Deconstructing the (Christian?) Subculture

Written by Bob Thune

I thought the Christian subculture was bad from the inside… but when an outsider hates all the same things I do, what does that mean? How did we get so shallow?

I received an email today that contained a feature article from the September 2002 issue of GQ. I’ve been the victim of enough email hoaxes and urban legends to be pretty wary of this stuff. But I checked it out, and I think this one’s legit. The author is indeed a freelance writer who writes for GQ. I even found the whole article posted on a website (see link below). Reading it made me want to laugh, cry, and pull out my hair. Actually, it made me want to sit down with Walter Kirn (the author) and have a beer. He seems like one of those types that could be close to the kingdom of God… if it wasn’t for the Christian subculture.

His experiment was to immerse himself for 7 days into the evangelical world: Christian music, Christian TV, Christian books, Christian nutrition programs, Christian prayer guides. His assessment is insightful – or maybe I should say incisive. He has cut to the heart of what makes thinking, worshipping, historically-informed Christians want to puke their guts out.

Kirn has coined a clever phrase to describe Christian pop culture: “A self-contained parallel universe.” He calls it “the Ark” – as in Noah’s ark. The culture has gone to hell in a hand-basket, so the Christians have jumped ship into the safe haven of their own sanctified subculture. “If a person is going to waste his life cranking the stereo, clicking the remote, reading paperback pulp and chasing diet fads, he may as well save his soul while he's at it. Holy living no longer requires self-denial.” To Kirn, as to me, something about this seems cheap.

Am I the only Christian who hates the Left Behind series? Thank God for pagans who say it like it is. “What I don't understand about these Left Behind books is how there can be so f--ing many of them, given that their subject is Armageddon. How long can a writer drag out the Second Coming? Even a trilogy would be a stretch, but ten novels going on eleven, all huge sellers, with no final volume in sight? I smell a con.”

If you’re nodding your head so far, you’re probably one of the few who, like me, wonders how we ever got here. I think this nonbeliever has nailed the core issue. “The problem is lack of faith. Ark culture is a bad Xerox of the mainstream, not a truly distinctive or separate achievement. Without the courage to lead, it numbly follows, picking up the major media's scraps and gluing them back together with a cross on top.”

Why is it that we’re not saying this to ourselves? Are we too lazy, or too timid, or too numb? If someone claims to have a “Spirit-led” idea, does that mean it’s beyond critique in the evangelical world? Do we not have the guts to hurt some people’s feelings? The bottom line is that much of what’s sold in Christian bookstores and promoted in Christian media is just JUNK. It’s not innovative or creative or artistic. It in no way reflects the infinite glory and creativity and excellence of the God we claim to know and worship. It’s scraps of glued-together pop culture with a cross on top.

Where are the Christian artists and thinkers and writers and teachers who will achieve true excellence instead of ripping off pop culture? I’ll sign on with them. As far as I’m concerned, the Ark is too full of holes. To be honest: I hope it sinks. The God I serve deserves better.

Read Walter Kirn's article here.)

Comments

[Simon]

Bob, I am off the ark with you! A friend of a friend also coined a new term, "ministry parasite." These are the churches & ministries that take the recent ministry philosophy or experience, milk it for all it's worth, and then go find something new. This is going on right now at a church we attend. We think it is pretty cheap.

The cheap stuff is what bothers me the most. You can tell when something was paid for at high cost and most of the stuff we are seeing now is not. One of the reasons for that is burn out, another is driveness, another is business. Whatever the reason, we have been so tied up and distracted that we don't even ask the question anymore. A mentor once asked me to live a life of discontentment. Something that was joyful and thankful for all that God had given, willing to wait, but always asking and desiring God to move. I have found that no one does this. Everyone is content with anything and everything passed to them by Christian culture... why?

[Wes Wilmer]

Bob,
This is what makes me cringe sometimes to say that I'm a Christian. What a bunch of crap. An interesting book along these lines is Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory by Randall Balmer. He also has a video series that aired on PBS. I'm glad that I'm not the only one that thinks this way. May God use the Church to add substance to and define culture instead of building an "Ark."

[DT]

OK, so we're all ready to sink the "Ark." Everyone I gave the GQ article to will be glad to lend a hand. In fact, I've not found anyone to defend the Ark. Granted my circle of friends is pretty small, but someone out there must be promoting the Ark to keep it afloat. Who are these people? I realize none of them go to our churches, but then where are they?

Sure, my kids have every Veggie Tales video and I buy books at a bookstore that also offers ties with verses on them, but I'm not one of them am I?

I'd like to hear from one of you smart guys your ideas on how a pastor or a church would go about unplugging from this version of Christianity and leading a move to original, authentic, excellent expressions of the faith, whether in art, music, writing, or preaching.

[Jeff Dodge]

Bob,

Great piece on the GQ article. By the way, did you see my picture in that issue? Yeah, well, anyway...

I have to tell you that I am fully on board with you on your disdain for the Christian subculture. I am embarrassed by the way we have taken "kitsch" to a whole new level.

But the article itself smells funny to me. Though Kirk presents himself as a transient visitor into the "parallel universe of American Christian pop culture," I have a hard time buying it. Heck, the guy knows more about the "ark" than I do -- and I'm one of the captains!

Now I know that Kirk is speaking somewhat allegorically about his journey on the ark (I hope he doesn't expect us to believe that he stumbled onto all of this mass of details in just "seven strange days."). In fact, his level of intimate understanding of the "ark" leads me to believe that he has been on that boat for some time. It just seems disingenuous,

Regardless -- I wish like crazy that Kirn was wrong. I wish I could dismiss his evaluations such as "half-assed, so thin, so weak" and the real kicker, "a bad Xerox of the mainstream." And then the final blow, "without the courage to lead, it numbly follows, picking up the major media's scraps and gluing them back together with a cross on top." Ouch. It leaves me screaming, "Why didn't I write that?!?"

Maybe I'm too simplistic, but it seems that God's church should quit chasing the "scraps" and offer instead the one pure thing that we possess -- "Jesus Christ and Him crucified."

I think our artists and journalists and jocks and mathematicians and entrepreneurs should "adorn the teachings of Christ" with their exquisite gifts. But above all, that every ethnos on earth would see Jesus Christ -- and not have to find Him under a mountain of...kitsch.

By the way, you can now buy Walter Kirn's novel, "Up in the Air" for $1.98. This leaky ark of ours had better figure out a way to do better than that!

[DT]

And on it goes ... http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/religion/2634392

[Allie]

I completely disagree. I don't think that Christians have a sub culture. There are just those of us who don't feel like watching mainstrean crap and listening to songs mostly about sex.
If Christians acted how they should, and didn't subject themselves to the junk that is out there, we would have to live in a little box with nothing to do. What's the diffrence in someone feeling moved to write a song about love, and someone writing a song about their Savior? There is nothing wrong with Christians expressing themselves through music and books and etc.

[B]

I completely agree with the article, I work for a christian book store and I see a lot of this junk out there, lame excuses for trying to fit into the culture and groups trying to sound like the counterpart. I'm sorry to disagree with some of the readers who do not agree with me but that's is the problem. I DON'T WANT ANYBODY AGREEING WITH ME. I don't want to live in this little bubble. I know how much this hurts me and I bet it does hurt God.

[d white]

Stop lying already-we all know that you subscribe to GQ. You don't have to blog in such a cover up way. You are right on, if the church has the grace and truth then we should be leading the culture and not adapting to it. Does that mean that I have to get rid of my 1985 Lord's Gym shirt?

[John Boda]

Hey, great article! I am in total agreement and lived over twenty years inside the Christian sub-cultural bubble, which I liken to The Matrix. It took a tornado of God's grace to get me out, and grace for every second of every day to keep me straight now.
I have similar writings at my site, please visit.
It's all about heaven in the real world!
Thanks.

[Nathaniel]

Bob, both your article and Kim's were very good and took a truly crucial look at this crisis within Christianity. Trying to attract people to a Christian message is one thing, but a "Jesus loves you a latte" Christian coffee mug is quite another. If our culture thievery stopped there, it still wouldn't be that bad. After all, even the Romans stole their culture from the Greeks, and poorly at that, but they ruled the world for hundreds of years. Unfortunatly have now raised the copied culture to a whole new level.
Prior to this brave new world, Christianity was known as a religion which would stand and deliver. We would speak what was needed and trusted in God to change things. Yeah, we were not always perfect (see Pope Urban the 8th, the Crusades, most of American History), but as individuals, Christianity stayed strong. If the leadership of the day was poor, we always had great teachers of the past to look back upon and learn from. Todays Christian culture no longer has that. We have become so dependant upon this "ark" that we cannot look back in our time because "they didn't have our problems back then". We say that and wonder why we are stuck with a weak and ineffective faith. People regard C.S. Lewis and A.W. Tozer as true classics nowadays. To be sure, they were good men, but whatever happened to the real classics?
Recently, for a literature class, I had to read 15 Christian classics and write about all of them. That was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. Yes, John Eldredge does have some good things to say, but he has never kept me up until 4 in the morning wondering about God in the role of abandonment like John of the Cross or St. Francis De Sales. John Piper says that the most important person in his life outside of God has been Jonathan Edwards. C.S. Lewis calls the type of thinking that the church uses now "chronological snobbey", or modernity. New ideas are not inherantly better than old ones. Yes, some are better and some are worse. Unfortunatly, the ideas in older books do not already come digested and regurgiated for our now weak and unused critial minds.
We need to actually start thinking again and take this ark back to the dying lands that need what we can help them find.

[Joe P]

Read "The Vanishing Word" by Hunt. Describes how our culture has dumbed, no, stupided down.. 100 years ago secular culture had more depth than the Christian Ark spoken of here. We no longer need the spoken or written word, including the Word. We have our media entertainment with a (I'm ashamed to use the phrase) "Christian Emphasis". Anyone have an idea how to get off the ark?

[Nick]

Thank you!!!!!

this subculture shit called "christianity" has GOT TO BE BROKEN, DESTROYED, AND BURNED DOWN. i want to serve God, i want to follow christ, but im ashamed to call myself a christian, simply because the associations revolving around selfish seperate bastards in the "Ark" turns the nonbelievers off in an instant. what happened to love?

obviously someone decided it want worth it.
well.
it is.

i love you.

lets kill the christian subculture.
you and me.

[Johnny Lanson]

Good shit. I agree.

-Johnny Lanson