Celebrity Christian Culture

We live in a world of Celebrity. It is, in my opinion, unfortunate. We are constantly bombarded by news articles, television programmes, websites and entire magazines dedicated to "being a celebrity" - it has been linked with girls having negative images of themselve, guys feeling the need to use steroids to change their body, the rise in numbers of people with eating disorders, huge amounts of money spent on surgical body enhancement in order to be like these famous folk. It is a huge market, one that produces a lot of revenue for many people and one that a vast number of people buy into and lap up on a regular basis.

Perhaps more dissappointly it seems to also have infiltrated Christian culture. Rather than the Christianity being a good example to the shallow and superficial world of Celebrity it seems that Celebrity has managed to inflict it's own shallow and superficial stance on Christians.

Christianity seems to be having a revival with huge festival style meetings and speakers flown in from all over the world hailed as "The most dynamic and most creative Chrisitan speaker ever" or Worship leaders that have "Sold hundreds and thousands of albums worldwide". Many Christians speakers do so with intergrity and continue to use their time on stage before thousands of other Christians for the right reason, Jesus, and the message that he wanted delivered.

Sometimes, however, it does feel like some speakers are not giving all the glory to God, not speaking with humility that I believe should be associated with their words, not rooting their messages in scripture and generally missing the point. Fortunately they are few and far between and, like I mentioned earlier, the vast number of Christian preachers and speakers do have intergrity and genuine love of Jesus.

But who is responsible for the ones that don't? Is it totally their fault that they have been raised up onto a pedestal and start to believe their own hype and maybe even revel in their new found fame in their comfortable neich market? Or do we, as Christians, have a responsibility to monitor those that speak and deliver the word of God? Is it up to us to judge and speak out if there is something that does not feel right to us.

Another aspect of this whole "Christian Celebrity" culture is the obvious hawking of books, cd's and dvd's. I don't have an issue with people writing books and asking people to pay for them, likewise with CD's and DVD's but I object to the constant barrage you get, at some Christian events, of the phrase "You can buy this... this is avilable for... for a bargain price of..." and having the stalls to sell them right there in the tent. Jesus kicked over tables and stopped people trading in the temple, is this really that far removed? (Perhaps the main difference being the lack of corruption in the Christian marketplace)

Sorry, somewhat of a rant there but I think I needed to get it off my chest. It is hard to become a well known Christian speaker and not be given many compliments on your ability to communicate and speaking from the experience I gained in the entertainment industry, it is very hard not to let constant encouragements and praise coupled with compliments and applause inflate the ego just a little bit.