""A fascinating and long overdue look at advertising from a truly Christian perspective. Van Eman does a masterful job of demonstrating how the 'simulated gospel' of advertising perverts and distorts Jesus's radical message of love and compassion. Van Eman vividly illustrates that advertising's seductive promise of happiness and fulfillment through consumption and greed leaves us spiritually impoverished and endangers our world."" --Jean Kilbourne, author of Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel ""We all knew that advertising was making consumerism into a pseudoreligion, but Sam Van Eman is the first one to actually analyze what is going on in the advertising media and challenge its deceptions. This is a must-read for anyone who is trying to critique our culture and stand against its debilitating effects."" --Tony Campolo, author of Speaking My Mind ""An important, urgent, penetrating analysis of how today's pervasive materialism seduces us and how biblical faith liberates us."" --Ronald J. Sider, author of Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience ""The question of our time is whether we allow the consumer society to teach each of us to think of ourselves as the most important thing on the planet, or whether we manage to learn the lesson that maturity--that is, happiness--requires us to live in and for community, for things larger than ourselves. Sam Van Eman offers some very wise and very straightforward guidance in this fine and compassionate book."" --Bill McKibben, author of The Age of Missing Information ""In a day and age when our children and teens are the most targeted market segment in the world, we are failing to understand just how deeply the pervasive marketing machine is shaping our individual and collective worldviews. Sam Van Eman has struck a chord with me as he takes us past advertising's surfacy and enticing fluff to get at the real messages we buy long before we purchase the goods and services. This book will help you and those you influence see through the fluff in order to become less like the world and more like Christ."" --Walt Mueller, Center for Parent / Youth Understanding ""Van Eman's concise analyses and helpful prescriptions can equip us to negotiate the dangerous curves and slippery slopes of advertising so that we will be less likely to be distracted from our kingdom calling to live for Christ."" --T. M. Moore, author of Redeeming Pop Culture Sam Van Eman is a staff resource specialist with the Coalition for Christian Outreach.