It is human nature to insulate ourselves. We want a predictable, familiar community of people - and when we find it, we want it to remain the same forever. Too often we've built these insular communities and called them "churches," when that couldn't be farther from the original design. Intimate, connected, familial - for sure - but closed and private, certainly not. The whole purpose of the Church is to live out a specific lifestyle in the midst of the public square, to be an example of an alternative way of life.
This brought to mind a distinction I ran across months ago (so long ago I've now forgotten who to properly credit) that Christians, especially American evangelicals, intend to be counter-cultural, but have actually constructed a subculture, separate and distinct from the culture at large. This is the distinction between living differently in the world and living in a different world altogether.
Conservative Christians in the US - what's become commonly known as "the evangelicals" - have created their own little world and, instead of engaging culture, reject it and recreate it separately, expecting people to take notice. What's worse: so much of this subculture has very little to do with Christianity; it's largely a generic moralism that's vaguely related to carefully curated scripture passages - often entirely devoid of context.
In a subculture, your primary concern is checking the right behavioral boxes to live in a way that will qualify you for the subculture. The colloquial expression growing up was "don't drink, smoke, or chew, or go with girls who do." It was an out-of-touch joke even then, but it betrays a reality. It's not even that a distinctive set of practices (either done or avoided) is a bad thing - a common rule of life is a community-defining practice and often vitally important, even for a counter-cultural presence. The problem really arises when you start to look at "why" those things are done (or not done). If it's simply to bodily identify with a specific group or to check off the boxes for heaven, you're in real trouble. If it's to embody a different set of principles, foundational assumptions for life, then it makes a lot more sense.
One of the real benefits, though, of American evangelicalism becoming and ever more exclusive subculture is that it has less and less presence in the real world. Not having been in a traditional ministry setting the last few years has woken me up to the fact that most everyone, even many people very involved in Christian ministry, just have no clue this evangelical subculture even exists. I hear pastor friends lamenting some preacher/author/conference that's embarrassing themselves and Christ and I gladly don't know what they're talking about.
As a subculture prefects its isolation, it disappears. The only time evangelical leaders pop up in mainstream culture is when they're saying ridiculous, usually deplorable things. It's a strange novelty - a bit more offensive than the Amish or a hippy commune, but equally as irrelevant in everyday life. I suspect (and hope) that by the time my daughter's grown up, the average American will know as much about Franklin Graham as they do about snakehandlers.
True counter-culture makes it's present felt simply by existing. Subcultures fade from consciousness as they reach their goals. Counter-culture is generally painful for the mainstream, but largely by asking difficult questions about relevant issues. Subcultures are annoying to the mainstream, because they feign relevancy by making a scene (almost literally the original definition of geek).
The gospel of Jesus Christ is wildly relevant to this (and every other) time and place. It is a counter-cultural message of suffering, unconditional love. It does not always provide the safety, security, or privacy of a cul-de-sac - but those very well may be illusions anyway.
There is no question of whether Christianity will survive the current upheaval of culture and human understanding, but whether the organizations and institutions we now associate with Christianity survive the change is entirely dependent on them rejecting the human desire for subculture and embracing a truly revolutionary counter-cultural presence.
Growing up in this evangelical subculture (specifically the traditional Nazarene one from which I hail) we'd often be handed "our" celebrities, to celebrate and follow with the same fervor everyone else supported the mainstream pop-culture celebrities of the day.* As a sports-loving evangelical child I remember getting Sports Spectrum magazine (which, low and behold, still exists). It was full of athletes (many famous) who were also Christians.
This is where things became incredibly confusing for me. Yes, these guys talked about God and went to that special baseball chapel and did team bible studies, and huddled for prayer after games - they used the right insider lingo and, no doubt, genuinely seemed to find Christian faith an important part of their identity.
But I also read the sports section of the newspaper (ha! newspaper - I'm old) and I knew that the on and off field lives of these same guys would never pass muster in my church. Now I'd been lectured about the differences in denominational theology and how different people can believe different things and still be Christian (although this rarely seemed to apply to Catholics, but whatever), but as a child who was taught growing up (something I believe to be pretty central to evangelical thought) that what you do says a lot more about what you believe that what you say (something I still believe to be true), it was incredibly confusing.
Guys impregnating waitresses, cheating on their spouses, getting arrested for some drunken brawl, visibly swearing with the TV cameras on them. I didn't get why these "celebrities" should be celebrated any more than anyone else, just because they said they loved Jesus. If anything, evangelical culture, as I know it, deems people like that worse than those other generic sinners.
I know some of those christian celebrities really did fit the bill - David Robinson was pretty prominently featured and, by all accounts, he lives up to the evangelical hype. I'm sure there were others, but it always felt like a real (and unnecessary) tension - as if evangelical culture was trying to say, "look, we're just like you, only Christian," when that is pretty much the opposite of what it means to have a Christian culture. The difference is important.
Things all went to heck with Amy Grant. She was the evangelical celebrity darling, who not only sang well and got popular, but crossed over into mainstream pop music and kept talking about Jesus (for the most part). Then, famously, she left her husband to marry country-star Vince Gill (who also left his wife at the same time). If this was anyone in my church, it would've been a huge scandal. It became more like a secret scandal amongst evangelicals. People didn't want to give up the Christian cache of claiming a big star and some people were willing to give her a pass on judgment because of it.
Now, in the end, you know what, marriages are often broken. I believe in marriage. I think divorce is really sad and shouldn't necessarily be undertaken as easily as it sometimes is today (even among Christians) - at the same time, I recognize how unfair it is to put the kind of pressure on someone like Amy Grant to be perfect. I recognize perhaps that kind of scrutiny and pressure contributed to her relationship problems - she wouldn't be the first evangelical to have that happen, famous or not. Plus, she's still pretty vocal about her faith and has, by all accounts, been a pretty good example of marriage and health relationship for decades following.
And I know that a 23 year old guy (who seemed so old, grown-up, and mature when I was reading about him in a magazine when I was eight) who gets a million dollar check with almost no accountability, might get himself into a fair bit of trouble, despite his religious commitments and upbringing. I also recognize that some people really do have a cultural faith that fits pretty well within the realm of generic american evangelicalism - and most people are (rightly and graciously) willing to forgive a few flaws and failures.
In other words, things aren't actually as black and white as we'd like to believe.**
Life is far more intricate and convoluted, but that doesn't seem to stop the evangelical celebrity machine. I saw this article about Jim Gaffigan a few weeks back. Jim is the kind of Christian you'd love to promote - he's a sort of progressive catholic who's just trying to live out his faith well. It's a great story to have out there (and surely it helps promote his new show, which he and his wife did on their own and can use all the promotional help it can get).
But it's utterly confusing why he'd be lifted up as an evangelical celebrity (even beyond the whole catholic thing, which we seem to be getting over, finally). Yeah, he works clean, but in interview after interview he talks about how he's not against swearing (and swearing while he does it), explaining it just doesn't make sense to do jokes about his kids full of profanity. He's not on the evangelical side of any political issue and he's all but refused to really speak about anything theological ("I know nothing. And so I don't want to be presented as someone who knows what they're talking about.").
Maybe this is all a good thing. Maybe I'm picking nits about evangelicalism being lax on famous people, when really it's a transformation of grace and openness. Then again, I do read the news - plus I spend way too much time on Facebook.
Maybe I'm just being selfish - maybe I'm just uptight because I can (and do) conform to most of those quintessentially super-Christian lifestyle choices and yet I'm constantly prodded and pushed and challenged when I happen to espouse a theological (or political) position that might be a little outside what's expected.
It's as if evangelicalism wants to include anyone who might make them look cool, but exclude anyone who might make them think. Well, I guess maybe we've gotten this celebrity thing down after all.
*Now. obviously there's a real critique about celebrity and celebrity culture itself that's problematic in this instance, but that might be subject for another day.
**Man, it took a long time to get around to something so seemingly simple.
***There's no corresponding reference to this above, but if you're in the mood for a pained groan today, google "evangelical celebrity" on image search. Rough.
