{"id":668,"date":"2008-05-06T23:09:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-06T23:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2008\/05\/06\/slate-asks-does-christian-pop-culture-have-to-be-so-wretched\/"},"modified":"2008-05-06T23:09:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-06T23:09:00","slug":"slate-asks-does-christian-pop-culture-have-to-be-so-wretched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2008\/05\/06\/slate-asks-does-christian-pop-culture-have-to-be-so-wretched\/","title":{"rendered":"Slate asks: &quot;Does Christian Pop Culture Have To Be So Wretched?&quot;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Interesting article in the online magazine <em>Slate<\/em> by Hanna Rosin entitled, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2190482\">&#8220;Pop Goes Christianity: The deep contradictions of Christian popular culture&#8221;:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The entertainers in Radosh&#8217;s book complain about watchdog groups that count the number of times a song mentions Jesus or about the lockstep political agenda a Christian audience expects. They complain about promoting an &#8220;adolescent theology&#8221; of Christian rock, as one calls it, where they &#8220;just can&#8217;t get over how darned cool it was that Jesus sacrificed himself.&#8221; In his interview with Radosh, Powell pulled out an imitation of a 1982 New Wave pop song with the lyrics; &#8220;You&#8217;ll have to excuse us\/ We&#8217;re in love with Jesus.&#8221; This, he explained, was the equivalent of a black-velvet painting of Elvis. Only it&#8217;s more offensive, because it&#8217;s asking the listener to base his whole life around an insipid message and terrible quality music.<\/p>\n<p>For faith, the results can be dangerous. A young Christian can get the idea that her religion is a tinny, desperate thing that can&#8217;t compete with the secular culture. A Christian friend who&#8217;d grown up totally sheltered once wrote to me that the first time he heard a Top 40 station he was horrified, and not because of the racy lyrics: &#8220;Suddenly, my lifelong suspicions became crystal clear,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;Christian subculture was nothing but a commercialized rip-off of the mainstream, done with wretched quality and an apocryphal insistence on the sanitization of reality.&#8221; <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s an extended review\/discussion of a book by Daniel Radosh called, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Rapture-Ready-Adventures-Parallel-Christian\/dp\/0743297709\/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1210115556&#038;sr=8-1\">Rapture Ready!Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture.<\/a><\/p>\n<div class='kindleWidget kindleLight' ><img src=\"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-content\/plugins\/send-to-kindle\/media\/white-15.png\" \/><span>Send to Kindle<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Interesting article in the online magazine Slate by Hanna Rosin entitled, &#8220;Pop Goes Christianity: The deep contradictions of Christian popular culture&#8221;: The entertainers in Radosh&#8217;s book complain about watchdog groups that count the number of times a song mentions Jesus &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2008\/05\/06\/slate-asks-does-christian-pop-culture-have-to-be-so-wretched\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}