{"id":71807,"date":"2025-11-06T16:29:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T21:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=71807"},"modified":"2025-11-06T16:29:00","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T21:29:00","slug":"tales-from-the-religion-press-release-slush-pile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2025\/11\/06\/tales-from-the-religion-press-release-slush-pile\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales from the religion press release slush pile"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

My RSS feed for Religion News Service<\/a> yields some great religion reporting and commentary, but it also grabs everything from RNS\u2019s \u201cpress release distribution service.\u201d That includes lots of the usual boilerplate announcements from various denominations and religious organizations \u2014 anniversaries, hirings, publications, etc.<\/p>\n

But it also includes some marketing curiosities and dubious promotional hype. These are sometimes amusing, sometimes confounding.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a look at a few recent examples from the press release slush pile:<\/p>\n

\u2022 This press release is from Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer, which is both the name of the group and the name of the thing they say they\u2019re going to build: \u201cConstruction begins on major Christian landmark in Britain celebrating a million answered prayers<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

EWAP says it has raised $50 million to build \u201cBritain\u2019s largest Christian monument.\u201d The monument\/installment\/statue-thing will be:<\/p>\n

\u2026 located 100 miles north of London near Birmingham, will stand 167 feet tall in the form of a M\u00f6bius strip \u2014 a continuous loop symbolizing the everlasting nature of prayer and God\u2019s faithfulness.<\/p>\n

Taller than the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil, the structure will contain one million bricks \u2014 each representing a story of answered prayer that visitors can access through their smartphones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the plus side here, I love the idea of a ginormous M\u00f6bius strip. That would be neat.<\/p>\n

Does the world need<\/em> such a thing? Well \u2026 yes and no. Did the world need<\/em> the concrete dinosaurs of Apple Valley? Did the world need<\/em> the 40-feet tall bowling pin statue outside of Green Brook Lanes? Maybe, maybe not. But I\u2019m glad they\u2019re there.<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s artist\u2019s conception of its completed \u201cmonument\u201d raises some safety concerns and other questions:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

What happens if it gets, like, windy? How do they plan to keep skaters off of that thing?<\/p>\n

And is brick<\/em> really the best material for this building project?<\/p>\n

But first I\u2019d ask questions like \u201cWhy is this supposedly UK-based project exclusively using American dollars in its press release?\u201d and \u201cCan it really be true they\u2019ve already raised $43 million in donations for this?\u201d and \u201cWhere will that money go once it\u2019s clear that this thing is never getting built?\u201d and \u201cThis is a scam, isn\u2019t it? Because doesn\u2019t it look like a scam to you too?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Next up is a confusing press release from the First Baptist Church of Dallas<\/a>, the best little MAGA-mega in Texas.<\/p>\n

How do we know it\u2019s the \u201cbest\u201d? Because the evil liberal secular media said so: \u201cThe 16,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas, pastored by Dr. Robert Jeffress, was announced Sunday, October 26, as the \u2018Best Church in the DFW Metroplex,\u2019 as voted on by readers of The Dallas Morning News<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had to go back and check. It was the Houston Chronicle,<\/em> not the Dallas Morning News,<\/em> that did that blockbuster investigative report in 2019 on sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention. Phew<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But what exactly does the \u201cBest Church in DFW\u201d mean? Like, I get it when newspapers do readers polls to name the \u201cBest Pizza\u201d in town, and the pizza place frames the article and hangs it up behind the counter. I understand, generally, what\u2019s going on there and what it means and all the Chamber of Commerce-meets-Yelp implications of that. But I can\u2019t quite grasp what readers are being asked to judge when given the chance to pick the \u201cbest church.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

The final graf of First Baptist\u2019s press release clears this up a little:<\/p>\n

First Dallas extends heartfelt thanks to its members and community for this year\u2019s Gold Award recognition. The church was previously honored with the Silver Award in 2024 and has been recognized among the Top Places to Work since 2021, including ranking #2 among midsize organizations in 2024.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, OK. It\u2019s one of those \u201cbest places to work\u201d surveys. That\u2019s not at all the same as being named \u201cbest church.\u201d But having said that, it\u2019s still commendable. Robert Jeffress may be an idolatrous right-wing demagogue and attending First Baptist of Dallas puts your soul in peril and makes you complicit in the white supremacist agenda of a wanna-be fascist authoritarian regime. But, on the other hand, they also have on-site child care and probably, like, good dental coverage. So there\u2019s also that and good for them on that score.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Finally here\u2019s the latest from one of the most prolific press-release releasers in the slush pile, Gloo \u2014 \u201ca technology platform serving the faith ecosystem.\u201d Like almost all of Gloo\u2019s press releases, this one is a relentless stream of technobabble: \u201cGloo AI Hackathon awards $250,000 for values-aligned AI innovations advancing human flourishing<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The three-day event brought together developers, content creators, Bible translators, publishers, church leaders, game designers and more to harness AI for human flourishing and organizational thriving within Christian communities. More than $250,000 in cash prizes were awarded to the top-performing teams whose ideas pushed the boundaries of what values-aligned AI can do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This all sounds like it was organized by people who looked at Bible Gateway<\/a> and thought, \u201cGee, I wish this were more like the \u2018A.I. summary\u2019 features that have made Google search so much less useful and trustworthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gloo\u2019s press releases always seem to be aimed at two audiences: white churches desperately hoping that technology will boost church growth, and the kind of venture capitalists who might be persuaded that \u201cthe faith ecosystem\u201d might be a lucrative new data-mining niche. And I\u2019m still not quite decided on whether they are, themselves, true believers in the former project or just cynical grifters in the latter.<\/p>\n

Patrick Gelsinger, the former CEO of Intel who now runs Gloo<\/a>, would insist he\u2019s in that first category, touting his new company\u2019s work as the biggest thing for Christianity since Gutenberg. That Guardian<\/em> article sums up Gloo as \u201cthink Salesforce for churches, plus chatbots and AI assistants for automating pastoral work and ministry support.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the last nine words of that paragraph don\u2019t make you squirm a little, you lack imagination. A.I.-written sermons are coming soon. But Grok-in-the-pulpit doesn\u2019t worry me as much as Grok at the bedside, when these inhuman tools start being used to automate the kind of pastoral work done in hospitals, hospices, and cemeteries.<\/p>\n

That article also clarifies that Gloo\u2019s \u201chuman flourishing\u201d language doesn\u2019t come from Miroslav Wolf, but from Harvard\u2019s \u201cHuman Flourishing Program,\u201d an attempt to quantify qualities that recalls that Oscar Wilde line about knowing \u201cthe price of everything and the value of nothing.\u201d The aim seems to be to create concrete, three-digits-after-the-decimal metrics that can precisely quantify all those fuzzy questions I had above about what it means to say a place is \u201cthe best church.\u201d Goodhart\u2019s Law<\/a> will remain in effect, with a vengeance.<\/p>\n

My main questions about Gloo remain these: What data are they collecting? What are they using it for? And who are they planning to sell it to? And I\u2019m far from convinced the answers to those questions will have much to do with human flourishing.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ginormous Mobius-strip monument to answered prayer won’t be built until you people fork over another $7 million. Plus: the best little prayer-house in Texas, and what is “Gloo” up to?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":71810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nTales from the religion press release slush pile<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The ginormous Mobius-strip monument to answered prayer won't be built until you people fork over another $7 million. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Tales from the religion press release slush pile","description":"The ginormous Mobius-strip monument to answered prayer won't be built until you people fork over another $7 million. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}