The Blue Pages

Red State Capital City Suburb generates a lot of phone books. We have the Suburb white and yellow pages, the Suburb County white and yellow pages, the Capital City yellow pages, and sometimes even the Capital City white pages. But until this week, we never had the Blue Pages. Or, as the cover puts it:

Christian Blue Pages
greater red state capital city christian business directory
your trusted source for products & services.

Apparently it’s been around for a while--the one I picked up on the rack outside Kroger’s is the 14^th edition. According to the first page,

The advertisers in this directory confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, demonstrate their faith through active involvement in a local Christian church, and commit to operate their businesses according to Biblical principles. These advertisers are desiring to represent Christ by serving you.

Which is really going to matter a lot when you need a plumber in the middle of the night.

Some of the businesses are what you might expect: the biggest section is churches, and you’ve got your share of Christian bookstores, “pregnancy help centers,” and funeral directors. But you can also find yourself a Christian piano teacher, exterminator, or caterer (and I thought religion only matters when you’re catering for Muslims or Jews). While Kustom Air Heating & Cooling makes no mention of Jesus in its ad, which features a snowflake, the sun, and an air conditioning unit, Rosemarie Welch advertises her law practice as “Integrating Christian Teachings Into The Practice of Law” (her caps). She seems to specialize in family issues, especially related to adoption--and we can imagine where that specialization came from.

Putting aside Christianity’s ongoing affiliation with capitalism, I’m of two minds about my newly acquired Blue Pages. On the one hand, it represents what liberals try to do all the time: organize our purchasing power to support our interests. We boycott non-union hotels, we buy fair trade coffee, we even have our own Green Pages. Why shouldn’t Christians do it too?

On the other hand, it seems like one more sign of the ominous Christianization of America, an effort not just to meet the needs of a certain group of businesses and customers, but to move toward making Christianity a criteria for all our decisions. But of course, that’s what liberals want to do too: make the country conform to their beliefs. It’s just that I agree with those beliefs.

[And given our current ideological coloration, I’m not quite sure why it’s called the BLUE Pages.]