The Evangelical Brand and the RC Brand

I've not myself used the term 'brand' in thinking about the way that church traditions operate. But actually, now I've had a bit of time to consider it through the lens of this article Out of Ur: Giglio & the Weakness of the Evangelical Brand I think that in a world where the broadcast media have been so dominant in public discourse, of course some of what happens around 'churchmanship' takes on the character of branding. The interesting thing is the voluntariness of the corporate body concerned: congregants take on the branding of their own free will. Probably this has some kind of similarity to the way consumers may identify with a brand and give it loyalty.
Anyway, the article uses the notion of brand to help elucidate some recent trends in the USA with regard to sexuality. The crucial thing to note is that for the general public at least Evangelicals are marked by relevancy.

Given this commitment to relevancy, when evangelical leaders refuse to accommodate to the culture on matters of homosexuality it appears to those outside that they are violating their own brand. While Catholic clergy are understandably behind the times ...

And so for some people this sets up a kind of dissonance which I've seen myself in relation to how people respond to me. I have sometimes found that there is a pleasure when people discover that 'despite' being a priest, I'm not very 'religious' and seem to understand and enjoy a number of things about contemporary life that they don't think 'go with' religiosity. They seem to enjoy the idea that perhaps spirituality doesn't have to hedge about with thorns and briars their joys and desires (to marshal Wm. Blake's words). However, then they may make an assumption that therefore I'd be okay with something that I have questions about (usually something like sexual activity outside of a committed relationship) and then there is palpable confusion. Which I suspect is rather like ...

While Catholic clergy are understandably behind the times, the gay community has trouble believing that evangelical opposition to same-sex marriage is predicated on a principled religious conviction or tradition. As one leader in the LGBT movement asked me, “Evangelicals are fine with ignoring many other parts of the Bible, so why do they insist on holding on to a few verses about homosexuality?”

And that is indeed a good question. Part of the proble, also, is that the hermeneutic is so obscure. At least with RC's it's clear that tradition and 'the Pope says' is more or less the last word and if they change its only after a very long time (there's an awareness, at some level, that many of the principal arguments of the protestant reformers were conceded eventually but only after about 400 years).

This leads to an articulation of what many of us who do or have identified with the label 'Evangelical' now wrestle with.

There are a great many Christians who are looking for a new public identity--a new banner--that is distinct from the tainted brand of evangelicalism we’ve inherited from the Religious Right. We’re looking for one that retains the theological orthodoxy of Scripture as well as the historical commitment to the common good that earlier manifestations of evangelicalism affirmed.

Though there is one other dimension that some of us bring to the ring: a sense that we don't want to cede the label to the 'headbangers'. But terms like Red-Letter Christians do look awfully attractive alternatives.