Ever wonder how Jesus and American Idol are different? Reader Jessica didn’t, even after she found a religious pamphlet on the subject in a Black & Decker food processor she picked up at Walmart. She is now “totally creeped out,” and doesn’t quite know how to respond.
religion
Walmart Apologizes For Making Fun Of A Muslim Woman Wearing A Veil
By 3.12.08
“Please don’t stick me up,” a cashier told the shopper on Feb. 2, according to the Nevada chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Study Says Payday Lenders More Prevalent In Areas Of High Christian Conservative Power
By 2.15.08
A law professor and associate professor of geography set out to create the most comprehensive map of U.S. payday lenders to date. What they found, to their surprise, was “a surprising relationship between populations of Christian conservatives and the proliferation of payday lenders.” And it’s not a side effect of a poor population that happens to be Christian, according to the authors: “Our research showed that the correlation between payday lenders and the political power of conservative Christians was stronger than the correlation between payday lenders and the proportion of a population living below the poverty line.”
By 12.4.07
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Red Bull has pulled a nativity-themed ad from Italian television after a priest from Sicily denounced it as a “blasphemous act.” [Reuters]
By 9.7.07
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A mortgage maker that positioned itself as a “Christian” lender wasn’t immune to secular market forces and fired employees are learning to turn the other cheek when it comes to their severance pay: a $20 supermarket gift card. [Atlanta Journal Constitution]
Annual Islamic Convention Is A Muslim Shopper's Dream
By 9.5.07
The annual Islamic Society of North America convention, which was held this past weekend in Illinois, is the largest on the continent—this year approximately 40,000 people attended to take part in panel discussions and seminars. It’s also a bastion of shopping stalls offering every Muslim product imaginable, which leads the UK’s Guardian newspaper to wonder whether it has become “more about shopping than spirituality.”
By 8.31.07
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The Vatican has opened a special airline to shuttle pilgrims to holy spots around the globe, but not even their holy water is exempt from the 100 ml liquid carry-on limit. Man, those are going to be some well-anointed security checkpoints. [Telegraph via BoingBoing]
Religious Action Figures Are Coming To Walmart
By 7.24.07
Talking Jesus dolls will make their Walmart debut early next month as part of a spiffy new line of religious action figures. Walmart claims it is responding to the needs of kids who want to ditch their G.I. Joe for a Samson, and will only stock the religious toys in stores where the bible is a best-seller. Walmart has always catered to the family values crowd, but that hasn’t stopped some Christian ministers from questioning Walmart’s faith:
“They’ll carry anything that sells,” says David Croyle, president of FamilyLife, a non-denominational ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. “This simply signals intelligent buying within Wal-Mart.”
Reading The Bible Will Make You Rich
By 7.16.07
No matter your spiritual disposition, those guys who wrote the Bible knew a thing or two about holding on to your shekels.
New Penalties For Cab Drivers Who Refuse Fares On Religious Grounds
By 4.17.07
A large number of taxi drivers in the area of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport are Muslim Somali immigrants. Many say they feel the faith’s ban on alcohol consumption includes transporting anyone carrying it.
Religion On The Job
By 4.4.07
The law on this is Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits religious discrimination in the workplace. It requires employers to make “reasonable accommodations” for an employee’s religious beliefs — “reasonable” being anything that doesn’t create an “undue hardship” on the employer or on co-workers.
We think it’s great and wonderful and amazing that companies make these accommodations, but retailers should probably make sure there’s at least one friendly atheistic heathen-type cashier available at all times. Otherwise, at which register would we buy that gun that shoots pork-based birth control? —MEGHANN MARCO
Inflation Watch: Religion Getting More Expensive
By 9.22.06
For Jewish Consumerists, the high holy days are nigh, and the expense may be greater than ever.
Looks Like a Theme Park, Smells Like a Church
By 9.15.06
In a great leap forward for workers’ rights, but a disappointment to throngs of born-again tourists, management of the Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando cancelled the daily crucifixion. “Park officials were apologetic but firm: None of their employees would hang on the cross during a lightning storm.”
Shockingly, E-Harmony Found Electronic, Harmonious
By 7.11.06
We’ve ragged on E-Harmony, the online dating service accused of having a vaguely creepy religious aura, and several months ago, we were plucking e-Harmony’s harp pretty hard.
Spam in the House of The Lord
By 5.24.06
Just received this spam from the Crusader Lending Corp. It sounds awesome. We’re going to go out and re-fi our church right away.
Confessions of a Former eHarmony Worker
By 3.31.06
An ex eHarmony.com customer service rep and atheist wrote in. She reveals more about the matchmaking site’s inner workings, including the old guy who sat behind her with a bible on her desk.
Souls = Cheeseburgers
By 3.30.06
We saw this odd little list thanks to Church Marketing Sucks. It was originally posted over at the Revitalize Your Church blog. We’re just going to quote the whole thing, since we’re pretty astounded by it.
