10/27/08

Reverse Christianification of Secular Junk

I am going into this post assuming that most of the readers are familiar with we Christians' propensity for taking popular secular stuff and Christianizing it in an attempt to be.... maybe funny, maybe relevant, maybe holier than thou.  Some of the obvious highlights are:
  • Our local Christian station refusing to play a secular song unless it is recorded - completely unchanged - by a Christian artist.
  • T-shirts like Lord's Gym which take a known phrase or brand and give it a clever (?) twist.
  • Church signs like this one: 

(please feel free to comment on your favorites which I've neglected to mention)

We all know that this is a strange phenomenon but I think we ought to acknowledge that is goes both ways.

You have the WWJD; "what would Jesus DRIVE" campaign and the WTFWJD (if you don't recognize that one right off, don't Google it - just trust me that it's a very secular version of that acronym).

Or how about the Darwinized ichthus (AKA Christian fish), followed by the chomping Christian fish, followed by another posed Darwin fish....?  Sure it's a slightly more clever knock-off than most Christian ones but a knock-off nonetheless.

Or the "Jesus was a community organizer" tag-line.  I've seen it used by Christian and secular Obamatons alike but it seems to have a whiff of knock-offism to it.

Then you have those that are hybrids like the "Jesus is my homeboy" shirts.  I still can't figure out whether that one was designed as an uber-cheesy Christian thing in the vein of the photo above or a secular shirt trying to co-opt the image of Christ.  If you think about it, it works either way.

So what do you say?  What's your favorite/least favorite knock-off from either direction?




4 comments:

  1. My boss is a Jewish Carpentizzle.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh crap...
    Aaron, I forgot to give you a hat tip for that picture.

    LET IT BE KNOWN THAT I SAW THE ABOVE PICTURE ON SLICK'S BLOG!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. My coined phrase: "In the world but not of it" - that's what this junk is.

    ReplyDelete

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