![]() ![]() Hannah Kirby, the response from megachurch followers was discouraging. Anyone that knows me know that I am the SALES/HOOKUP KING! Look at this amazing coat that I picked up from a second hand store. (Though, Pastor Hannah of New Life Southeast did post a recent fitpic with the caption "Someone did a post about me wearing a Gucci jacket that cost 2300 dollars. NPR reached out to a few pastors featured on the Instagram account but haven't heard back. Like secular celebrities, these pastors have their own stan armies who came for Kirby when he poked at them. And so the Pastors then become willing to "wed their theology to this very aggressively hyper celebrity-driven, hyper youth-culture-obsessed version of popular culture," said Bowler. It's that God is present now, and is relevant to your life today. She says that a central tenet of the theology is that God isn't going to wait around and give you these gifts later. Kate Bowler is a professor of history at Duke University, and is an expert on the prosperity gospel. The suits and ties of Joel Osteen have given way to streetwear and high fashion hype beast looks. "Especially as the '70s rolled around and you saw the rise of what became the prosperity gospel." Which is the idea that if you performed the right kind of faith, and you spoke it out loud, good things would happen to you.Ī post shared by PreachersNSneakers while the idea isn't new, the aesthetics of aspirational preaching have been changed. "At that point in time you started to see many more people performing with a kind of wealth," said Frederick. The aspirational approach to preaching is far from new, but it got a huge boost when sight and sound came together on television, says Marla Frederick, professor of Religion and Culture at Emory University and author of a number of books about televangelism. "Is it to normalize us as regular people? Is it to encourage others to take time to recharge, rest, and reflect? Or, deep down, might we juuuuust enjoy the idea of our followers thinking we've got a pretty dope life?" "Why are we so determined to let the world see into our beautiful lives?" he writes. And Kirby considers what it means that all of this is out there packaged and beautiful on all the socials for us to enviously consume, which, in turn, encourages believers to emulate the lifestyle. As he watched the good-looking people of Elevation Worship on stage in their Yeezy sneakers and designer clothes, he posted on his personal Instagram: "Hey, Elevation Worship, how much are you paying your musicians that they can afford $800 kicks? Let me get on the payroll!" He didn't put much thought to it – "It was just a poorly informed joke for my four hundred followers, delivered with a dose of cynical snark," he writes in the book.Ī post shared by PreachersNSneakers new book expands the central frame of the Instagram account, questioning other aspects of megachurches: the fancy production values, the self-help stylings of the sermons, the preachers posting pics of themselves on beautiful vacations rubbing shoulders with the Kanyes and Beibers of the world. He was on his couch one Sunday, watching worship songs on YouTube (he had a DJ gig the night before and slept through church). Kirby is a 31-year-old sneakerhead and Christian. So he went public with his identity in The Washington Post last month, no longer just a guy talking trash anonymously online. ![]() ![]() "I just didn't see myself effectively able to continue to be in the conversation without being fully out in public," he said in an interview. But as the project expanded – to a podcast and now to a new book called PreachersNSneakers: Authenticity in an Age of For-Profit Faith and (Wannabe) Celebrities – Kirby found the anonymity stifling. There's also the small detail that his wife works at a megachurch in Dallas. ![]() The megachurch culture he's critiquing is a small but loud and passionate faction of American Christianity at large. Kirby was anonymous at first for a few reasons. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |