Re: "A thought on suffering and the call for Christians"

In response to the post A thought on suffering and the call for Christians.

I like your friend Tom’s message very much! I wish that all christian organizations could embrace it. The world is full of suffering gone ignored, and in some cases intensified, by so many christians. But indeed helping to alleviate suffering, going to where it’s found and doing what we can, is something that christians and non alike should be doing. But there’s more!

An example: why that calcuttan baby was dying alone in the alley? Let’s say, for the sake of the example, that the baby is an AIDS orphan. The question then is where was Mother Theresa when that baby’s parents should have been educated about safer sex; learned that condoms effectively prevent the spread of HIV?
Now I know that is a hypothetical, but it’s not an outlandish example, and it serves well to illustrate my point. That point being that suffering shouldn’t just be dealt with, it can be precluded.

What a wonderful challenge that would be! Instead of simply feeding the poor and visiting the sick we could prevent the poverty and the disease.

We could create inclusive environments for all children, so they don’t end up hanging from the rafters in their grandmother’s barn because too many of their peers called them a fag. We could support the aforementioned safer sex education (even if so many churches don’t – I’m looking at you, Vatican), so that there are less orphans. The list is exhaustive.

I’ve noticed this trend with christian charity. Lovely and kind and thoughtful as it often is, it’s too often a bandaid and not a vaccine.

re: Christian Apps… “There’s an App for That”

In response to Christian Apps... "There's an App for That", 


The question of authenticity here is a moot point.

In class we questioned the sincerity of Gaga and Bieber who are combining their christianity (and a christian message?) with their music. If they have a mission to preach through their music, then the means (Gaga's sexuality and sexuosity, for example) and their rampant financial success certainly shed doubt on true motives. Unilver was also mentioned in one response to this post. They are another good example of questionable sincerity. In selling Dove products they are selling a message of female empowerment. But they also sell axe products, which was selling a message of extreme misogyny with commercials featuring vapid, slutty women tripping over themselves to be near men with a "nice" smell. To be fair to unilever, however, the more recent commercials feature both women AND men acting like vapid sluts.

The sincerity of companies like Surgeworks, whose goal is clearly not to missionize, but simply create and sell quality applications, can't be be called into question. Simply, they are a company with a goal to sell. To comment on the high price of their application I would hazard to guess (after a cursory glance at the product description on their site) that the application itself just costs more to produce. Dictionaries are in a similar vein, and they are in the same price neighbourhood. That's a publishing industry thing (thank you copyright?).

As mentioned by one respondent, the "confession" app is really interesting. It is reminiscent of the "indulges" given by the Catholic church. Rich sinners could pay the church and receive the slips of paper absolving them.. those who could pay could sin in abundance and still gain entry to the glorious kingdom of heaven! Clearly capitalist christianity is no new phenomenon. 

Indulgences fun-fact and sidenote: the printing press, was initially harshly opposed by the Church. At least until Gutenberg had the clever idea to print the previously handwritten "indulgences", which meant that the Church could produce more in less time (and cash in, exponentially).

"It's not a museum for good people.."

A very interesting and fitting YouTube video by rap musician Jeff Bethky was recently discussed on the NPR (Yay, NPR!) podcast on Pop Culture.  It's entitled "Why I hate religion, but love Jesus."


Take a moment and have a look (also download all the NPR podcasts now!)...

Amazing.  Even I was touched in some way.


Also notable is that this video (at the time of the writing of this post) has nearly 20 million views.  According to the NPR podcast the video was viewed 2 million times overnight with an additional 4 million views the following day.  It has also spawned over 200 response videos.


Why has this video been so popular?
I like to think that it's because there are lot of (young) christians who agree with Bethky.  Religion is not working for them but they love Jesus and his message (as they see it). I would take this as further proof of what I've discussed in my previous post and response that christianity has changed.


While many might question the sincerity of Gaga and Bieber, as we all did in class, Bethky claims that religion is like "spraying perfume on a casket", that "there's a problem if people only know you're a christian by your facebook".  Religion, to Bethky, is a "man made invention", it's the "infection".  This is no new idea, of course.  The culture wars of Reagan did, as we saw in class, polarize society; since the 80s denouncing religion has been a popular activity for pop culture and its icons.  But Bethky isn't just denouncing religion, he's promoting Jesus, who is "the work of God" and "the cure".  It's a meeting of two formerly separate camps.


As with Gaga's (oh how she dominates discussion!), this is a christianity that accepts flaws and sins.  Akin to her claim that "Jesus is my virtue, and Judas is the demon I cling to", Bethky's christianity is only the love of Jesus and his forgiveness. As he states: "Now that I know Jesus, I boast in my weakness"; there's no need to "hide my sin, 'cause it doesn't depend on me, it depends on him [Jesus]". Perhaps the most appealing part of his declaration is that "salvation is freely mine and forgiveness is my own, not based on my merit, but on Jesus' obedience alone... he took what we all deserve [crucifixion], I guess that's why they call it Grace."


It's as though the new christianity has had the epiphany that humanity is weak. All people are sinners; they are flawed, sexual, and abusive to themselves and others.  Even as "God's enemy and certainly not a fan," God still "looked down and said: 'I want that man.'"  As I've previously argued there's a clear reason for this change.  Aforementioned cultural polarization nurtured the development of a popular culture of sex and drugs and sin, and that popular culture in turn nurtures the growth of a christianity that can accept it.


Of course, being on the frontier of this neo-christianity and fully immersed in Corona's "hypermodernity" it's still very easy to doubt the authenticity of these neo-christian acolytes like Gaga, who appear to be, first and foremost, profiting.  And not missionizing.  Further, it would be negligent not to consider that this neo-christianity is appealing to a younger audience, which study after study has shown to be increasingly narcissistic. This "me" generation scores exponentially higher on the Narcissistic Personality Index than any previous generation.  They like anything uniquely created for them alone, exemplified in L'Oréal's change from a slogan of "Because I'm Worth it" (delivered by a beautifully coiffed Morgan Fairchild) to one of "Because You're Worth it."  The draw to a Jesus who "when he was dangling on that cross he was thinking of you" to a "me" generation is clear.


But that is a discussion for another post.


Truly I don't mean to promote Christianity per se, but it would be (as I've said before) thoughtless to ignore its potential.  And whatever the reason for its appeal, this neo-christianity is hopeful. If "religion says slave, Jesus says son," the real message of Jesus to love one's neighbour shines through.  Moreover, however imperfect we might be, "Grace is water, the church should be an ocean." This new christianity really can be a "a hospital for the broken."

Something nice..

I write this as an aside to the required blog posts, but I just wanted to share the video.


Looking at the MRI images today in class reminded me of this "competition".  It's very sweet.  Enjoy.




Do You Have What it Takes to Win a Love Competition?


(Sorry; turns out I don't know how to embed a video, so a link will have to suffice)

re: Lady Gaga: a good Christian? Or a great Christian?

In response to the post: Lady Gaga: a good Christian? Or a great Christian?

The quality of Gaga’s christianity is possibly a sidenote. What seems more important is that she IS a christian while also a huge pop culture icon.


As I discussed in my latest post (http://smc305christblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/gays-christ-and-pop-culture.html), christianity and pop culture have changed one another. Popular culture now embraces christianity a lot more often; being a christian isn’t the ultra “lame” thing that is used to be. In turn christianity has accepted popular culture. This new christianity we have with Gaga involves sex and nudity (which have long been staples of popular culture - they sell very well). It’s also more human as the Judas quote illustrates; Jesus can be our virtue while we all accept that, as humans, we’re more like Judas.


Johnny Cash fits in well here. He is a former pop culture icon who is, as you quoted, “and artist who is a christian”, exemplifying the separation that existed when he was at his peak.

It seems logical that the more (positive) a presence christianity we find in popular culture, the more (positive) a presence of pop culture we’ll find in christianity.


While she likely refrained from using the term “christian” in favour of “religious” with Larry King to avoid alienating her religious fans who aren’t christian, it also could very well be the case that Gaga is playing a part. She’s a very clever woman, so even if she’s only pretending to be christian, the act itself just as faithfully reflects the new relationship between christianity and popular culture.

Gays, Christ and Pop Culture

This is my first ever blog.  Sure I had an Angelfire webpage as a teen in the mid-90s, like everyone else did, but that wasn't really a blog.  More of an advertisement for oneself.  While in theory this has all become more user friendly, I find using this site a lot more difficult than coding that Angelfire page all those years ago.

Like self-promotion on the internet, the popular culture has really changed.  Currently in North America (at least) Christ, christianity and the morals attached are more dominant than they ever have been, in my lifetime.  Christian groups are louder and wield more power, and they seem to factor in more heavily in governmental decisions.  One need only look to the struggle for gay marriage in America.  Not surprisingly this increased presence is very obviously reflected in the artefacts of popular culture, such as all three of the music videos we have seen to date in class.

One in particular, Bad Romance, illustrates my point very well.  

In class I mentioned, briefly and poorly, the overt gay theme in this video.  Anyone who knows anything about Gaga knows that she fancies herself the new female pop icon for the gay community, and she really is (at least one of the main icons, anyway).  The video is full of shout-outs to the gays; it takes place in "Gaga's bathhouse", the dancers all look like drag queens (also less relevant, but they are amazing and worth mentioning: the Alexander McQueen "horse shoes"). The song itself does as well, with lyrics stating that the "bad romance" is both criminal and associated to disease. But this video and song are also very christian, for all the reasons we covered so thoroughly in class.

But the gay icons didn't always come with Christ attached.

When I was a child in the 80s my uncle gave me his copy of She's So Unusual and I used to spend hours in my basement, playing it until it wouldn't play anymore.  In so far as I have ever noticed, my generation's gay icon (Cyndi Lauper), was never very christian.  Her videos and music never contained the blatant christianity that does Gaga's.  I think 80s pop culture was more focused around cocaine, shoulder pads and new wave.

That's not so say that christianity didn't appear at all in popular culture.  Watch Like a Prayer. Black criminal Jesus?  Sex in a church?  The early 90s were the same; look at the original version of Hurt, or Soundgarden's Jesus Christ Pose.

I think that somewhere in the late 90s God made a huge comeback, at least in North American culture.  So it's not surprising that popular culture flipped from having an absence or criticism to a more prominent promotion of christianity.

As such this course has never been more relevant, as the link between the two is stronger than it's been in a very long time.

But what does this flip mean?  I think that the two (popular culture and christianity) have been altering each other steadily (and of course they have).  Homosexuality really illustrates this change.  

While the christian right in the US is still fighting to oppress us, so many more (young, new) gay men have christian values.  Increasingly they have faith (in God), they attend church, they want traditional christian families. Christianity has also changed; they are numerous gay friendly churches.  Seems that christianity’s positive presence in popular culture is a reflection of a social change in the US, but as a result it’s become more accepting, and more accepted.

So, ultimately it's not surprising that Lady Gaga can successfully unite a christian message in a visually christian video while simultaneously representing the gay community.