Religious Business

Religion is, in many respects, the ultimate example of capitalist business. By stripping back the business of religion and comparing its products and methods with other modern companies we can learn much of how churches and their related industries have survived, and flourished, for so long.

The long-term survival of new companies is not guaranteed and most fail within a few years. Even one-time market leaders like Nokia, Marconi or Rover can be rapidly reduced or destroyed by new market entrants, changes in the law or emerging technology. The churches, and in this case I am thinking of the Catholic Church and the Church of England, are amongst the oldest continuously operating institutions in the world; how have they done it?

The key to their long-term success is their product, which remains desirable even as customers become more enlightened. With a finite lifespan humans are naturally drawn to products that offer to extend their experience time and so the Church's core product, ever-lasting life in paradise, has a strong appeal and is readily peddled by any salesman prepared to make unsubstantiated promises to his customers.

Not only is the product highly desirable it has essentially zero marginal production costs since it is a service delivered exclusively post-mortem and sold through a highly-scalable and long-established network of local and regional facilities. The cost of sales and customer acquisition are reasonably high - churches must be built and maintained, political support must be obtained and retained and considerable effort must be made to avoid legislation covering workplace equality and related issues - but at core the product is basically free to produce and the Church's longevity means that it has accumulated vast assets with which it can weather even the most dreadful disasters.

The fact that the major product is delivered only after death also means that post-sales service and customer returns are both minimised. Every customer can be assumed to be happy and if they aren't there's nothing that can be done anyway.

Apart from the physical infrastructure, the only other major cost for the Church is the hiring of new salesmen and managers, who undergo long period of product training before starting work. This training is primarily to familiarise new employees with the huge volume of (sometimes contradictory and impenetrable) sales literature produced by the Church over the centuries. Mastery of this literature can take years but fully trained employees often stay with the firm until retirement and can generate revenue and attract new customers for decades; some former employees remain useful for marketing purposes for millennia.

Given all this, why do religious organisations have charitable status? They compete for customers and resources (personnel, property etc.) with other entertainment and lifestyle management businesses but enjoy an unfair tax advantage whilst discriminating on the grounds of gender and sexual orientation.

The answer is simple; disestablish the Church of England and end privileges for religious organisations, putting them on the same basis as all other companies.