Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll: Celebrity Part Two
Even though in my last post I said I would make “one last” comment about The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, I received a few replies to the post, and I wanted to respond to them (at least indirectly). As an aside, this blog was started several months ago for reasons not worth mentioning now, but it has turned into a place for me to bake my half-baked ideas a little bit more. And that baking process is helped by feedback — so don’t be shy about giving it, if you want.
As a Kuyperian, I think I’m contractually obligated to be allergic to schemes of centralization. I’m a pluralist. I believe most social problems are best solved by multiple institutions collaborating together. I believe in the importance of a public square full of vigorous debate. And even though I appreciate the need for a strong national community in a post-1930’s world, I also believe in the necessity of strong, local communities for the flourishing of human beings.
It is these presuppositions that make me suspicious of celebrity culture and form the basis of the following brief reflections.
Certainly, we can and should discriminate between good and bad celebrities, people worth honoring and people who are honored for bad reasons. However, to leave the conversation there misses the danger of the power of celebrity. It’s akin to focusing on parental advisory ratings for movie and TV while ignoring the power of the media themselves. In other words, celebrity itself (whether good or bad) needs to be interrogated as a form and medium.
For example, celebrity tends to give authority to a particular celebrity in areas beyond their expertise. We praise them for one thing, and then we listen to them on other matters when we probably shouldn’t. A common form of this is the Hollywood actor who uses her platform to opine about politics. It also happens when a reality TV star convinces almost half the country he is qualified to occupy the most powerful governmental position in the world. However, you also see it in more subtle ways. Pastors who rightly see the Bible as governing all of life can be tempted to speak on subjects for which they have no training. An urban pastor may give his views on how cities should function, but where is your degree in urban studies or work experience in the mayor’s office? Now imagine you’re a celebrity urban pastor with a huge platform: the temptation for that pastor to step outside their lane and for us to heed their words becomes ever stronger.
Celebrity culture also tends to diminish the role of institutions. My point about Russell Moore was not to call into question the quality of his writing and commentary. Indeed, I follow him because his writing and commentary are of high quality, such that I don’t care about his institutional setting. However, institutions play an important role in shaping, enlivening, and restraining individual actors. As Yuval Levin argues in A Time To Build, we now live in a media and political environment that rewards the New York Times reporter who wants to build their personal brand, instead of submitting to the restraints and guardrails the newspaper requires of its reporters. We are naturally drawn to people, not to institutions, and that will never change. Still, as Mike Horton has long said, we need to care less about ministers and more about the ministry. It is, after all, the ministry that will live on long after any particular minister is gone. I think this can be extended to all institutions and the people who inhabit them.
Finally, celebrity culture tends to diminish the ordinary. What do churches need? What do our politics need? What do schools need? When speaking once about celebrity culture in the church, Carl Trueman noted that as a seminary professor, most aspiring pastors wanted to be the next Tim Keller. Of course, that’s an unrealistic expectation for anyone to have. The church doesn’t need a bunch of superstar pastors. It needs many, many good pastors. Schools don’t need superstar teachers. They need many, many good teachers. American politics doesn’t need celebrity politicians. It needs many, many good politicians who will work in ordinary callings, even local ones.
On this last point, Matt Glassman (a political scientist at Georgetown) recently wrote that he would be taking a break from Twitter during Lent. He enjoys Twitter, and he learns quite a bit from those he follows on the platform. However, he noted that (among other things) it tends to nationalize politics. The more time we spend on Twitter, the further removed we get from actual politics, and the further removed we get from local, ordinary affairs. Celebrity culture (as sometimes mediated through Twitter!) encourages the national and the glamorous and discourages the local and the ordinary.
However, none of this is meant to be absolute. In a recent interview with Mere Fidelity, Tim Keller talked about his experience on Twitter. His wife asked him why he spends time on that crazy platform. Indeed, he noted the limits of it, the propensity for misinterpretation and unnecessary rancor. What, then, keeps him on the platform? It’s the fact that he has 500,000 followers. As a celebrity, he simply can’t walk away from the opportunity to spread a good word to vast numbers of people.
In the end, who am I to ask Tim Keller or Billy Graham to lay down their celebrity status and give up their influence for good? Of course, I’m in no place to do so. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t things about celebrity and celebrity culture worth worrying about.
