It's been done.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ The...an_Nobody_Knows
astorian | 05.29.08 - 11:05 am | #

I can't speak to those two books, but The Greatest Salesman in the World had what sounds like a similar theme and it is a very worthy read.
Chris-2-4 | 05.29.08 - 11:23 am | #

I hadn't heard that old saying, but it speaks volumes. I'm remembering that one.
Tim J. | Homepage | 05.29.08 - 12:04 pm | #

Reminds me a bit of what Gen. Juan Peron called the Opus Dei: the dollarization of Catholicism.

Anyway, it also calls to mind the Mormons, though they at this point aren't really Christian anymore. They have a motivated (and interested) salesforce, a clean-cut brand name, and an efficient sytem of collecting funds (tithing) that would be the envy of any major corporation. Indeed, in my own experience, I have come to describe Mormon temples as "the Vatican if run by Disney". Very American.
Arturo Vasquez | Homepage | 05.29.08 - 4:21 pm | #

Well, I've heard the Catholic Church be described as one of the most efficient corporate business models in the world, what with the relatively flat but well-defined hierarchy and all.
JonathanR. | 05.30.08 - 8:32 pm | #

Perversely, I can't help but admire at one remove God Is a Salesman's raw, in-your-face idolatry. It makes the quasi-idolatry of other self-help sales books look unknowingly inadequate, like the kid who thinks he's a bad-ass because he skipped a Sunday school class.

(FTR, I wouldn't class The Greatest Salesman in the World (GSW) with the latter kind of books. Unlike its would-be peers, GSW emphasizes the salesman's need to save first and foremost his own soul. It suggests, to say the least, that by doing so one becomes the kind of person who will, when it counts, get the sale.

By contrast, the books that follow the tack of God Is a Salesman treat the soul, at least by implication, as an afterthought. Insofar as they recognize that a man (non-sex specific) has a soul, they seem to believe that the soul will no doubt benefit from the socialization involved in becoming the kind of person who can "create faith" in himself and his product: "Save the sale and your soul will follow!"

This is speculative, but FWIW, Karl Marx thought the soul was an afterthought, or to be more precise, an "epiphenomenon," something that doesn't really exist in itself, but only as a necessary adjunct to "real" material processes. The capitalistic schtick of God is a Salesman winds up at the same place, with the soul as an afterthought, the result of the "faith-creating" experiences that are the "real" things of this world. The similarity seems to me a confirmation of JPII's (and now Benedict XVI's) contention that, without the discipline of supernatural faith, communism and capitalism lead to the same materialistic despair).
Brian | 06.02.08 - 12:49 am | #