'If your crap is Christian, I'll eat it' - a rant

[Burris]

I think most of us have noticed a tendency among the fundies we watch to spend their money principally with each other, supporting only a small number of 'theologically correct' ventures within a fairly static and exclusive micro-economy. This micro-economy includes parachurch organizations such as Vision Forum, Christian media outlets, and Christian-run businesses (home-based and otherwise).

While I think people should be able to spend their own money however they wish, purchasing whatever goods and services best suit their preferences, I can't help but notice just how often they're willing to put up with absolute crap merely because it's allegedly produced by another Christian.

Whether it's the World's Worst Books or the much-loved critical flop, Courageous, it doesn't matter: They'll drink even the worst dreck imaginable, and proclaim it as the sweetest ambrosia, if the central message is correct. They demand absolutely nothing of their art. Not subtly. Not depth. Not anything.

Christian marketers can certainly afford to produce technically competent projects* – well-written, well-acted, well-directed movies; decent books with good copy-editing; and pretty much anything else the mainstream media does.

They generally don't exercise the necessary effort, however, simply because they don't have to: The audience demands nothing better, and so Christian publishers of all sizes needn't trouble their bottom-line by working on quality control.

Take June Fuentes' latest “effort,†for example: The ad-copy for it is rife with grammatical errors, and yet people are expected to part with actual money for virtual crap. Then there's Vision Forum, which charges money for public domain works they've regurgitated as a reprint without editing of any kind.

Big-box efforts such as Fireproof and the Left Behind series aren't much better. They're just low-rent rip-offs of themes that appear in the secular media.

So when I see fundies such as Hallee the Homemaker congratulating themselves for purging 'sinful media' from their lives, only to replace it with the sub-standard visual tchochkes such as Courageous (which Hallee has seen twice now), I can't help but feel a sense of contempt. Utter contempt.

On October 15, Hallee posted an excerpt from yet another shit-tastic bit of fuckery called Lies Women Believe – a book written by Nancy Leigh DeMoss, an unmarried, crop-headed hypocrite who owns and manages a multi-million dollar publishing and conference company while telling other women that God wants them to stay home and make baybeez.

It takes only until the second paragraph of her post before Hallee adopts the standard fundie claim: 'People persecute us because we don't watch popular shows/read popular books/listen to popular media.'

Observe:

No one really understood why we did it, and often looked at us oddly because of it. What? No Glee!? No Criminal Minds? No Forrest Gump? No No Strings Attached? We got lots of weird looks and uncomfortable silences about it.

Yeah, sure. I doubt those 'uncomfortable silences' had anything to do with having to endure the ravings of a glassy-eyed zealot who hates cheap, tawdry television even while giddily proclaiming that, “...it would be nice if they made [Courageous] equired viewing for all potential fathers.â€

I can understand wanting to confine one's self to wholesome entertainment, but I can't understand why modern Christians are content to accept sub-standard offerings merely because these were made by other Christians.

(How much bank do you suppose VF is making off Elsie Dinsmore? That series may be one of the worst bags of syphilitic vomit ever inflicted on the English-speaking world, and yet homeschoolers are snapping it up as if it were written by the Bard himself.)

Anyway, back to Hallee:

But we had a very specific reason for [cutting out 'unseemly' entertainment].

We believe that the constant exposure to sin in the films, books, television, magazines, etc., had desensitized us to sin.

Some of you won't be surprised to learn I do most of my heavy thinking and reading while in the john. Seriously. Everyone has a sacred space, or should, and mine is sitting on the toilet. I read tomes on theology there. I read the Bible there. And last night I was rereading a book called Seeking the Sacred there.

I had come to the chapter by Stephen Lewis where he sketched out the staggering dimensions of the AIDS plague in Africa and other developing regions. He also discussed how so many countries, including Canada and the United States, had dropped the ball when it came to meeting promised commitments to those beleaguered areas – and this was before the economic collapse.

Orphans – a whole generation of them – are raising their younger brothers and sisters because their parents died of AIDS.

Guess how much it cost to keep one person – one parent; one mother or one father – alive for a year with the AIDS cocktail in 2005: $139 (78). That's less than $12 a month to ensure one set of children can go longer without having to face the world as orphans.

And yet I don't hear a lot about that in the news – not as much as such a tragedy would justify. And guess where I never hear about it? From fundies!

They are so desensitized to the suffering of their fellow human beings that they disregard it in favor of obsessing over venial sins such as lust. They stop watching popular media for fear of being corrupted, and yet they contribute to their own damnation in a thousand little ways every single day when they blatantly ignore the cries of widows and orphans both in their midst and abroad.

I don't know that Hallee herself is guilty of this ignorance, and yet I see a lot more from her about petty shit like swearing and sex on TV than I do about the excesses of rogue governments or about the widening income gap in the developed world.

For example...

The more time that goes by observing our self proclaimed fast from sin in the entertainment we consume, the more shockingly aware of it we become. It is horribly offensive to us now to see some advertisements on billboards or in magazines we might pick up in waiting rooms, to see the themes of most movies and television shows, to see the kinds of books that are on the bookshelves at the store.

Hallee and her husband aren't merely sensitized to sin now; they're consumed with it far more than they would be if they merely accepted it as part of the human condition and contented themselves specifically with trying to make the world a better place.

She continues...

We also notice, daily, just how very deeply secular culture has penetrated the Christian culture. As recently as 50 years ago it was obtusely common to overhear and immediately comprehend references to scriptural icons in common parlance. Our parents related to each other in language by referring to the Bible, or the classics, or non-fictional people. Today, when someone says, “You’re acting like Peter,†he likely means Peter Griffin of the Family Guy instead of the Apostle who denied Christ three times and went on to be the Rock upon which the Church was built.

And now we're getting to the reason for my rant.

Hallee has things ass-backwards, here. While I think a strong argument can be made that secular ideas – e.g., unrestrained capitalism and naked greed (as demonstrated through the Prosperity Gospel in particular) – have profaned Christian culture, the example Hallee provides isn't proof of it. It simply shows that secular culture has moved away from the adoption or even the basic recognition of religious language and stories.

The entire Christian culture is being polluted by something far worse than mere secularism: it's being crippled and stomped to death, utterly, by a mixture of anemic, shitty media like the crap mentioned above and pessimistic suspicions of anyone who isn't part of the in-crowd.

The Calvinistas at NCFIC and VF are merely at the extreme end on a long continuum of insular Christian groups that favor even the worst offerings of their own media over better stuff produced by someone else.

Our intentional abstinence from sin in the media has removed sin from the forefront of our minds and allowed us to focus on our walk with Christ.

Ah yes – Christ! The guy who fed people who didn't deserve it and healed the sick that didn't deserve it and died for a world that didn't deserve it.

“What are you doing to follow that guy?!â€

“Abstaining from popular media. Duh! The best measure of a Christian is obviously in what he doesn't do.â€

Of DeMoss' words on this subject, Hallee writes, “...I feel like reading it every single day, over and over again, until the words are impressed in my memory.â€

***FACEPALM!***

* It's difficult to accurately track sales data across multiple vendors, but Christian publishing is big businesses. From a 2007 article in Christianity Today:

Publishers release good news: Zondervan, for example, will mention that it's sold 250,000 copies of its audio Bible Experience, 250,000 copies of Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis, and 30 million copies of The Purpose-Driven Life. Thomas Nelson touts its 19 New York Times bestsellers and the fact that 49 of its books sold at least 100,000 copies last year, including Blue Like Jazz, which is now approaching a million sales overall. But neither publisher releases comprehensive sales data.

"There is no objective way to track sales data in the book publishing industry," Lynn Garrett, religion editor of Publishers Weekly, told CT. "The only way you can get sales data is from publishers themselves—so you kind of have to believe what they tell you."

In recent years, Christian publishing has enjoyed a string of Godzilla-sized hits—starting with the Left Behind series (with sales of more than 60 million copies), followed by The Prayer of Jabez (more than 9 million sold), and then The Purpose-Driven Life. While these books have been a boon to publishers and retailers, they skew the market, says Garrett.

[HijabiLady]

Very well written post! I am still stuck on the fact that a fundie think Forrest Gump is bad. I love that movie, and it has a wonderful message.

[emmiedahl]

Thanks for the rant. No.really. I have had the same thought. Why does Christian=better? wtf?

My step-grandmother recently fell and broke her hip while on vacation. She had to be put in a rehab facility in the area until she was well enough to travel home. They were substandard to say the least. When my mother showed up in town and started throwing tantrums to licensing, someone told her that the facility is run by 'good Christian people'. So that makes it okay that they are charging Medicare for rehab when there is not a single person trained in rehabilitating in the facility. We moved Grandma home early using an expensive medical transport, but that one stuck in Mom's craw in a serious way.

Apparently Jews just don't realize how important it is to be Christian.

[manatees]

Love it. My best friend has ME/CFS and also some mental health issues (anxiety mostly). She and her fiance are evangelical Christians (though not fundies) and though they planned not to have sex before marriage, they ended up doing so. My friend ended up having a huge breakdown due to the guilt and nearly ended up killing herself. Because she was living with him at the time (they were studying in the same town, it was out of convenience), he called his mum out as her mother lives 5 hours away. The fact that they had sex was obviously 1000x more concerning than her nearly killing herself. Suffice to say, my ability to be civil to her MIL at their wedding next month will be pretty compromised >_>

[DamnPrecious]

They are so desensitized to the suffering of their fellow human beings that they disregard it in favor of obsessing over venial sins such as lust. They stop watching popular media for fear of being corrupted, and yet they contribute to their own damnation in a thousand little ways every single day when they blatantly ignore the cries of widows and orphans both in their midst and abroad.

This is what pisses me off the most about fundies.

[thetabmeister]

I don't automatically watch stuff labeled "Christian"--there's a reason for that, I was raised IFBx and watched every "Feature Films for Families" movie there was, plus all the BJU ones which I HATED! (anyone ever seen "The Printing"?) In fact, I think I run the opposite way. I've been given "The Prayer of Jabez," "Purpose Driven Life," and recommended to watch "The Passion of the Christ" and "Fireproof" and "Facing the Giants," I think. Never seen any of it.

I am a Christian, and I watch R-rated movies, if they're done well. :o

Anyway, all that to say that I may not be the most qualified to offer the following opinion on why Christian entertainment is so huge, but based on my brush with it growing up in the 90s, here are the two main impressions I have received regarding it:

1. It exists as a form of evangelizing/proselytizing

2. It exists to make money

I have seen churches with bookstores, I used to live at a ministry that was a Christian summer camp for 10 weeks and made money the rest of the year by selling CDs and piano music that they composed regularly, also selling books that the big names wrote.

The brand of fundieism I'm seeing nowadays is different than what I knew as a kid in the 90s. Of course, I only saw a small slice of the world anyway being raised in the deep south for most of it, around likeminded people. But nowadays it seems the main goal of Christian entertainment is so that the Christians will have something to feast their holy eyes on since everything else is wrong. And from what I saw of folks 15 years ago, it wasn't like that. We watched Christian movies when our parents or our church was trying to get a lot of people "saved," or because we knew the person/company that produced it and were trying to show our "support" (read: proselytizing and money making). So yea, it's a whole new dynamic to see Christian media stepping up as the only approved outlet for Christians to entertain themselves. What a cash cow, if you played it right. :whistle:

[manatees]

The money making thing seems like another branch of 'socialism = EVIL' a lot of fundie churches spout (see also In A Shoe).

[Lostie]

I have seen churches with bookstores, I used to live at a ministry that was a Christian summer camp for 10 weeks and made money the rest of the year by selling CDs and piano music that they composed regularly, also selling books that the big names wrote.

We have a christian bookstore (that, from what I've seen in the window, has books, movies, music, etc) and a Christian music store (I've never gotten close enough to that one to know if it's just music or not). Sometimes I wish other religions had stores like that for their followers and people interested in learning more. I would be completely into walking around downtown and seeing a Wiccan bookstore, Muslim/Islamic bookstore, Jewish bookstore, Mormon bookstore, etc.

Although perhaps that would be a bad idea for my student bank account :P .

On the subject though, I do think higher standards would be better. I'd like to think that with time the standards will improve, but it definitely won't if people keep eating it up the way they seem to be right now.

[emmiedahl]

Look around. In my town, we have a pagan book store, an LDS store and a Messianic Jewish book store. That's in a town of about 100K, and those are just the ones I personally know about.

[kayray]

You can have a couple of the Mormon bookstores we have here in a city of less than 85,000 (with very, very strong Mormon, Hutterite and Mennonite populations in & surrounding). We also have a few other Mormon-specific stores, like "preparing for the end of the world with food storage" stores. There is even an LDS "health supplements" store. No idea how it is different than any other health supplement store though.

There are a couple Christian bookstores. For everything else, you need to hit the library which has a great assortment though of anything not with its own bookstore!

Where I used to live (larger city), we had all the above bookstores (or significant bookstore sections within stores that were "Wiccan"-related, etc), and much more. You could find a bookstore for the Flying Spaghetti Monster if you looked for it. It was a lot more liberal with a lot more variety than where I live now, which is something I miss.

[AnnieC 305]

Another interesting aspect of this is a question of how we transmit our culture.

Think about it, if you watch nothing but Christian movies, read Christian books, consume Christian news, go to only Christian websites, listen to Christian music on a Christian radio station, only watch Christian TV channels on a Christian cable system, including Christian news, shop only at Christian stores, see only Christian professional and only spend time with fellow Christians, are you even part of the same culture as the rest of us?

Add in the latent hostility they show toward the secular culture and their overt militant posturing and you have to start sensing a certain waft of the former Yugoslavia at times.

This is also why it's so important to vote, people.

[Dinorah]

It strikes me as well how much the fundie culture seems intertwined with business ventures. A lot of fundie websites - Vision Forum, Feelin Feminine, Sowers of Hope- are big selling machines, what with the advice books and various modesty parapharnalia.

[Trynn]

Even as a kid I was frustrated over the lack of well written christian books. As an adult, I am even more frustrated over the lack of well written christian books that aren't romance novels. I have nothing against people who wish to read such things but they are not my cup of tea.

About Vision Forum. I'm part of a community of doll collectors, and Vision Forum dolls came up. I can't remember if people on the forum had actually bought the dolls, or whether they could tell from the pictures that the quality of the dolls is....well, crappy. But yet they charge about as much as American Girl. Even some of the people who would have bought the dolls anyway looked at some of the beliefs of Vision Forum and they ran far far away in the other direction.

[alsio]

It is pretty clever marketing.

First you get them to intentionally starve themselves of most entertainment because of SIN11!!1 and then you can sell them the cheapest, boring shit there is and they will still gobble it up gratefully,

because... they are that starved for entertainment.

The sheep fleece themselve.

[Guest Anonymous]

It is pretty clever marketing.

First you get them to intentionally starve themselves of most entertainment because of SIN11!!1 and then you can sell them the cheapest, boring shit there is and they will still gobble it up gratefully,

because... they are that starved for entertainment.

The sheep fleece themselve.

This, squared.

[Burris]

Another interesting aspect of this is a question of how we transmit our culture.

Think about it, if you watch nothing but Christian movies, read Christian books, consume Christian news, go to only Christian websites, listen to Christian music on a Christian radio station, only watch Christian TV channels on a Christian cable system, including Christian news, shop only at Christian stores, see only Christian professional and only spend time with fellow Christians, are you even part of the same culture as the rest of us?

Add in the latent hostility they show toward the secular culture and their overt militant posturing and you have to start sensing a certain waft of the former Yugoslavia at times.

I don't see anything wrong with criticizing the dominant culture or/and stepping out of it and into some sort of counter-culture. And while I don't think insularity is a good thing, I also don't see it as the kiss of death.

A lack of strong checks and balances and of accountability within a counter-culture – now that is the kiss of death.

Not only does a lack of accountability allow corrupt or under-qualified people to reach positions of leadership, and abuse those positions, but it also permits utter crap to be passed off as 'quality entertainment.' These two items – unqualified or corrupt leaders and a low bar for things permitted to inform the entire culture – are both symptoms of the same disease.

Our dominant culture suffers from this illness, but most people within it don't delude themselves otherwise. The Christian culture also suffers from it, but is doubly afflicted by an unwillingness to admit and remedy the situation. If the Christian culture is called to a higher standard, as so many of its leaders claim, then where is the evidence of it either in the caliber of leaders or in the quality of products?

[Marian the Librarian]

Great post, Burris!

There was another thread recently re: the micro-economics of fundie-dom (can't remember which, and am feeling too flu-ish to dig it up) where I compared VF and its ilk to multi-level marketing businesses, the most infamous being Amway. They're closed systems, and eventually collapse in on themselves. If our new member Knight is to be believed, Dougie is skating a lot closer to the economic edge that he'd like to let on.

One of the perks of my job in public library-land is that I get an interesting perspective on this phenomenon. Despite our reputation for evil, a fair number of fundie homeschoolers use public libraries. A good public library (so the saying goes) should have something to offend everyone - and, in fact, mine offends me, as the Botkins' execrable books and DVDs are available there. But we also own plenty of science books that back Darwin's theory to the hilt, and plenty of sex education books that take a "knowledge is power" approach, and any number of recent titles that take the Dominionists to task.

But the most important thing we offer is choice, which is what's sadly lacking in the lives of the kids being raised in homes like Hallee's. And that right to choose is what we get to defend every time someone like Hallee kicks up a fuss and insists that "X" book or magazine or DVD be purged from the library's collection. It happens, not frequently, but regularly enough - and I just love a good intellectual freedom fight!

[julie paradox]

"obtusely common"?

- I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Also, snigger.

[Kishiria]

I was waiting for an opportunity to rant along these lines, so thank you, Burris.

When I was in high school, a friend of mine two years ahead of me was "born again" in college. Fast forward decades later and she has been married for 20+ years to "Dick". Dick has a Facebook, which I friended hoping to find out how my friend from high school is doing. (She looks great.) However, Dick posts a lot about how important it is to go to Christian movies. He urged people to take their non-believing friends to go to the Christian film festival for "great movies with a great message."

Okay, I've seen some Christian films and usually they're utter crap. I haven't seen "Fireproof" or "Courageous" but I have seen a number of shorts and "Left Behind". I found a good essay by a Christian lamenting that Christian films are normally horrible and sent it to Dick, asking for his thoughts.

Dick told me that "Soul Surfer", the latest he'd seen of this genre, was a wonderful movie and so good to see in this wicked, sinful world.

(I'm pagan, so I believe that the world is not wicked or sinful, but beautiful despite the fucked-up things that nonetheless happen.)

He lists "Fireproof" as being one of his favourite movies.

What is WRONG with these people?

[deelaem]

"obtusely common"?

- I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Also, snigger.

LOL - Good one!

I reject most of mainstream media and entertainment and I'm a total non-theist. That shit'll rot your brain. However, if your moral ground is so shaky that a mere glance of Jersey Shore makes you want to flaunt your fake-baked body to one and all, you've got much bigger problems.

Morality should be internally driven, not external.

[jenny_islander]

We have a christian bookstore (that, from what I've seen in the window, has books, movies, music, etc) and a Christian music store (I've never gotten close enough to that one to know if it's just music or not). Sometimes I wish other religions had stores like that for their followers and people interested in learning more. I would be completely into walking around downtown and seeing a Wiccan bookstore, Muslim/Islamic bookstore, Jewish bookstore, Mormon bookstore, etc.

Although perhaps that would be a bad idea for my student bank account :P .

On the subject though, I do think higher standards would be better. I'd like to think that with time the standards will improve, but it definitely won't if people keep eating it up the way they seem to be right now.

Unless you're very lucky, that's only books that come from the approved Christian publishers--no chance of finding something by a Christian writer who doesn't use a publishing house with a fish or a cross in the logo. Only movies that don't include anything on the This Is Bad checklist; what they do include is irrelevant. And only music from the past 20 years. I walked into our local Christian bookstore and attempted to buy something by Bach. The attendant told me that they only carried Christian music. She was completely serious. I walked out.

[Kitty]

The thing I can't stand about Christian media is that it's so up its own ass with "the Message" that the art itself suffers, often horribly.

In Christian books, the authors rely on purple prose, fake dialogue, and Canon Sues. The characters can never do wrong, no, and when they do it's perfectly acceptable because they are the Christian heroes.

In Christian movies, the writers rely on Canon Sues and fake dialogue.

I haven't seen a Christian TV show unless you count 7th Heaven, but 7th Heaven was bad enough. We don't need a show that does actually mention Jesus and Christianity as much as you'd expect a show about a preacher and his family to.

Christian music... don't get me fucking started. All of the songs are "Jesus is my boyfriend" songs, and if they're not, the lyrics are so in your face you want to vomit. I'm not talking about the traditional stuff. That's actually really good. I'm talking about the contemporary stuff that was written by tin-eared hacks who are more focused on winning souls than actually producing ART. Which is what music is supposed to be. The lyrics are usually cheesy, if they didn't make the song sound enough like a typical pop love song. I HATE listening to an awesome song on the radio and then finding out it's Christian. It completely changes the meaning and not in a good way. You wanna know one of the factors that made me ditch Christianity? It was all of the bullshit I was fed at age 12 about being pure and saving myself for marriage and not having boyfriends and shit like that. If having those feelings are bad, why is it okay to have those feelings about Jesus?

It's all supposed to be a "moral substitute," and it's an awful one. Once Christian writers get their heads out of their asses and learn SUBTLETY (and no, extended romance metaphors do NOT count as subtlety!) their media will never be received well by secular audiences who are used to higher standards.

Well, the secular media doesn't have that much higher standards, but still...

[darareaksmey]

Burris, I don't know how is more to blame: the pompous asses who produce and market this stuff, or the dolts who buy it. About 10 years ago I had a Sunday School teacher who was a contemporary of mine, a well-educated congregant in an ELCA church. He learned someone else in the church was opening a restaurant and he spent an entire SS class talking about how we ought to patronize and frequent the other guy's restaurant, because helping other Christians is what we should be about. I had never heard that expressed by another Lutheran before, and I inwardly called bullshit on it. Silly me, what I thought we were about was helping those who need help without questioning their belief systems. I couldn't see myself patronizing a restaurant just because a church member ran it.

I also make it my business not to frequent businesses or establishments that advertise they're run by Christians, or show the sign of the fish or something similar. I prefer to do business at arm's length and to get the best bang for my buck, not to support someone just because we believe in the same God. If they are good at what they do, then they don't need my help. If not, then why do I want shoddy service,and why should I help them stay in business?

[GolightlyGrrl]

So-called "Christians"-Kelly Crawford, The Jeubs, Vision Forum-can crap on a cone and the fundies will call it ice cream.

[emmiedahl]

I have to admit, they were playing a song that I liked at the fundie clothing exchange. But most of them are ridiculous crap. I love SouthPark's take on it, with Cartman singing about making love to Jesus all day and night.