Sunday, December 13, 2009

The Sacred, Celebrity and Theological Challenge


An excerpt from Gary Laderman's Sacred Matters: Celebrity Worship, Sexual Ecstasies, the Living Dead, and Other Signs of Religious Life in the United States (New York & London: The New Press, 2009), p. 81:
"For many Christians, the fear that Jesus Christ is not the only truly divine celebrity, the sole source for true sacrality for the modern world, is an ongoing challenge to contemporary theology which has found itself increasingly displaced by and ill-equipped to deal with an Oprah or a Valentino, let alone a Bruce, Marilyn, or Elvis. The confusion and fear over the commingling of sacred and secular, and the possibility that people have multiple religious identities and identifications, some of which do not require a monotheistic God, is expressed in public culture through diatribe and jeremiads, sermonizing and, in some cases, soul-searching reflection."

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