Hi Hoser
Yes - they misuse Jesus' words for the sake of winning hearts and minds. They use little bits of the Bible as bait and reel you in.
They aren't the only ones though:-
The Coolidge-Conservation collection calls attention to the careers
of four major publicists during the 1920s: two advertising men, Claude
Hopkins of the Chicago agency Lord & Thomas and Bruce Barton of
Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborne; and two public relations agents,
Ivy L. Lee and Edward L. Bernays. Hopkins and Barton embody the driven
ad-man image; both seem to be have suffered nervous breakdowns at one
time or another in their careers. Bernays, on the other hand, seems to
have been consistently energized by his career as "Public Relations
Counsel."
In "From Salvation to Self-Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture, 1880-1930," an essay in The Culture of Consumption
(1983), T.J. Jackson Lears describes high-powered salesman Claude
Hopkins as a "phrasemaker who had sold astonishing amounts of beer,
lard, and patent medicine by using what he called the 'Reason Why'
approach. . . . Hopkins refused to appeal to a buyer's reason by
listing a product's qualities; on the contrary he addressed nonrational
yearnings by suggesting the ways his client's product would transform
the buyer's life . . . [offering] the therapeutic promise of a richer,
fuller life" (p. 18)....
Bruce Barton, son of a Congregational pastor, founded with Roy S.
Durstine what by the 1920s had become the fourth largest advertising
agency in the United States, Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborne.
(For a portrait photograph of Bruce Barton, see the June 1926 issue of Associated Advertising, p. 7.)
Barton was responsible for creating the Betty Crocker image for
General Mills. His ability to bridge the tension between modern,
corporate, business consciousness and the traditional spiritual concerns
of his youth helped make him an enormously popular writer for the
mass-circulation magazines. And in 1925, he capitalized on the
dichotomy by writing the widely reprinted story The Man Nobody Knows: A Discovery of the Real Jesus
(not included in this collection), a retelling of the life of Jesus
Christ that casts Jesus as the world's first business executive and
super-salesman. The book perched at the top of the nation's nonfiction
best-seller list for two years. Barton even worked as a consultant, at
the invitation of Cecil B. De Mille, on King of Kings (1926), Hollywood's first Biblical spectacular. (INTRO NOTE Spirituality)
http://lcweb2.loc.gov:8081/ammem/amrlhtml/inadvert.html
What Jesus ACTUALLY said.
(Matthew 6:19-21) 19 “Stop storing up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break in and steal. Rather, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
