Blog - Saturday, March 5, 2011 1:00 - 1 Comment

The False Advertising in Religions

A subscriber to the blog and podcast sent the following complaint to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) as a result of the advertisement above:

Product provider: Eastwood Baptist Church

Product description: Eternal Life

Complaint:I noticed at the start of the month that the Eastwood Baptist Church (and other churches) had a sign on it’s exterior proclaiming “Ap for Eternal Life” accompanied with an image of the holy bible. I have looked into this and have found that there is no way to verify the claims made in this advertising. Any approach to find evidence for eternal life was only refuted with the statement that it requires faith. I do not believe that this meets the standards for accuracy in advertising and as such am lodging this complaint.

Here is their initial reply:

Dear Mr XXXX,

Thank you for your email of 18 February 2011 to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) regarding what you consider to be misleading advertising by the Eastwood Baptist Church.

The role of the ACCC is to ensure compliance with the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (the Act) which is designed to encourage fair trading and discourage anti-competitive conduct through a specific set of competition and consumer protection rules. However the Act does not prohibit every activity that every consumer or business perceives to be unfair. Based on the information that you have provided to us we do not consider that there has been a breach of the Act.

As part of its role the ACCC also monitors emerging trends across consumer and business complaints to determine whether there is a pattern of behaviour by a particular trader or in a particular industry that requires attention. In this regard, your complaint has been recorded and is an important part of our ongoing analysis.

Thank you for contacting the ACCC with your concerns. I trust this information is of assistance.

Yours sincerely

ACCC Infocentre

Not easily perturbed, our intrepid atheist replies:

Hello,

Thank you for the response, however I am surprised and disapointed at your decision to state this as not being a breach of the act.

I primarly took the decision to report this incident after seeing the recent case where the ACCC took action against the people who make the “Power and balance band”.

In particular the comment made by the chairman of the ACCC Graeme Samuel struck me as particularly apt in this instance, I will quote it here:

“Consumers should be wary of other similar products on the market that make unsubstantiated claims, when they may be no more beneficial than a rubber band,” he said.

“Suppliers of these types of products must ensure that they are not claiming supposed benefits when there is no supportive scientific evidence.”

I feel the claims I brought to your attention are of even greater signifigance than ‘Power and Balance Bands’, and have the same lack of evidence backing up their validity as no person ever has been scientifically proven to have, or even shown to be likely to have eternal life after reading the bible. The promoters of these claims are taking in huge profits (even more than power bands) and have no way to validate their claims and as such may very well be misleading the purchasers of bibles and other people buying the unproven claims made by this organisation.

I sincerely hope you re-evaluate your decision and investigate this (and other breaches made by this organisation)

Regards, XXXX

To which the ACCC responds:

Dear XXXX,

Thank you for your further correspondence of 23 February 2011 to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) regarding the previous response that you received from the ACCC.

The Act applies only to persons engaged in trade or commerce. Therefore, in this instance as the issues you have raised do not appear to fall within the scope of the Act, the ACCC does not intend to pursue this matter any further.

Thank you for contacting the ACCC

Yours Sincerely,

ACCC Infocentre

I am not a lawyer, but it seems the church needs to be selling a product in order to fall under the jurisdiction of the ACC.  Members freely donating their time, money, and resources does not qualify as “engaging in trade of commerce.”

Is this a valid avenue to to peruse?  Do you think the ACCC would ever prosecute a church or religion for false advertising?  If not, why not?  What do you think?