Essentializing the Evangelical: Reflexivity Among Evangelicals When Engaging Popular Media Culture (Part 10)

This is a paper that I have developed for a class I am taking at New York University on Interpreting Popular Culture.

I would love to hear your feedback and recommendations.

If you have missed any parts of this paper, you can click on the following hyperlinks:

Part One: Introduction
Part Two: Defining the Evangelical - Melting Pot or Mosaic?
Part Three: Constructing the Mythology of the Evangelical
Part Four: Defining Evangelical - The KKK Evangelical Mythology
Part Five: Representation - Kook
Part Six: Representation - Kon
Part Seven: Representation - Konquistador
Part Eight - A Multiplicity of Representations that Break the Mold
Part Nine - Reception
Bibliography
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For years, the term ‘moral panic’ and ‘evangelical’ have appeared to be virtually synonymous (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994). This is still true in many cases – books like Harry Potter (Rowling, 1999) and The Da Vinci Code (Brown, 2003); and games like Grand Theft Auto – San Andreas (Rockstar Entertainment, 2005) have evoked moral panics. For years, evangelicals have slanted toward a technophobic and isolationist posture when considering popular culture – many of these evangelical intellectuals (Wells, 1994; Zacharias, 1996) have largely drawn on the work of Neil Postman (Postman, 1986; 1993) when considering evangelical’s reception of popular media culture. Popular culture is something that decreases intellectual capacity; and is destroying the rich culture of ‘the enlightenment.’

However, this tide of technophobia is being challenged by a group that is now drawing more on the work of cultural and media studies. For example, Robert K. Johnston (2000); William D. Romanowski (2003); and Craig Detweiler (2003) all reference major British, French, and American popular cultural studies theorists in their books. This shift in evangelical critical thinking is not simply arm-chair thinking, but is also being represented on the frontlines of Hollywood itself - particularly with the work of Barbara Nicolosi (Lewerenz & Nicolosi, 2005) who has created Act One (2006) – a non-profit organization for Christian screenwriters and film makers who are more interested in being Christians-who-make-good-art, rather than simply making mediocre Christian knock-off films and television. For example, the blockbuster X-Men series has been produced by Ralph Winter (2006) who is a well-respected evangelical, but also a well-respected movie producer.

What I find interesting is the emergence of a critical reflexivity in the construction process of both evangelical academics and media producers. This shift in reception of popular culture among evangelicals symbolizes a breaking-out of this group from the traditionally assumed stereotype of fearful isolation and self-righteous condemnation.

Go to Part 11: Subversive Textual Poaching in Evangelical Subcultures