aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Saturday, June 18, 2005
What would Jesus ride?
In The Future of Freedom, there’s a compelling and well argued chapter entitled “The Death of Authority.” In it, Fareed Zakaria sees a populist evangelicalism that coddles its flock. “People are praised, comforted, consoled, but never condemned,” he writes.
Zakaria follows the evolution of Billy Graham from a “fiery preacher of perdition to a benign father figure” that coincides with his rising popularity and move to radio and television evangelizing, the development of Jerry Falwell’s megachurches modeled on shopping centers to “attract the massed to the gospel,” and Bill and Tammy Fay Bakker’s “Christianity should be fun” hedonism, to illustrate the populist democratization and rising politicization of evangelicalism:
What remains of the old Protestant fundamentalism is politics: abortion, gays, evolution. These issues are what binds the vast congregation together. But even here things have changed as Americans have become more tolerant of many of these social taboos. Today many fundamentalist churches take nominally tough positions on, say, homosexuality but increasingly do little else for fear of offending the average believer, whom one scholar calls “the unwashed Harry.” All it really takes to be a fundamentalist these days is to watch the TV shows, go tothe theme parks, buy Christian rock, and vote Republican.
A story from the Faith and Values section of the AJC today (which also features an interview with Southern Baptist Convention president Bobby Welch in which he calls Jim Wallis an “ignoramus who is wedded to socialist-mandated policies") asks, What would Jesus ride?
It’s hard to be still at Atlanta Fest, a high-spirited, fist-pumping Christian youth festival that combines roller coasters, rock ‘n’ roll and more than 20,000 young people for three sweltering days every summer at Six Flags Over Georgia. The festival, in its 19th year and its 13th at Six Flags, started Thursday and ends today. It draws about half its attendees from Georgia, the other half from about 12 states, mostly in the Southeast.
One of the few places of relative tranquillity was the Prayer Labyrinth, a covered picnic area in the shadow of the Scream Machine..."The irony is to have this beautiful place in all the chaos of the theme park,” said Nancy Thompson, Atlanta Fest’s director of Christian education. “It’s all very focused on the Word of God, and the responses of the kids overwhelm you.”
[...]
Not all the Christian teens go to the labyrinth; some have a more freewheeling approach to a three-day bash at an amusement park that’s coupled with marathon evening concerts with their favorite Christian rock bands, including Audio Adrenaline and Third Day.
“Everybody gets so distracted with the rides and everything,” said Kayla Chambers, a freshman at Rockmart High School in Rockmart.
“Some people are just here for the girls in bikinis,” added her friend Anna Burnette.
Indeed they are.
UPDATE: Another example, today in the NYTimes:
Brian Racer is pastor to Laura and Dave Clark and a local opinion shaper on social issues. He is a tall, rangy 43-year-old man with a big mustache and a conversational style that is casual but enormously self-confident. Racer has a vigorous Christianity-in-society approach, which is illustrated by a recent move he made. When Mel Gibson’s movie ‘’The Passion of the Christ’’ came out in February 2004, he, like many ministers around the country, booked a whole theater in the local multiplex to accommodate the members of his church. But the venue itself—comfortable seats, good acoustics, convenient location—clicked for him. He worked out a rental arrangement with the manager of the theater. So now the Clarks and their fellow congregants worship at the Open Door Bible Church in Theater 24 in the Muvico multiplex at the Arundel Mills Mall. ‘’The teens think it’s pretty cool,’’ he said. ‘’After service they can go have lunch at the food court, then come back to the theater and see a movie.’’
