Celebrification<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"That's a word that Pete Ward introduced to me yesterday. Pete may be best known in the US as the author of Liquid Church, a book that was referred to\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/2011\/03\/22\/celebrification\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Celebrification\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"That's a word that Pete Ward introduced to me yesterday. 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{"id":2924,"date":"2011-03-22T12:18:47","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T17:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/?p=2924"},"modified":"2015-03-13T16:58:22","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:58:22","slug":"celebrification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/2011\/03\/22\/celebrification\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrification"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Dr. Peter Ward, King's College, London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

That\u2019s a word that Pete Ward<\/a> introduced to me yesterday.<\/p>\n

Pete may be best known in the US as the author of Liquid Church<\/a><\/em>, a book that was referred to often during the early days of the emergent movement.\u00a0 (OK, he may be even better known as one of the interstitial commenters in my first book<\/a>.)\u00a0 At the time, to be honest, I wasn\u2019t a fan of Pete\u2019s thesis.\u00a0 At the time, I was on my way to becoming a Made Man in the Hauerwasian Mafia<\/a>.\u00a0 As evidenced in PMYM<\/a>, I thought of the church as a distinct culture\/polis with its own discrete rationality, language, and practice.<\/p>\n

I have since rejected that notion, and I am much more friendly to Pete\u2019s argument that the church is liquid \u2014 that is, fluid, changing, and boundary-less.\u00a0 In fact, my dissertation argues much the same thing.<\/p>\n

Pete\u2019s got a new book out: Gods Behaving Badly: Media, Religion and Celebrity Culture<\/a><\/em>, which is out in the UK and available for pre-0rder in the States (published here by Baylor University Press).\u00a0 I went to Luther Seminary yesterday to have breakfast with Pete and hear him lecture in Andy Root<\/a>\u2018s class.\u00a0 And tonight he\u2019s giving a public lecture at Luther<\/a>, introduced by Chris Scharen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was only a 35-minute lecture yesterday, so I don\u2019t know that I fully absorbed Pete\u2019s thesis in his new book, but this is what I gathered: religious and theological language is still powerful in our culture, and that\u2019s why it is so often co-opted by celebrity and pop culture (e.g., Madonna, diva, American Idol, \u201ccult of personality,\u201d etc.).<\/p>\n

What Pete doesn\u2019t do is the usual knee-jerk Christian reaction to this kind of thing.\u00a0 He\u2019s not saying that celebrity culture is inherently bad \u2014 at least he didn\u2019t seem to be saying that overtly.\u00a0 He did remark that celebrity culture\u2019s use of religious language is not particularly serious, whereas most religions are extremely serious about what they believe and how they practice.<\/p>\n

He admitted that this is not a \u201cwhat you should do\u201d book, but it\u2019s more of a \u201chow things are\u201d book.\u00a0 It\u2019s descriptive, not prescriptive.\u00a0 But his book is worth a look in that he\u2019s turned his very capable theological mind to that area of culture in which celebrity and religious faith intersect.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"