reality tv meets jesus

my friends cliff and mary (and Jack!) are visiting right now. I just love them, and wish y'all could know them, too.

Back in the day Cliff and I used to tell stories to each other over frenchfries in the student union at BGSU, and Mary and I brewed exotic coffees in a decrepit pit of a Teaching Assistant Office while wrestling with rhetoric, interpretation & the politics of highered...

So anyway Cliff is brilliant culture critic who recently wrote about (mark your calendars!): Gifted an astonishing swirl of American Dreams, Reality TV & Christianbookstormerica.

once. when i was a fundamentalist. I participated in a a pageant called: Most Christian Teen. or Outstanding Christian Teen.

or something like that.

I found it absurd, but there were scholarships available, and goshdarnit, I was a prize Christian Teen if ever I knew one. And if I wasn't going to get any beer or sex or even movies or dancing, for that matter, than goshdarnit (oops...with that much profanity i wouldn't have stood a chance...i've become quite a pottymouth since then...) why not get some college tuition for it.

One of the things that cracks me up about what we used to say to condemn Catholics was that -- "everybody knows that their faith is just 'cultural'." As if that was a bad thing. As if ours wasn't.

Indeed the *culture* of evangelicals is beautifully satired in the movie -- SAVED. (if you missed it, you'll have to wait for video, as distribution is waning.) and Cliff closes his piece on GIFTED -- essentially an "american idol" for the TBN set -- with a quote:

“That’s our ultimate goal,” said McIntyre, “to put attention on the Christian world.”

his technique:

God gives us so many gifts, but we reach for the one with the prettiest wrapping. In a world where MTV dictates trends and pop-stars become idols, Christianity seems to be wrapped in conditions and judgments. It is our goal to wrap God’s message—His love—in acceptance, and in a way that blends seamlessly into ‘pop’ culture while still upholding the values we, as Christians, value most. When presented with this gift, wrapped tightly in respect, we hope that today’s youth will open the trendy packaging to release God’s love—and realize in doing so that we are all truly ‘Gifted.’

So you should expect that America's next "Gift" will be a 300-something pound somebody with acne, right? but the show's great production values will make us realize that God's gifts of love and acceptance blends seamlessly with pop culture's gifts? right?

You know that I love the gifts of pop culture, right? And am all for featuring the immanence of Christ and the Gospel in the cultural milieu -- but the thing is --

the "christian world" that McIntyre wants to feature is a cultural hybrid where every consumer trend is hastily baptized, blessed & pressed into the service of evangelism -- without considering how good or ill the fit may be...

everytime Jesusness becomes a product you can buy -- somebody, somewhere, is trying to serve God & mammon at the same time. i know that Mammon happily accepts their fruity sacrifice...