Christianity Needs Celebrities

by Ben Howard

A celebrity is not so much a person as it is the persona, the mediated representation and distillation of the person who inhabits the role. Rachel Held Evans did an excellent job highlighting this difference in her post, “You Don’t Hate Me. You Hate My Brand.” Evans argues that no matter how much she or any other public figure believes in the things they represent, these beliefs and ideologies are not the entirety of their humanity. No one is as simple as the things they represent.

Instead, it is this persona, this brand, which we associate with celebrity. Removed from the complexity, and subtlety, of an underlying humanity, a celebrity persona serves as a vehicle for a two-dimensional iconography. It’s from this humanity-adjacent position that we begin to talk about what Taylor Swift “means” or what aspects of culture Kanye West “represents.” In the context of Christian culture, this concept of celebrity allows us to invoke Mark Driscoll's name as a placeholder for "angry neo-calvinist," or Rob Bell's as "hipster preacher."

It’s also vital to point out that celebrity never exists or arises in a vacuum. I would argue that most celebrities, or at least those who are celebrities because of the ideologies they represent, are the products of a wider sub-culture. As a result, this celebrity becomes a representation and amalgamation of the sub-culture from which it springs. This is readily apparent in political races where a candidate comes to represent not only their own personal convictions, but also the embedded ideology of their particular party.

Thus far I’ve focused solely on what celebrity is, not what celebrity does, which begs the question of whether celebrity is merely the by-product of our culture or if celebrity actually offers some utility. Considering that the title of this essay is “Christianity Needs Celebrities,” I don’t think you’ll be surprised to find out that I do think it plays a useful role in society. Namely, celebrity provides a bridge between a sub-culture and the wider cultural zeitgeist.

As I mentioned earlier, celebrity is not merely a representation of a person, but a mediated and distilled representation of a person. As a result, celebrity iconography is by its very essence reductive and simplifying. While I’m sure this is a constant frustration to the deeply complex and nuanced person who happens to inhabit the role of “celebrity,” it provides an easy-to-process shorthand for the dissemination of their ideology into the culture-at-large.

For example, look at Pope Francis. If you read his interview with Antonio Spadoro from September, you will discover an incredibly complex person with a wide-range of influences and perspectives on how he carries out his life and his role as Pope. However, the popular depiction, the celebrity nature of Pope Francis is a short-hand summary of this complexity. In the popular landscape he is “The Social Justice Pope” or “The Marxist Pope” or “The Awesome Pope Who Kisses and Hugs and Loves People.” While none of these depictions encapsulate the man, the Jesuit community which formed him, or the Catholic church as a whole, they serve as a way for the wider culture to access the iconography and meaning of the Pope and what he represents. Without this reductive, yet resonant shorthand, the zeitgeist likely would have omitted the ideas of the Pope entirely. Complexity has an inverse relationship with popularity.

This is why Christianity needs celebrities. Christianity does not need celebrities because it needs leaders, or because Christians need someone to follow and fall in line behind. Christians need celebrities because they need someone to represent them to the broader culture, even if that representation is a simplified version.

This capacity to create celebrity, and not its conservative, “Bible-based” theology, is the true genius of evangelical Christianity. Whether it be Billy Graham or Jerry Falwell or Francis Chan, evangelical Christianity has always known how to find a suitable personification for its version of the gospel.

As a progressive, or at least a quasi-progressive, the easy response to this is to dismiss evangelicalism and its appetite for simplicity or to denounce it for catering to a culture of celebrity. Ironically, this seems to be the argument evangelicalism itself makes when discussing celebrity culture. Celebrity is viewed as vapid, and thus unworthy of Jesus and his followers.

But this overlooks a vital aspect of how celebrity functions within the ebb and flow of culture: the ideologies and movements which find their way into history are inevitably attached to a personification; a celebrity. The Civil Rights Movement had Martin Luther King Jr. The birth of the United States had George Washington. The very idea of democracy had John Locke. 

In fact, Christianity itself is inherently a celebrity driven religion. It is literally formed around a historical figure who built a cult of personality based on his iconography and teachings. The entire Bible is built upon the back of celebrity, through the narratives of Abraham and Moses and David and the teachings of Peter and Paul and John. And subsequent Christian theology is built around celebrity culture where various theologians and saints serve as representatives of complex ideologies and movements. Even our organization of churches, centered around priests and preachers, is a celebrity-oriented endeavor.

Christianity needs celebrities because it needs a bridge; an accessible version of its ideology that's available to the wider world. Celebrity is ingrained in culture and it is part of the roots of Christianity. The problem with Christianity is not celebrity culture it is who the celebrities are and what that celebrity represents. Christianity doesn’t need to abandon celebrity; it needs to create better ones.

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87.  

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
  

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Rob Bell

by Ben Howard

The first time I read Velvet Elvis was the summer after my freshman year of college. I read the entire book over the course of a month in the Barnes & Noble next to apartment in Tulsa. I was thrown by the bright white, orange, and silver design of the original hardback. As for the book, I kind of didn't get it.

Then I read it again the next spring when I went to Honduras. Then I read it again over the summer after my sophomore year and taught my way through it at the church where I grew up in Ohio.

I realize in retrospect that Rob Bell was my gateway drug into theology. I read Sex God and downloaded his sermons which eventually lead me down a path where I read McLaren and Claiborne and Rollins and Hauerwas and Yoder and Niebuhr and Augustine and Julian.

As I continued down that path I decided that I had outgrown Rob Bell, a mere "pop theologian." People would tell me that they read one of his books, or saw a video and I would say, "Yeah, but do you know who he got that idea from?"

However, my dismissive attitude didn't quite connect with the content of Bell's work. I wanted, I still want, to dismiss him as nothing more than warmed over sentiment served as theology, but the content of the conversation belies such a curt dismissal and it makes me question why I feel the need to distance myself from Rob Bell.

This ambivalence isn't isolated to myself. I've seen it from many of my friends who consider themselves or aspire to be "serious" theologians. I see it in the blogs I frequent. In fact, I see all sorts of passionate support/dismissal of Rob Bell all throughout the Christian world. As I try and put together the disparate versions and visions of what people say about Rob Bell, I can only come to one conclusion:

When we talk about Rob Bell, we're actually talking about ourselves.

Prophet/Heretic/Artist/Jerk

I've heard all four of these descriptions used for Rob Bell. I don't mean that I've seen all four used by some unknown person on the internet, I mean I've heard all four personally in conversations with friends.

You see, Rob Bell has the bizarre ability to be whoever we want him to be. Or at least his iconography can represent whatever we want it to represent.

I think it's fair to say, whatever your views on Bell's theology, he's a master at communication. From audio to video to the written word to his in-person speaking engagements, he's always engaging, always drawing you in. This style of communication creates an artificial accessibility, it makes you think you know him.

But you don't. It's an artifice, a persona, you know the cultural representation of "Rob Bell" and this combination of artificial closeness and real distance makes Bell the perfect medium for our projections. Since the persona isn't real, it can become the focal point of our frustrations, hopes and fears about Christianity.

Scared about the future? He's a heretic. Hopeful? Prophet. Distrustful of the church's celebrity culture? Jerk and a megalomaniac. Looking for beauty? He's an artist.

Maybe Rob Bell is all of these things. Maybe he's none of them. However, if I know anything about the human condition, it's that people are rarely as extreme as we project them to be. So maybe he's kind of a prophet/heretic/artist/jerk. Like most people.

I Liked His First Album

Being a fan of Rob Bell is kind of like being a fan of Mumford and Sons.

When Mumford and Sons new album came out the reaction among their earliest fans was ambivalent. The album was highly anticipated and it sounded very much like the Mumford and Sons you were used to, but there were two problems. 

First, it sounded like the first album. Second, it was insanely popular. And then they won a Grammy.

There was an immediate backlash. Some writers argued that the lyrics were simply an amalgamation of literary phrases that made no coherent sense. Some argued that the band had stalled. Others adored the album. Others helped it become so popular that it won a Grammy and started playing in regular rotation on Top 40 radio next to Taylor Swift and Rihanna.

Who is right? It's impossible to tell, because you can't remove the backlash from the popularity. Would there have been a critical backlash if the album had not been a commercial success?

There is always the person who who doesn't listen to Mumford and Sons because they're popular. The one who goes to thrift stores because it's better than the mainstream. And you can just tell that the choice says more about them than it ever could about the band or about fashion. It allows a person to orient themselves against the field.

This is how we talk about Rob Bell. Like he's an indie band, and it means something when someone says that they knew he would be a star before he even wrote his first book. It means something because it allows us to orient ourselves around a communal reference point. It allows us to know where we are.

In the same way that he becomes whatever people want to see, Rob Bell also serves as a short-hand way of discussing where someone is on the often complex theological spectrum.  Are you progressive but new to it?  You love him.  Battle-hardened progressive?  You're beyond him; you loved him before it was cool.  Inquiring Evangelical?  You're nervous, but still reading; he's your intro into indie.  Fundamentalist?  He's exchanged the truth of God for a lie!  He's started a cult!  He's one of those darned kids who won't turn down that infernal racket!

Once again, the truth is something more subtle. It's not as easy to digest, but more nuanced. 

A few months back, Peter Rollins tweeted out something to the effect that when he looked back on his earlier books, he liked one more now than when he wrote it, disagreed with another, and wasn't sure about the other one. It's easy to forget that the people you read, the people who influence you, grow and develop and change. But their words are still stuck on a page. Stuck in space and time. The person changes, but who they are to the public, that's always the same.

So when we talk about Rob Bell, just as when we talk about Mumford and Sons, we can't tell if they changed or if we did, but at least we can tell where we are now.

Rob Bell Does(n't) Matter

In the wake of the release of Bell's most recent book and his recent support of gay marriage, I've come across a number of articles arguing about whether Rob Bell does or doesn't matter.

But that's the wrong question; what these blogs and articles are really asking is whether their opinion of Rob Bell really matters. They are asking a question about the viability and necessity of the Christian echo chamber made up of blogs (like this one), books, conferences, and all the various baubles and widgets that go alongside them.

Rob Bell's new book will or will not sell. His television show will or will not be picked up. His words will or will not affect someone, and the conversation we're having here, the conversation about Rob Bell, about whether or not he matters or what he means, will not affect that. A conversation about Rob Bell's importance, or the importance of any person or movement, is really a conversation about the ways we've tied our meaning, our viability, to this conversation.

This is the how the echo chamber expresses that it is self-aware, how it asks itself the question of whether or not it is adding things to the conversation, whether or not it (I cringe to use the phrase) is relevant and whether anyone on the outside is even listening.

Rob Bell is not part of this conversation. It can be argued that his books are, but he, as a person, is not. We talk ABOUT Rob Bell, but we don't converse with him. He isn't in this discussion. This discussion is about us.

But Rob Bell.. Rob Bell is having an entirely different conversation.

So when we talk about Rob Bell. That's what we talk about. We talk about us.

Peace,
Ben

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

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Alex Rodriguez, Jealousy and Hate

by Ben Howard

Alex Rodriguez is good at playing baseball.

I have no idea how many of you follow sports, but for those of you that do, you know this is an incredibly controversial statement.

Alex Rodriguez is one of the greatest baseball players in the history of the sport. There's no rational argument that can make a case against this statement. He's easily the greatest player of his generation and has been since he was about 16 years old.

Alex Rodriguez is also probably one of the most hated baseball players in history. To be clear, this isn't that kind of friendly-rivalry-hate or that love-to-hate-'em phenomenon that some people have with athletes. There is nothing fun involved in the hatred of Alex Rodriguez and that's probably because people don't hate Alex Rodriguez: The Person, they hate Alex Rodriguez: The Idea.

Rodriguez is hated because he's always been good. He's hated because being good has always looked easy. He's hated even more because that talent that looked so effortless made him the highest played player in professional sports. Jealousy plus a perception of easy money? Yeah, that's a recipe for deep-seated hatred.

It doesn't help that Rodriguez comes off as stilted and awkward during interviews. Something that in a lesser player might be interpreted as a distaste for the limelight is interpreted as Rodriguez being cold and corporate, unable to relate to the common man.

This hatred has nearly boiled over several times including when Rodriguez was nearly traded to the Boston Red Sox, but eventually went to the Yankees instead and several years after that when it came to light that he had used steroids for a short period of time in Texas.

Jealousy + easy money + corporate facade + steroids? That's a recipe for sports fan hell.

This has bubbled up again during the recent postseason. The Yankees have been struggling offensively up and down the lineup. No one is playing well, but most of the hatred has been pointed at Rodriguez. Fans don't want it to be a slump, they want it to be the end of the line. There is this widespread believe, or maybe hope is the better word, that two bad weeks in October mean that he'll be forced to retire in shame.

Even the Yankees manager seems to have bought into this weird, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately mentality replacing Rodriguez with the far less adept Eric Chavez for the two of the last three games.

Why do we do this? Why does this happen?

I don't think any of us is immune to this kind of jealous hate. I know for certain that I'm not. I do it all the time with writers. Some author becomes wildly successful and my immediate reaction is that he must be a sell-out. All of his ideas must be empty and baseless, because no one becomes popular based on substance in the religion and theology racket. Christian best-seller is just another phrase for "Book I won't be reading soon."

This type of thinking is so stupid. I know that I've gone through this very scenario with Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne, the list goes on. But when I think about it, when I think about what they're actually saying, they're right. It's true and it's authentic and they didn't change. I did, or at least my perception of them did.

So I want to apologize to Rob Bell and Brian McLaren and Shane Claiborne and any other author that I've secretly felt resentful towards because of their success. I'm sorry, you guys are really awesome, I was wrong. I also want to apologize to Alex Rodriguez. I hope things get better for you.

Take this as a call to reconsider why you hate the things you hate and love the things you love. Are they actually as bad as you think or are you possibly jealous? And as for the things you love, are they actually true or do they just reinforce what you already believe? Those are simply two sides of the same coin.

I hope we all find the freedom to say we're wrong and change our minds.

Peace,
Ben

You can follow Ben on Twitter @BenHoward87 or email him at benjamin.howard87 [at] gmail.com.

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Review of Hellbound? by Director Kevin Miller

by Ben Howard

When I first heard about the movie Hellbound I was worried that it was going to be yet another conservative response to Rob Bell's book Love Wins. I mean if Christian culture is good at anything it's mobilizing all it's creative forces in the face of an “attack” against “traditional values.” For instance, the number of anti-Da Vinci Code books probably numbers a hundred or so.

However, I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that Hellbound was actually titled Hellbound?. Never has a question mark carried such interpretive significance.

Last Wednesday, I was lucky enough to be able to attend the cinematic premiere of Kevin Miller's documentary Hellbound​?. In the film, Miller explores prevailing views of eternal damnation and the afterlife through a vast array of interviews from all across the theological spectrum. He delves into the beliefs of neo-Calvinism, explores Jesus cultural understanding of hell, wrestles with the theological issues of a God who may or may not damn people to eternal torment, and even lets members of the Westboro Baptist Church yell at him.

Over the first third of the movie, Miller lays out the classical position on hell beginning with the absurdist beliefs of the Westboro Baptist Church and slowly progressing into more mainline evangelical and Calvinist positions.

He then transitions into a deconstruction of this classical view. Miller and his interview subjects point out the historical background for a belief in hell and provide significant context to biblical references to Hell, especially Jesus' references to Gehenna. They also discuss the problem's inherent in referencing a

biblical idea of hell as the Bible makes references that point towards views favoring eternal torment, as well as annihilationism and universalism. To believe in one view is to deny or sublimate verses referring to other understandings of the afterlife.

The final third of the movie lays out a belief and an argument in favor of Christian Universalism including references to historical Christian figures, like Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, who held such a view.

It's important to note that from all appearances Miller began this project with an open mind; a mind with a list of questions and concerns, but far from convinced of one view or the other. However, it becomes clear over the course of the film that while Miller may not be entirely convinced of the fact of universalism, he is at least convinced by the function of this belief.

Though the interview subjects are treated with respect and dignity by Miller, many of their statements come across as at the least comical and occasionally terrifying. When Miller asks one of the Westboro Baptist protestors how many of his children he loves the man pauses and is unable to formulate an accurate response. Again, when Miller asks noted “evangelist” Ray Comfort how many people he has converted using his questionable techniques, Comfort is forced to awkwardly pause before saying that his accomplishments “will be in the Lambs Book of Life.”*

*For a fuller examination of Comfort's tactics, pick up Kevin Roose's book An Unlikely Disciple, which includes a chapter about a spring break trip with Liberty students to convert people using Comfort's methods.

The more painful moments of the film come predominantly from Miller's interviews with Mark Driscoll and Kevin DeYoung, both prominent neo-Calvinists from the mold of John Piper. Miller juxtaposes many of the statements concerning God's love made by scholars and writers in favor of universalism with angry, fire-breathing screeds from Driscoll. In the most painful scene of the movie, Miller asks Driscoll if all people are children of God, and Driscoll proclaims that they are not.

This is not a flawless film. The last third drags of the film drags in comparison to the first hour, also while there are mentions of annihilationism, it does not seem to be discussed by anyone interviewed in the film. Additionally, as one audience member pointed out in the Q&A after the premiere, the interview subjects were predominantly white males, Sharon Baker being a noted exception.

However, while it is not a flawless film, it is an important one. Though many may view this as propaganda in support of a universalist position, I don't believe that is the intent. Ultimately, this film is not concerned about where people go when they die, but how a belief in the afterlife affects how they deal with people today. The film's argument in favor of universalism is predicated on representing the beauty and love of God to a world in pain.

If anything, this film is intended to free people to think about what they believe, but especially to reflect on his there beliefs affect the way they deal with the world in the present. The problem is not with a belief in hell, the problem is a belief in hell that allows people to feel superior and rain down violence and damnation on those who they believe to be beneath them.

Maybe Sartre was right and maybe hell is other people. Dear God, save us from ourselves.

Peace,

Ben

To see where Hellbound? and Kevin Miller will be headed next visit their website or follow them on Twitter @HellboundMovie.

If you want to contact me, you can follow me on Twitter @BenHoward87 or email me at benjamin.howard [at] gmail.com. 

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