{"id":531,"date":"2007-04-09T14:06:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-09T14:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2007\/04\/accessorizing-for-jesus.html"},"modified":"2007-04-09T14:06:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-09T14:06:00","slug":"accessorizing-for-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/04\/accessorizing-for-jesus.html","title":{"rendered":"Accessorizing for Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is no end to Christian tacky in America. I once went to a CBA convention (Christian Booksellers Association) and thought I had died and gone to Christian tacky heaven.  There was a Gold&#8217;s Gym guy bench pressing a cross,  there were all sorts of Christian flags and license plates and coffee mugs and purses. There were  Christian lines of cologne or perfume (&#8220;Song of Solomon&#8221;&#8211; &#8216;smell like a king, attract a great queen&#8217;).  There was men&#8217;s pommade (&#8220;look slick like Pastor Rick&#8221; or &#8220;You too can look like a TV evangelist&#8221;. I wasn&#8217;t sure if that was a selling feature).  And of course there were endless T-shirts&#8211; some of my favorites were the biker ones&#8211; &#8220;Drive by faith, not by sight&#8221;   or &#8220;God&#8217;s last name is not Dammit&#8221; or &#8220;If you miss heaven, what in hell will you do?&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>Then there was the Christian boxer shorts for men.  For Methodists there was the cross and flame boxer shorts, so you could remind your family members of your denominational loyalties while trapsing around the house.   My personal favorites in this line were the Wittenburg Door&#8217;s  boxer shorts which  said on the left back side &#8220;left behind&#8221; and on the right back side &#8220;right behind&#8221;.  I need a pair of those in case I am raptured while not fully clothed. There was Baptist swimming trunks which proclaimed&#8212; &#8220;I&#8217;m all wet, how about you&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Of course there were bumper stickers, some more in your face than others. One, which is also on a T shirt, says  &#8220;Terrorists have killed 3,000 Americans since 1990. Abortionists have killed 4,000 unborns since yesterday&#8221; or in a similar vein &#8220;Jews did not choose genocide. Blacks did not choose slavery. Unborns did not choose abortion&#8221;.    Then there was &#8220;Get stoned like Paul:  Stand your Ground&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>You have to wonder&#8212;- What would Jesus say about all this, and all in the name of making an almighty dollar?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is no end to Christian tacky in America. I once went to a CBA convention (Christian Booksellers Association) and thought I had died and gone to Christian tacky heaven. There was a Gold&#8217;s Gym guy bench pressing a cross, there were all sorts of Christian flags and license plates and coffee mugs and purses.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Accessorizing for Jesus - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/04\/accessorizing-for-jesus.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Accessorizing for Jesus - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There is no end to Christian tacky in America. I once went to a CBA convention (Christian Booksellers Association) and thought I had died and gone to Christian tacky heaven. There was a Gold&#8217;s Gym guy bench pressing a cross, there were all sorts of Christian flags and license plates and coffee mugs and purses.&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/04\/accessorizing-for-jesus.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-04-09T14:06:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ben Witherington\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Accessorizing for Jesus - The Bible and Culture","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/04\/accessorizing-for-jesus.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Accessorizing for Jesus - The Bible and Culture","og_description":"There is no end to Christian tacky in America. I once went to a CBA convention (Christian Booksellers Association) and thought I had died and gone to Christian tacky heaven. 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&amp;E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}