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
Bibliography
_______________________________________
I teach at a program called Project 1:17 which is a mentoring program for evangelical youthworkers who have committed their lives to working with at-risk youth. As part of this program, I teach classes on communication, culture and media studies.
At the beginning of each year, we have our students go down to Washington Square Park (which is in the center of New York University's campus; and is considered by many the local hub of counter-youth culture). When there, we have these students complete a Spirituality and Culture Questionnaire with the young adults in the park. [Note: this exercise was in no way a subversive prosyletism strategy - our students were told specifically just to listen].
Some of the questions were generic and about their tastes/interests - favorite films, music, what they like to do in their free time etc.
Some of the questions were directed toward questions of spirituality:
- What spiritual paths, if any, did you follow when growing up?
- Do you embrace any forms of spirituality today?
- What is your perception of organized religion?
- Do you think spirituality will play a significant role in the 21st century?
Almost always, my students come back with their jaws wide open - shocked by two major realities:
1. Most young adults have a radically negative perception of organized religion. Evangelical churches are considered organized religion - and therefore are perceived of in a negative light.
2. Most of these same young adults embrace spirituality and believe that it will play a significant role in the 21st century.
The purpose of this exercise is to be nothing more than a listening tool. So often as evangelicals we are so interested in speaking that we take no time to listen.
This struck me most powerfully when watching Michael Moore's controversial, but award winning film, Bowling for Columbine. The question of the roots gun violence are explored by Moore. At one point, he interviews Marilyn Manson - whose music was the target of many evangelicals who used it to provide a rationale for why such a massacre would take place. Moore asks Manson what he would say to these youth.
Immediately, Manson replies, "See that's the difference. I wouldn't say anything to them - I would listen to them."
While Manson wouldn't be considered by many to be a great role model for the average evangelical, he certainly is prophetic in this statement - and provides a wonderful model for how we should engage youth culture.
So our survey was intended to be a listening device... and when we listened, it was bone-chilling to hear the honest impression the Church has made on youth culture.
A few years ago, after this questionnaire was complete, one of our students from New Zealand said to me: "It seems like we've lost our opportunity to speak to this generation - it's hopeless..."
I thought about the despair in this response, and then I realized: this horrible impression could provide a fantastic opportunity:
This generation has a crystallized impression and stereotype of who we are as evangelicals. Unfortunately this is because of both what we have done (we need to accept this responsibility) and how we have been represented. I thought about how something which has been crystallized becomes incredibly delicate - the smallest gesture can crack and destroy this mold.
If we as evangelicals, are able to contradict this stereotype by standing outside of the mold and not being the uncritical and narrow minded, radically right-wing fundamentalist, puritanical, culturally homogeneous, isolated, over-protected, middle-class, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, bigoted, megalomaniacal stereotype... this would BLOW this generation away! It would SHATTER THEIR IMPRESSION of who we are - and possibly change their picture of God and the Church.
It would leave them with a positive encounter.
Cultural theorist, Stuart Hall, drawing on the work of Richard Dyer, says that stereotyping takes place when something is “reduced to a few essentials, fixed in Nature by a few simplified characteristics” (Hall, 1997, 249). We always try to make sense of the world by creating types which are “…any simple, vivid, memorable, easily grasped and widely recognized characterization in which a few traits are foregrounded and change or development is kept at a minimum” (Hall, 1997, 257). However, this is radically different to stereotypes which “…reduce everything about the person to those traits, exaggerate and simplify them, and fix them without change or development to eternity” (Hall, 1997, 257).
It is clear that stereotyping marginalizes… While some might argue that evangelicals are the group that is in the position of power, and are therefore not being marginalized. I would argue that only some evangelicals are in that position of power; and that when considering the larger umbrella of evangelicals who don’t fit into this limited representational stereotype – there is a very clear marginalization which is taking place in popular media culture. Remember, most evangelicals are NOT white and middle class - so who ends up being marginalized?
I am not calling for censorship of the current representations. I think that they are both somewhat accurate and fulfill a very important function - they serve as a mirror to awaken evangelicals to how we are being perceived. This function can continue to serve to keep our actions and attitudes accountable.
Rather, I am advocating a greater diversity that draws on a multiplicity of evangelical representations in the media – representations that don’t fit into the dominant ‘KKK’ evangelical mythology. I am advocating a representation that taps into the heterogeneous, mosaic difference which beautifully exists in the church.
In this first section, I have briefly explored issues of representation. These issues frame our discussion of reception – as these images and sound bytes provide the tools with which evangelicals negotiate their social presentation of evangelical identities.
In the second section, I will begin to explore the reception of evangelicals to these representations - and how a culture of resistance has emerged to negotiate such representations.
Go to Part 9 - Essentializing the Evangelical: Reception
No comments:
Post a Comment