Just finished Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. It’s fascinating, important, and covers topics that influence politics far more than most realize.
One almost parenthetically profound point she makes – easy to miss amid everything else – is this: popular media now defines Christianity more than any typical church or even the Bible itself. Best-selling books, podcasts, and programs to which Christians subscribe shape faith more than sermons or scripture.
When Protestants broke from Catholicism, they declared the Bible as their ultimate authority, subordinating the church to it. Catholics warned that since the Bible could be interpreted in so many ways, Protestantism would fracture into thousands of denominations.
(Spoiler alert: they were right.) One credible 2020 estimate suggests there are ~45,000 Christian denominations globally. By some reasoning, that implies members of 44,999 denominations are in for a rude surprise on Judgment Day. Your odds are not great.
So the question remains: Who defines Christianity?
The Pope? Billy Graham? A televangelist? The Council of Nicaea?
What Du Mez’s research suggests is that it is the market itself. The books that sell best and the YouTube channels with the most subscribers now define what “Christianity” means for many believers. And perhaps unsurprisingly, the cultural references of John Wayne are more vivid and emotionally resonant than the lesser-known biblical stories – like Shiphrah and Puah, the Hebrew midwives in Exodus 1 who defied Pharaoh’s order to kill Israelite babies.
Popularity – or more to the point, market success – has become the evidence of things unseen.
What gives religious claims authority today?
Apparently, pop culture references. Or - put more simply - just popularity itself.
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