DETROIT (AP) - Chevrolet is linking up with an evangelical concert tour for a marketing campaign, a move criticized as crossing the line between religion and the board room.
The "Chevrolet Presents: Come Together and Worship" stage shows begin Nov. 1 in Atlanta and end at the Palace at Auburn Hills on Nov. 23.
"This is surprising — a real blurring of the lines between the commercial and the sacred," Phyllis Tickle, an expert on religious marketing for Publishers Weekly magazine, told the Detroit Free Press for a story Wednesday. "We know that church and state are never supposed to meet, and I think it's also a bad idea for church and Wall Street to be meeting like this."
Steve Betz, the General Motors Corp. division's marketing manager for the southeastern United States, said he was confident the tour will send a positive message and give dealers a boost.
"It's important that we get the message out there with regards to Chevrolet and how we're so family oriented and have great values," Betz said.
The Chevrolet tour includes a multimedia worship service with preaching by the Rev. Max Lucado, a Texas pastor and author, and a distribution of free evangelical literature. The headline musicians, Michael W. Smith and the rock band Third Day, are among popular acts in the contemporary Christian music genre.
The shows are booked into venues averaging 14,000 seats, such as the American Airlines Center in Dallas and Atlanta's Philips Arena.
"We consider this to be a breakthrough for our industry," said Frank Breeden, head of the Christian Music Trade Association in Nashville, Tenn. "A lot of corporations have had a long-standing hands-off policy on topics they consider controversial. And for a long time they've thought about religion as one of those topics."