Celebrity Culture and the American Church

[Music] foreign thanks so much Molly and let me just add my own welcome to all of you joining us today for our online conversation with Caitlin Beatty on Celebrity culture and the American Church I'd also like to thank our friends at the Brazos press who are co-hosting today's online conversation with us and welcome the more than a thousand of you who have registered for today's online conversation I understand that we have guests for more than a dozen countries joining us as well as almost a hundred first-time registrants so first welcome from across the miles and across the time zones if you haven't let us know already we'd love to hear where you're from put that in the chat feature it's kind of fun for us all to see kind of where everyone is tuning in from and a special thank you to those of you who tuned in for the first time today for what is I believe our 88th online conversation if you are one of those first-time attendees or otherwise new to the work of the Trinity Forum we seek to provide a space to engage the big questions of life in the context of faith and to offer programs like this online conversation to do so and to come to better know the author of the answers we hope today's conversation will be a small taste of that for you today so every age has its scandals but the last several years seem to have brought the collapse of quite a number of celebrity pastors and para church leaders whose Ministries as well as reputations have been left in shambles as the reality of abuses injustices or immorality has come to light each of these cases have felt not only deeply sad but also shocking even unbelievable and indeed in most cases the whistleblowers were initially not believed but consider together Our Guest today a search there are discernible patterns and predictable dynamics that enable even encourage a preoccupation with power profit and fame and a susceptibility to their misuse a culture of celebrity she argues is hurting the church both by distorting the message of the gospel and often the priorities of The Messengers who bring it and over emphasis on cultivating personas on pedestals has often encouraged the pursuit of influence and profit without the guard rails of of institutional accountability or spiritual maturity and the way forward Begins by looking squarely at the deceptions embedded within a culture of celebrity as well as renewed attention to truer ways of living modeled by he who called himself the way the truth and the life it's a provocative and an intriguing argument and one made with expertise eloquence and Grace by Our Guest today Caitlin Beatty Caitlyn is an editor author and journalist who's written on faith and culture for the New York Times the New Yorker The Washington Post Religion News service the Atlantic and many other Publications she's also the editorial director of Brazos press and previously served as the print managing editor of Christianity Today she is also the author of several books but including her most recent book celebrities for Jesus how personas platforms and profits are hurting the church which we've invited her here today to discuss Caitlyn welcome the Trinity forum's online conversation hey Caitlin welcome hello Sherry thank you so much for that invitation and introduction and thank you all for joining us today I look forward to getting to some of your questions later on in our hour together absolutely well we're so excited to have you here so as we start off I just have to observe your career has been spent as a a writer and editor a podcaster a frequent commentator all sectors and industries were the influence of celebrity is is particularly profitable and sought after so what do you see as the problem with celebrity culture and what led you to write this book me yeah well I to answer your the second part of your question first I wrote this book in large part based on my time at Christianity Today magazine Flagship Evangelical publication based on the Chicago suburbs and would end up being there for about a decade and CT is non-sectarian journalistic publication and received several tips and allegations in the time that I was there against famous Christian leaders household names people whose books were on my family's bookshelf growing up of course I didn't know these leaders personally but I had this kind of affection or affinity for them from afar from from that distance and we'll talk about the distance that celebrity creates um and so CT you know had to report on these stories look into these allegations and of course we have seen a pattern emerge among celebrity leaders in the church um it tends to be the case that uh the the higher the platform uh the higher the power and the higher the power the lesser the accountability we've seen in so many cases the failure of surrounding institutions and leaders to offer accountability and checks and balances to that celebrity power so I wrote this book very much to step back from the headlines uh not so much to rehearse the details but to say okay what what's in the water here for the American Church surely there is something Beyond kind of individual sins or pathologies there's enough of a pattern here to say we all need to examine our own common life together our own institutions the desire perhaps in our own Hearts to either seek a platform or to put others on platforms so that we don't keep seeing these Falls and failures that there's that there's a lot at stake to go back to the first part of your question yes I I have been inside the Evangelical industrial complex for um for my entire career and so on one hand I am very sympathetic to the idea that uh platforms and self-promotion feel like just part of the game in a celebrity oriented American culture in a social media driven culture I think a lot of us sense the tension of wanting to use those tools without those tools misshaping and misforming us so it's it's simplistic to say every Christian every faithful Christian should be off screen should be off the stage I would be very hypocritical to make an argument like that but I do want anybody who feels called to the role of communication and conversation in a public way to really be serious and sober about the Temptations that can come with a platform Driven Life and the personas that can arise in the midst of that you know um I've seen many articles and heard many people say that the last several years has basically seen the shift to an attention-based economy where you know attention is the most scarce and valuable resource even more than some material goods and so getting attention is sort of the new coin or the realm if we live in an attention economy is a celebrity culture but does it become inevitable and even unchangeable I think it is inevitable uh for Christian leaders and organizations that want to get people in the door and we we think about uh Evangelistic models and church growth strategies or organizational strategies and oftentimes in those contexts numerical growth whether in a budget or number of seats a number of people in the seats or pews whatever kind of church you go to um is kind of the the main goal we want to see that numerical growth and there's a very pragmatic calculation that can come in you know whatever it takes to attract people and so maybe another way of of saying that is whatever holds people's attention um we know that having a pastor with a excellently communicated 20-minute sermon that's passionate and motivational and helps me uh live a better life or more fulfilled life well that that holds people's attention I mean churches have risen and Fallen just on the power of the one person's uh or territory skills so there can be a very strong pragmatic impulse both within American culture and then of course within American Evangelical culture part of what I want to say in this book is that what we want as people of Christian faith isn't just to hold people's attention because we all know how fickle attention is and how easy it is to you know flit from one thing to another uh what we're offering people or what we want to offer people is something that captivates their hearts and minds and calls them to a life of deeper commitment of a deeper community of not just being entertained but being known in deep and Lasting ways and I think that is what we are made for I think that's what we want and maybe don't always know how to articulate and so in what ways can the church and Christian leaders perhaps play on holding people's attention but also Captivate their affections uh with the gospel um with the invitation to a deep life in Christ and that might actually require um not using some of the tools of the world you know if we want to offer something radically different from what the world offers we can't just determine to pick up the world's tools and expect to use them for Godly ends and so a lot of this book really is about looking at uh the means and saying that the means matter as much as the ends and fear that we've become overly focused on the ends that we forget the means we forget to even ask questions about how we're getting to our goals no no that's fascinating one of the things I thought was um was quite intriguing in your work is uh in tracing American Pro especially American evangelicalism a lot of the early celebrities of the uh 19th century in particular were were evangelists uh they were not tied to a particular institution or local church or even sometimes a denomination uh they were nomadic um traveling very well known you know whether we're thinking about Charles Finney or John Wesley um or even even Billy Graham and would be interested in your thoughts on how sort of that that early history of so much of American Evangelical Christianity being tied to uh to Revival sort of instigated by a celebrity figure might affect our view of celebrity culture yeah well I I find the history of let's argue the most famous Evangelical leaders of the last 200 years and kind of the men who would really shape our understanding of modern American evangelicalism um I come to this topic with great affection for Billy Graham in particular and I write about him a lot in my book um first of all as someone who I believe genuinely wanted to love and serve the Lord and draw people into the Faith with his incredible Evangelistic tools you know someone who actually acknowledged really early on in his ministry as his star was Rising that there could be real Temptations to this celebrity power that he found himself with I mean somebody traveling the globe as you said Cherie there's I think there's something about the nomadic lifestyle and always being on the road um that can fuel these celebrity Dynamics but no I write as someone who had a born-again experience at age 13 and responded personally and powerfully to an Evangelistic altar call and so this is these are my people this is very much my lineage um when I think back to my own early Faith formation our family always attended church but really never understood what it meant to be part of the local church I think really the emphasis was on having a powerful and pretty individualistic response to a gospel message and oftentimes that message being you know from someone like Billy Graham where you would go listen to them at a stadium packed with tens of thousands of people or hear them on the radio or on TV um and so we can point to that kind of legacy and say Yes numerically I mean even Billy Graham once bragged that he reached more people with the gospel than Jesus which is a pretty bold thing to brag about um I'm I'm indebted to that impulse that Evangelistic impulse and certainly that has borne much fruit I think what we are now encountering um it's in part of discipleship problem in the American church that after that powerful individualistic experience we aren't always equipped to know how to invite people into a life of ordinary faithfulness that doesn't depend or rise or fall on um a powerful emotional response to a particular message um and we all know that life with other people and with other believers can be uh hard can be grading can be boring um but really looking at the New Testament and believing that that is in fact the warp and wolf of the Christian life and I think the American church has struggled to thread that Needle and to call people into what's really ultimately a commitment to an institution or a commitment to a community or body um if the gospel that's originally been presented uh if the emphasis is so much on that individualistic experience with Jesus um it's it's no surprise that many American Christians think of their own devotional or discipleship life as I listen to a sermon at home uh on my laptop or you know on on a podcast while I'm walking to the gym or the groceries or whatever um and we can talk about those those forms of media and and teaching but I don't think that that is church and I don't think that that is what um the vast majority of us are are called to think of discipleship and life together as well let's talk about some of those forms of media because you said in your book that a celebrity culture essentially depends uh on on mass media and I think virtually any scholar uh of mass media and certainly you know one of the first and most famous of the Marshall mcluhan talked about essentially the medium through which we get our information is not neutral that the the medium affects the message it often affects the messenger that every different medium has a bias towards uh the way we present information the kind of information that we present in the first place how do you see a mass media celebrity culture shaping the content of what's of what the church teaches hmm well it's certainly shapes how the message is received um Neil Postman writes a lot about Billy Graham in his book amusing ourselves to death and is of course drawing from the work of Marshall mcluhan in claiming that the medium is the message and Postman argued that Graham and other televangelists we're showing this technological naivete um in terms of thinking about what it means to preach an Evangelistic message um through a medium that most people use to be entertained to consume entertainment and information throughout their days in a pretty passive and individualistic way so if you think about you know your average American or American Family watching sitting down at six o'clock to watch the Nightly News this is like this feels like a very long time ago to even be describing something like that but you know flipping the channel over to the Nightly News and then flipping the channel over to Jeopardy or the price is right and then they flip over to there's a crusade that's being televised from from Graham well what does it mean that this family's experience with the gospel message is kind of woven into you know uh salacious headlines from the day and then something very light and fluffy and entertaining um I think crucially these mass media tend to allow for a highly individualistic way of engaging the information and you know I think about the experience in a local church where you're you're sitting together with other believers in a community weekend and week out you hear a sermon maybe it's great maybe it's fine but you have an opportunity together to understand the meaning of the sermon either after church or in a small group or devotion group there's a sense that what we're doing together can only be understood in proximate Flesh and Blood relationship and mass media just atomizes the way that we process information and content of course you know going back to the attention economy and knowing how short our attention spans are I do wonder if mass media today especially with social media podcasting you know Tick Tock um you know really asks all of us to lead with the most dramatic or um clickbaity part of what we have to say and how that distorts oftentimes what we have to say you know if you're on Twitter it's like you lead with anger if you're on Tick Tock you lead with I don't know some kind of dance routine I don't spend a lot of time on Tick Tock I'll I'll admit yeah but but kind of if you are just trying to get eyeballs if you're just trying to get listeners or attention you're going to do the thing that is the most dramatic and I don't ultimately think that is the the fullness of what we have to offer the world when we're talking about um articulating Christianity in the modern world you mentioned the uh individualism that mass media sort of predisposes us towards in terms of our experience uh but it's generally been institutions and communities that have often been the most potent in terms of their formational power in terms of both their constraints and what they call us uh to do and you know I noticed that you you quoted uvolovan who's also been one of our online conversation guests on you know the the importance of Institutions and have uh not have implied but even argued that in many ways mass media and celebrity culture can undermine the formative power of Institutions would love to hear more of your thoughts on how that happens yeah well I'm I'm very grateful for yuval's Reflections on the decline of Institutions it's something that we see headlines about on a not infrequent basis and of course this isn't just religious institutions it's all of our institutions all of our common um organizations that that continue on our common life and keep things running essentially so what does it mean that all of these institutions are facing crises in levels of trust and you've all talks about institutions today becoming platforms for individual performance and one of the examples he gives is you know members of Congress being in session you know theoretically trying to create laws and meanwhile their their Twitter thread is going they're like throwing Shades from the other side of the political aisle um and just how much institutions are seen as propping up the individual's own agenda or or Persona right that that the Persona takes precedent over the very important but boring work of the institution and when we think about um you know it doesn't just happen in large churches but I do think about the mega church phenomenon and the mega church movement which on you know by by many accounts is a very successful model of church in the United States it's like the majority of people who attend church in America attend a church that qualifies as a mega church and also we just see over and over again the ways that the lead Pastor or the the pastor who preaches week in and week out um almost his I'm saying his intentionally because most mega church pastors are men um that their charismatic presence and their Persona just overwhelm the institution itself that that people who come and participate in that institution very much see a primary connection to that leader over and against a connection to that community and I know that there are lots of mega churches that have tried to mitigate this by drawing people if you make a commitment to this church well you need to be part of a small group lots of lay ministers or lay leaders you know keeping the church running but even there I worry that they're called to keep the church running so that the lead Pastor has room in his schedule to keep you know writing best-selling books and traveling all over the world preaching and speaking um and so one of the pitfalls of this model with the decline of the commitment to an institution and the ascendance of of the Persona is kind of the operating or or Central character in a Church's self-understanding is that if or when the pastor has a moral Scandal or Falls or fails in some way the institution has a really hard time continuing on without that central figure we've seen this with Willow Creek we've seen this with Hillsong various Hillsong churches where it's almost like the church doesn't know who they are apart from the leader and especially when you have a story of a leader who is no longer in a position of of power and there's been real hurt and real grief for the community how much harder it is to disentangle that past and that story from their own life together so I think it takes a real intentionality perhaps especially on the part of mega churches to have a an understanding of themselves and core commitments that say we know how easy it would be for what we're doing here to be essentially becoming a platform for this one person and here's how we're going to resist that here are choices that we can make together to resist that or to undo what's been done in the past but it's it's an uphill climb right it's it's going it's going against the flow of so many elements of mega church culture and American culture you know it's really fascinating in that um you know the development of that Persona not only of course does it put the church at an individual church at much greater risk but from everything we know cultivating a Persona rather than being known is actually a terribly isolating um lonely depressing place to be um you know there there's tons of data on this uh not only for adults but particularly for or teenagers you know um you know we recently interviewed Jonathan height and Andy Crouch and uh just overwhelming evidence that once smartphones became the norm you know just huge upticks in teen depression and anxiety at the same time it was accompanied by also huge upticks in in essentially elevating Fame as that which was Most Wanted you know there have been other studies that basically had teenagers pick from let's say to seven different uh values fame um definitely came out on top we want to be famous we want a Persona even though the Persona makes us miserable because we aren't known what is it about us that so Longs for a Persona when um a Persona a false Persona essentially makes us miserable yeah it's a profound question and I think about again using the the attention economy idea and we might say oh these teenagers just want attention you know they're using these tools to kind of get their 30 seconds of Fame because they just want to be seen but if you if you dig a little bit deeper into the understanding or the notion of attention especially when we're talking about young people at a very formative often unstable or rapidly changing part of their own sense of self and identity um attention is perhaps another way of of trying in their own way to be seen and to be known and even to be loved or adored and you know it's not relegated to talking teenagers of course um these are fundamental human longings that on a spiritual level are satisfied in our lives in Christ that God sees us and knows us and loves us and also something that we desperately need to live um grounded healthy uh human lives it's what we are created for and I think in a time of profound loneliness a time when uh were less likely to understand ourselves as part of something greater in the form of an institution or a local community um celebrity is like a shortcut um it is it is something that can be easily accessed using the tools of mass media to get a quick feeling of being known of being seen of being adored and so I think in that way it's I mean it's an ultimately an empty promise it's an empty it doesn't actually lead to that but that's where it that's the part of us the good part of us that it appeals to um you know over time of course like if if it happens to you that you become Mega famous like overnight especially at a young age um you just hear about you know people who grew up in Hollywood or became famous as teenagers or even children the profound psychological and relational consequences of that um and I just I I want Christians to first of all offer young people that a place where they can really be known and loved I mean I think about my own youth pastor growing up this was all of course pre social media by many years but you know she she would take me out to Dairy Queen after after school um or come to my my band concert just that kind of uh presence of attention and Care can go a really really long way in mitigating the temptation to find it on the internet um but also I mean for for those of us for adults um the Temptation doesn't go away and then I think it requires for anybody who does find themselves with some measure of Fame with some measure or platform um a real kind of counterbalance uh in one's own life to say um I'm putting deliberate parameters around my life using these platforms my priority is the people whose lives I'm intimately uh connected to uh the people I say I see every day the people who I'm um proximate to the that's the priority and all the more you know if that platform Rises if I feel myself getting sucked into that all the more am I choosing to invest in the people around me who don't just adore me but like actually love me you know like it's not actually good for us to just be adored but to be loved is to be um deeply known and and deeply seen and deeply committed to all the same um I write in the final chapter of celebrities for Jesus about the role of friendship which I asked you just mentioned Andy Crouch and I interviewed him um you know he's written very um deeply and thoughtfully on technology and just asked you know what do we do and and he he mentioned you know of course we we know accountability is important we know we need to place limits on our screen time and all of that but his answer or antidote to the celebrity problem he offered friendship which was not something that I was expecting but um just the the powerful role that lifelong friends can play in grounding us um keeping us on the ground when all of this digital technology wants to take us away away from real presence away from real community and into some kind of fantasy performance of a Persona that's not actually rooted in who we really are well Caitlin this has been fascinating so many more questions but we're going to turn to the questions that are piling up from those who are watching and uh just a reminder this is one of your first times you can not only ask a question but you can also like a question and that gives us an idea of what some of the most uh the questions are that most people have on their mind so a question from Marlo rondoni and Marlo asked to what do you do degree do you see Pastor as CEO and bad governance as a significant part of the problem foreign I don't have a um you know a percentage in mind and I have been in mega churches where the pastor for all I could tell did not think of themselves as CEOs but I I think very much so you know the mega church model Drew explicitly in the 70s and 80s from the American business model it was not there wasn't even anything covert about it it's just looking at basic business capitalistic principles and thinking about um growth and the bottom line as the driving principles and so you end up with people at the helm who as you just noted don't really come in with an understanding of the pastor as a shepherd of souls um because on one level just very pragmatically how could you possibly get to know 2000 Souls you can't you know it's it's impossible the the pastor is not so much someone who is meant to be accessible or someone who can provide emotional or spiritual pastoral care in any kind of personal way um rather they are the Visionary they are the person who is going to lead us into the future to um bring us take us to bigger and better Heights who uh inspires and encourages all from the platform um and it works you know it works in the way that the the Apple model under Steve Jobs worked now Steve Jobs as I understand it wasn't a very nice person to be around and it is really unfortunate that part of the CEO model is also perhaps someone who doesn't have time to treat people as people as real people um someone who doesn't think about softer skills like emotional intelligent as being necessary um all sorts of pathologies that can creep in with that CEO model so absolutely um you know there's very much an explicit borrowing from the world of business with the mega church model and unfortunately the pastor as CEO is a part of that so a question from Victoria Victoria Martino who asked Jesus warned his followers that they should not call anyone master or teacher or father he understood human nature in the auto human desire for agulation and elevation in the eyes of others why do you think that there have not been more whistleblowers in the Christian church that's a great question I think that just as this person noted we fallible humans are looking for touch points to the sacred in our midst we are looking for figures who seem to be closer to the Lord divinely and uniquely blessed we want to be part of whatever they're promising to do Among Us you know if if you're around a leader um who's saying you know this is the vision that the Lord has given me and this is how our church or organization is going to be a part of um you know spreading the kingdom in our midst of being on mission for God that meets a very deep felt need for us to be part of something bigger than ourselves to as Christians feel like we're co-laborers with God maybe God is uniquely blessing us or leading us in a way that God isn't leading other communities is um it just feels really good to be a part of that I couldn't help notice the music lead-in for this and for this session um and immediately thought back to of course the Christianity Today podcast the rise and fall of Marcel just a very um well done uh podcast series and I thought it was really well done in part because my cost per the producer recognized how many good things that people were getting by being part of Mars Hill they weren't dumb they weren't just blind sheep there were actual uh there seemed to be actual spiritual fruit and we all want to see that in our midst and the danger is when we end up confusing you know faithfulness to Christ with loyalty to a particular person or thinking that um you know God can only work in our midst or with this leader and not seeing the bigger picture and ending up excusing behavior that should never be excused but we want we want to touch point to the Divine and we want to be part of something big and important and that can lead a lot of us to turn a blind eye to really concerning and unchristian behavior there you go so a question from Peter Sherman who asked your book uses the word Charisma a lot and I wonder how a Theology and sociology of Charisma might compare and contrast with your notion of celebrity I suspect they are not the same thing um yeah well Charisma of course has a spiritual Dimension to the word we think about Paul writing about a charism or or gift and we also talk about um gifted people um both inside religious circles and and Beyond them and I didn't write about this as much as I would have liked to but I think too about Max Weber's notion of charismatic Authority and the ascendance of charismatic authority over more traditional forms of authority um it is simply the case that I would say most celebrities have some kind of personal Charisma um but it it defers um you know just because you're charismatic doesn't mean that you are a celebrity in the unhealthy way and I think that's why it's important early in the book that I try to distinguish between celebrity and fame and we think about someone like Martin Luther King um who had a very charismatic presence obviously was able to lead uh help lead the civil rights movement because of his um incredible oratory skills and charismatic presence among other people I don't think that he was seeking to become a celebrity in his midst and actually Billy Graham is another great model of someone who I genuinely believe had incredible gifts you know going back to the charisms he was gifted many different skill sets and many most people found him to be charismatic they wanted to be around him they're just we've all met people or it's like I want to be around that person there uh they'd light up a room you know like people hang on their every word um and when we're thinking about you know spiritual leadership uh learning to if you if you encounter someone with Incredible Charisma um perhaps thinking through uh special guard rails where it doesn't just slide into a celebrity dynamic because part of charismatic Authority is that those leaders find that there's like a cult of personality that builds up around them even if they don't want it so just recognizing that having charismatic Authority or having Charisma isn't always a blessing and it can come with things that you never wanted you people following you in a in a very unhealthy or obsessive way so just recognizing that yeah Charisma charismatic Authority comes with um the need for particular sensitivities and guard rails so that it doesn't slide into unhealthy celebrity Dynamics great So Adam Vicks asked given the reality that large-scale platforms like big conferences and social media aren't going away what are healthy examples of how the church can combat celebrity culture and Christianity mm-hmm yeah well I'm not thinking so much about lay Christians here and I'm sure Adam who just asked the question was probably thinking more about like what can what can everyday Christians do but I do just want to emphasize here when we're talking about conferences and book publishing which I am in currently I work as a full-time Acquisitions editor I think these um business infrastructures have a lot of responsibility to play in correcting long-standing dynamics of preference uh for celebrity leaders and and fueling celebrity Dynamics um so I think this isn't just an issue that's going to go away so long as everyday Christians commit themselves to the local church which is a great thing and which I think we should all do but I just want to note that there are these bigger infrastructure and Commercial um Dynamics at play in American evangelicalism where I don't think things will change until leaders in those organizations say uh this has gotten out of hand the way that conferences are run the way that people are selected the way we treat these people how much we pay these people this is all showing that we put way too much emphasis on Celebrity following to determine who gets to lead and teach the church um I think of course accountability is really important for any kind of organization or institution and it's something that we all know of course and even celebrity leaders will say oh yes I I you know I fully submit to structures of accountability of course that's important to me um but really interrogating what those accountability structures how they actually operate in real life and in real relationships because you can have a leader who has who you know theoretically answers to multiple boards and yet when you scratch the surface of those accountability groups or structures you realize that most of the people on the board or in the group have a vested interest in continuing to prop up the celebrity as a celebrity so really getting wise about interpersonal power and um intentionally choosing people to for for to whom the celebrity leader answers who don't have a vested interest um or their vested interest is in the future of the particular church or institution not on continuing the celebrity Leader's career or extending their power further and further so yeah getting wise about accountability structures I think this is a call for all of us we I mean I'm sure you've had many guests at the Trinity Forum Sheree who talk about screen time and our relationship to Media but this is something that um um we all know that something is off in our relationship with media um but looking at how much time and energy and kind of emotional investment we're placing in not just screens but how we then start to see people whom we don't know in any real way as authority figures in our own lives and spiritual formation and I'm saying this is someone who has benefited immensely from books written by Christian authors I don't know them personally but their work has really enriched my my life and relationship with God so this is not me saying don't ever read a Christian book by someone you don't know that's silly but are we Outsourcing uh discipleship away from the local church onto individual leaders out there and what if we were to prioritize or centralize our life in the local church as the place where the primary warp and wolf of the Christian Life is lived out and if we happen to find these extra resources that are helpful great but that's not those resources aren't the main thing makes sense um so another question we have comes from Rob Daniels who said what do you say to that friend family member or co-worker who cannot see that on the unhealthy celebrity culture that perhaps permeates the faith community that they are a part of where do you start that conversation hmm yeah that's a really good question um it's hard because you know if if your friend or family member is going to a mega church with a celebrity leader uh it's probably simplistic to say you shouldn't go to that church anymore and you know going back to the Mars Hill example we do see very meaningful and deep ways that people can become involved in institutions that are marked by celebrity Dynamics but aren't necessarily um swallowed up by those dynamics that actually you can have healthy and unhealthy impulses in the same community and the same leader right but I would maybe ask this person who finds themselves in a celebrity influenced Church culture uh when was the last time they had a conversation with someone on the Pastoral team and talking a little bit more deeply about the role of a pastor or pastors again coming back to the notion of a pastor being a shepherd of Souls and making sure that that person um feels cared for as as a sheep um as a as a member of the body that they understand their The crucial role that they play in the body of Christ and if that is not being spoken to or not an emphasis in that Community um yeah it might be time to to think about a different a church that does things differently or a spiritual community that does things differently um I think there's also a healthy warning just to say um you know we're not called to place our ultimate Allegiance in any one particular leader even very healthy Godly leaders um and to see the costs that can crop up when we find ourselves placing a certain kind of Allegiance or giving allegiance to leaders who we don't really know in any real way um when we look to these kind of heroes or or icons out there to tell us how to live as Christians um that lack of proximity and that distance can create all sorts of distortions and that can be personally heartbreaking if if the icon is cracked and we actually see the person behind it as being a very deeply flawed and potentially harmful leader that can have a real personal spiritual cost for us yeah so a final question comes from Chris Murphy who asked does technology and social media necessarily take us away from reality and or Community are there ways that technology and social media can actually cultivate community yeah I that what weapons online isn't reality um it is a mediated kind of reality and I think as people of Faith who come back to the central notion that God wasn't fleshed in the person of Christ and incarnated and lived among us as a full human I think we do want to say that what can happen in the presence of other people hits at a more core and deeper part of who we are and who we're made to be in the image of God but it's I think it's simplistic to say it's um you know what happens in the flesh is real and what happens online isn't real because you still have humans interacting with each other even through this these mediated forms and I have found some measure of community online mostly in terms of affinity or interests so I would say there's oftentimes a type of community that can be cultivated or connection that can be cultivated um that is that is good you know I like that I can you know go on well it's all driven by adding ads now and advertising so but uh theoretically I can go on to Twitter and you know type in a hashtag of bird watching I I enjoy bird watching on the side and um I get all these updates about you know other bird watchers in New York City and what they're seeing in Central Park and that makes me feel connected to that community and I think that's that's for the good right um but in general those types of communities aren't the types of communities that can show up for us in our most profound moments of need um for human understanding and connection and so it's not only invest in the people that you spend your everyday life with it's not that the connections you find online aren't real it's just that at the end of the day if I know myself to be a vulnerable person um and knows very well that I could face a moment of crisis of deep vulnerability where I need to rely on other people to get through the day or to get through the season the people who I have connected with online just can't be be there for me in a in a in a deep way and I don't think that they can necessarily mediate the presence of Christ Among Us in the way that a friend who would cry with us or pray with us or put their hand on our shoulder can so it's not it's simplistic to think in-person good online bad but I think it is appropriate to talk about prioritization and the kind of connections that we're able to cultivate both in person and online thanks Caitlin this has been fascinating uh and thank you to all of you for your questions this has been just a particularly great group of really thoughtful questions and we regret that we have only been able to get to a fraction of them so thank you for sending those in in just a minute I want to give Caitlin the last word but before then a few things just to share with you first immediately after we conclude we'll be sending around an online feedback form we love to get your thoughts I say this every time it's true every time we read every word we try to take your examples and suggestions to heart to make this program ever more valuable to those of you who watch it so as a particular incentive for uh filling out the feedback form we will send you a code and a link to a free Trinity Forum a reading download of your choice the digital version of our readings and some readings we would particularly recommend to go a little bit further into the topic that we've been discussing today includes Brave New world who stands fast by Bonhoeffer and Augustine city of God and confessions in addition tomorrow right around noon we'll be sending out an email which includes not only a list of additional readings and resources where you can go more deeply into this topic but also an edited a video of today's online conversation that we would love for you to share with friends family and others to start a conversation we also would love to extend an invitation to you to join the Trinity Forum Society which is the community of people who help Advance the Trinity forum's Mission of cultivating curating and disseminating the best of Christian thoughts we rely on our members to try to fulfill that mission and would love to welcome you to part of that Community there are many benefits to being a member of the Trinity Forum Society including a subscription to our quarterly readings a subscription to our daily what we're reading list of curated readings and recommendations as well as today only for those of you who join the Trinity Forum Society with your gift of a hundred dollars or more we will send you a signed copy of Caitlyn's book celebrities for Jesus so we'd love to have you join us at the 24 society and I would love to for you to receive a copy of Caitlyn's book as well coming up in the next few weeks for those of you who are in town in DC on March 21st we'll be hosting Russell Moore Curtis Chang and David French on the topic of towards a better Christian politics would love to have you join in addition some upcoming online conversations to be aware of include March 24th where we'll be hosting vegan girlian and Angel Parham on tinding the heart of virtue and on March 31st where our guest Jessica Hooten Wilson will talk to us about reading for the love of God so mark your calendars I would love to see you at each of those finally as promised Caitlyn the last word is yours well I won't end with reading all of middlemarch but I but I will read the final portion of the novel from George Eliot and this is about a woman Dorothea Lang who starts off in her life having Grand visions of doing big things for God and wants to become a famous Saint like Teresa of Avila of her time and life takes her to places of disappointment to places that are quieter and unseen but she really starts to see her calling over her life as investing in the people closest to her and the novel is such a beautiful image of ordinary faithfulness which I think is perhaps the most potent antidote to celebrity culture in our midst and so I'll read the final sentences of of middlemarch dorothea's full nature spent itself in channels which had no great name on the Earth but the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived Faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs and so um I just I can't read that without tearing up um but the image of living a Faithfully a hidden life and what if that is the call for the vast majority of us and can we live into that Vision uh with relief and joy thank you Caitlyn that was beautiful thank you to each of you for joining us have a great weekend 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Channel: The Trinity Forum

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Length: 60min 2sec (3602 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 10 2023