The Culture of Celebrity and Entertainment
In the Church!?

The second OJ Trial is in full swing in the form of a preliminary hearing. Does anyone doubt we will be bombarded with this “caper” for months, years, to come? Who can forget the time, money and energy expended by the media and the common folk who watched the televised “Trial of the Century”. O.J. outdistanced the Scopes trial because there was no TV back “in the day”.
And, now there is a new OJ crime that is transfixing the media and therefore the public who takes their cue from the media. And, what a run it had been on celebrities and the law---Anna Nicole, Paris, Brittany, Duane “Dog” Chapman, the bounty hunter, ad nauseam!

Christianity is not immune from this celebrity fascination. Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer and Joel Osteen are prominent names in Christian circles. Some of these folk are suddenly coming under scrutiny of the federal government. Sen. Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee is launching an investigation of six “health and wealth” gospel proponents on television. The government does not seem to be the organ for sorting out the charlatans of the church, but the investigation is to determine compliance with federal tax laws. What is interesting is that the secular and spiritual celebrities are linked together by the same underlying enterprise: entertainment.

The secular celeb issue is an easy one to assess. All media is tabloid media now. Even the “hard news” is about making money not reporting events. And, media is a fast paced business…the latest and the sensational had precedence over the long, played out story. So, what Brit does today is of far greater media significance that the arduous process of re-building Iraq. So successes in Iraq that do not involve maiming, killing or mis-steps by the US, are not newsworthy anymore. The viewer wants to be entertained.

Sadly, in this frenzied world, you have to be doing something new and catchy to stay in the news. Therefore, the celeb has to have a problem that keeps them in the public eye. Most viewers care little about the celebrity, they just are interested in their lives and what outrageous thing they are now doing. Oh, we know they need help, but if they were “cured” they would be out of the news because they would be regular folk like the viewers. Neither the viewer nor the media are much interested in repentance and the soul of the celluloid personality.

In the Christian community, this phenomenon is a bit more difficult to understand. We all recognize the foolishness of the idle babbling promoted by the entertainment culture in which we live. Yet, what do we do? We mimic the culture with our own celebrities, contemporary Christian music, Christian theme parks, Christian cartoons like Veggie Tales, etc. Are we not just adding fuel to the cultural fires burning? To use a term of Ken Myers, are we not just adding to the “cultural disorder”? Do we need an alternative “entertainment culture”? Why should the Christian community have any celebrities? Should not our lives be cultivated into sharing and suffering for the Gospel? Should not our emphasis be the emulation of Jesus Christ, the production of the fruit of the spirit and living a virtuous life?

The church is, or should be, about discipling. When entertainment takes over, it is about having fun, fulfilling our desires, going from one experience to another. There is no longer an emphasis on restraining desires, mortifying the flesh, becoming less and less while Christ in us becomes more and more. One of the real problems in the contemporary church is the failure to take discipleship seriously thereby negating creation and culture. When culture is only used as a method to get folks “saved” and not taken seriously, celebrity and entertainment become part of the Christian community. And, making disciples is not longer the mission of the church, contrary to the Lord’s Commission to His Church.