Disappearing Brands, Labels, and More

First published May 7, 2009 in The Daily Sentinel.




The US automotive industry is in turmoil. Chrysler is in bankruptcy and preparing to be at least partially merged with Italy’s Fiat. And GM has announced the elimination of Pontiac as an icon of American performance automobiles. The latter development has caught my attention.

As soon as 2010, Pontiacs will no longer be produced. For me, a car-oriented male, this is tragic! As a high schooler, I used to drool over the Pontiac Firebirds and Trans Ams at the Pontiac dealership. They were as untouchable for me as the far more exotic and expensive Porsches and Lamborghinis, but not for others. Several guys in my school drove them, and they were the envy of the rest of us. We knew guys who drove those cars somehow were way cooler than the rest of us.

But Pontiac is simply the latest major brand to fall in the storied history of American automobiles. After 107 years, Oldsmobile died in 2004; Plymouth went away in 2001. Older names have also disappeared. DeSoto was a Chrysler brand from 1929 through 1961. Packard and Studebaker were other once popular car brands that died in the late 1950s and 60s.

So this isn’t the first time the American automobile industry has gone through significant change, but it may be the most dramatic. Here are some of the numbers for GM:
• Hourly employees: 1991 = 304,000; 2008 = 63,700; by 2011 = 38,000
• Salaried employees: 1991 = 91,000; 2008 = 29,000; by 2011 = 15,000 or less
• Dealers: 2000 = 8,138, 2008 = 6,450; by 2011 = 3,605

In just 20 years, GM will shrink by more than half (sometimes by much more) in every measurement. Compared to how GM once dominated the American industrial scene across all sectors – not just in automobiles – this is even more remarkable. The old saying of “what’s good for GM is good for America” may not necessarily be so anymore.

As much as we may bemoan the downfall of the traditional American automobile manufacturing base, it is not the only area where significant downsizing has occurred. America’s religious landscape has also changed tremendously since the 1950s. Just looking at one denomination – which happens to be my own – the United Methodist Church has declined even more than GM.

The American Methodist Episcopal Church was formed in 1784 following the withdrawal of the Anglican Church from America in the aftermath of the American Revolution. By the close of the 19th century, nearly half the population of the United States was associated with a church in the Methodist tradition. In the 20th century, however, Methodism began to wane. By the time of the merger of the Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Church in 1968, there were 11 million members in the USA. In 2007, the latest year with figures, the US membership had declined to 7.9 million, while global membership was just over 12 million.

What this means is that the Methodist movement is losing ground in America even more than GM, Chrysler or Ford. One researcher made the comment that the US Methodist movement would soon revert to its 1825 size, and perhaps diminish to the small numbers that launched the movement in 1784.

But the United Methodist Church isn’t the only church with shrinkage problems. All mainline Christian denominations – Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, etc. – are diminishing populations. Even the Southern Baptist Church reversed its trend of growth in the past decade. Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church is growing only in areas where Hispanic migration has increased. Non-Hispanic Catholics are declining as rapidly as the Protestant churches’ populations.

A recent report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows that 44% of the adult US population has abandoned the faith in which they were raised. Nearly half of us are no longer in the church we went to as children. Some have switched churches, but even more have become completely unaffiliated with ANY church or faith group.

I conclude from all of this that Christianity is as much danger of collapse as the American car industry! People aren’t loyal to brands of cars, and they seem to have less loyalty to brands of faith. So the question, then, becomes this: what should we do about it?

People in favor of strict secularism would say, “Do nothing! This is what’s supposed to happen.” Europe is already a secular society – except where significant immigration of Muslims have occurred in parts of France, Germany, and England. Conflicts between Muslim law (known as Sharia) and secular governmental law are increasing.

But as a Christian, I think this is a terrible trend - and we Christians MUST do something about it! But what we do is almost less important than HOW we do it. I am as turned off by radical, guilt-driven, pushy evangelism tactics as anyone else. We may think we can guilt people into belief, or that we can (literally speaking) scare the hell out of them, but those are not effective motivations for true Christian transformation. People can be scared into short-term change. Take the flurry of masking by folks scared of swine flu, for example. But long-term change cannot be driven by fear or guilt.

Pontiac is dying because GM failed to maintain its brand image. They lost their core reason to exist. I think Christianity in American is doing the same thing. We’ve allowed ourselves to become characterized as either liberal “anything goes” or conservative “look just like us” people. On one side, we’ve gotten lost in “love” that has become syrupy sweet and non-nutritious. On the other side, we’ve gotten lost in separatism and insistence on “righteous behavior” before even getting to the One who can bring us righteousness.

But is it too late for Christianity to recover? Are we doomed to join Pontiac, Studebaker, and Oldsmobile in the dustbins of history? I don’t think so. We are in the midst of the Easter season, and Easter is all about Resurrection! Maybe we need to get this close to death as a faith group in America in order for God to give us really new life! This time not based on cultural expectations but on relevant, radical and reliable faith in Jesus Christ!