more inclusive. For if human life has any significance, it is this—that God has set going here an experiment to which all His resources are committed. He seeks to develop perfect human beings, superior to circumstance, victorious over Fate. No single kind of human talent or effort can be spared if the experiment is to succeed. The race must be fed and clothed and housed and transported, as well as preached to, and taught and healed. Thus all business is his Father’s business. All work is worship, all useful service prayer.

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