With contemporary churches going to the limits to “engage the culture,” the new millennium has seen a rising trendy of famous people from all sorts of pop and higher cultures getting converted to Christianity. And when this happens, it is always big news.
American socialite and actress Kim Kardashian recently broke the news that her husband Kanye West has undergone a conversion to Christianity.
“He has had an amazing evolution of being born again and being saved by Christ,” she said.
The conversion has resulted in a forthcoming album that will include Gospel songs, as well as hippie church services that he has been conducting at his residence in Calabasas lately.
In other news, Justin Bieber recently spoke about his struggles with childhood fame, heavy drug abuse, and the pain he inflicted on the people closest to him. He credits several pastors (some associated with Hillsong) for helping him through the fallout from some terrible decisions, and he urges his fans to consider the “unfailing love of Jesus” for them.
We could multiply examples of celebrities in recent years who’ve demonstrated a connection to Christianity through social media, awards acceptance speeches, philanthropy efforts, and even Christian lyrics or TV roles.
Denzel Washington grew up with a preacher as a father and went to church every Sunday. He’s been going to the same church for 30 years, and he says he reads the Bible every day.
Mark Wahlberg, is a devout Catholic who keeps an impressive schedule to make sure he has time to pray every day. According to him, he gets up at 2:30 a.m. to get in his prayers and workouts. The actor also lives out his faith by giving his time to talk with young people about his own troubled youth.
Country music superstar Carrie Underwood talked about the role her Christian faith played in her life when she was struggling with sadness and anger through a series of miscarriages in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning. After what she thought was yet another miscarriage, Underwood said she prayed like she never had before.
“And for the first time,” she said, “I feel like I actually I told God how I felt. And I feel, like, we’re supposed to do that.”
It turned out that nothing was wrong, and she had her second child earlier this year.
“I’m an actress and a singer and I’m also a Christian. We’re not all crazy right-wingers,” Kristin Dawn Chenoweth, who was raised Baptist, told the National Catholic Reporter. “I just want to be like Jesus, forgiving and loving and non-judgmental, accepting of everyone even if they don’t agree.”
Closer to home, controvertible political activist Lumumba William Gerald Mutumanje, famously known as Acie Lumumba, made headlines in August last year when he announced that he had joined the Seventh Day Adventist.
Popular actress and media personality Tinopona Katsande recently narrated how God’s favour had pulled her through fibroids and endometriosis which can cause infertility.
And yet as good as this news reads saccharine for Jesus, we always see a couple of reactions among Christians whenever a celebrity claims Christianity. Some rush to praise the superstar and to share far and wide the great things said about the love and grace of God while others cast a wary eye toward the celebrity, responding with cynicism regarding the star’s words and actions.
For the first group, it is as if a celebrity conversion conveys a sense of validation for many Christians, especially with non-believing groups like atheists and agnostics pushing the fact that Christian belief is a mark of low status and has been so for a long time.
Isn’t it wonderful? This rich and famous (and super cool) person has found Jesus!
Too often, it feels like underneath this reaction is an inferiority complex. The result is then to lift up the celebrity as a great example of Christian faith and us their influence to sin more souls.
For the second group, it’s as if a celebrity conversion is merely a pretext for extending their fan base, finding personal enrichment, or adopting a cultural Christianity that is therapeutic, not doctrinal.
Yeah, we’ll see how long this lasts. Besides, you can tell from other things they’re saying or doing that they’re not seriously following Jesus.
The result is to diminish the celebrity’s statements and to remain skeptical about their sincerity. Everything a celebrity does, to them, is just another “keep me famous” stunt. A deeper concern for many critics is that these celebrities do not have a strong grasp of the issues they are talking about.
Making a case against these two common reactions, Christina writer Trevin Wax said sometimes these responses to celebrity conversions says more about the church than the celebrity.
He argued that in the present climate humanity exists in a celebrity culture in which fame equals validation and significance.
He writes;
“When we hear news about a celebrity conversion, we usually don’t picture the lone individual standing before almighty God — stripped of all earthly trinkets and worldly successes — on the same level as you and me and everyone else. We still see them in their celebrity form, as the avatar created by their promotional machine. And once someone professes faith, we tend to slip into the same worldly assessment of their significance.
Feeling perhaps a bit insecure regarding our faith in a secular age and hoping that a famous person of great stature might make our faith more plausible to others, we celebrate a conversion because it says something about the legitimacy of what we believe. We don’t feel so “out there” or so “strange” when a respected celebrity gives us a nod.”
He added that the most extreme expression of this outlook leads us to celebrate the vague, spiritual comment from a celebrity more than the conversion of someone in our congregation, even though we have a relationship with the latter and not the former.
And because the world says celebrities “count more,” Christians think their conversion counts more, too and they usually move too quick to lift up celebrities as examples of faith and leadership. This happens, despite the specific warning of the apostle Paul to not put into roles of official leadership anyone who is a “recent convert,” as the fruit of repentance takes time.
But because Christians feel like they are underrepresented pop culture, it’s easy to latch on to any celebrity who could become a force for good in that environment.
However, the rush to establish a celebrity as a leader in matters of faith does injustice to both the celebrity and also the church, requiring a sped-up sanctification process on behalf of the celebrity and setting the church up for let-down when the star disappoints.
This is why, over time, people migrate from the first group of concierges to the second group of skeptics. Initially excited about a celebrity conversion, they champion the story far and wide, only later to be disappointed in the lack of fruit they see in the star, or in the unbiblical stances a celebrity takes. Then, on the same social media accounts where they once celebrated the conversion, they excoriate the celebrity for failing to live up to Christianity’s morals and theology.
Once this process repeats itself enough times, it’s no wonder many Christians respond to celebrity conversions not with hope and optimism, but with the sneer of a minimifidian.
Hitherto, both of these reactions say more about the Church than they do about the celebrity. It is an indication that the Church of God has adopted the worldly assumptions about fame and fortune, meaning and significance, relevance and validation.
If a Christian’s first reaction to a celebrity conversion is jubilation, one needs to ask themselves if they would react the same way when someone of “lesser importance” shows interest in Christianity. If your first reaction is to sneer and criticise a celebrity’s statement, ask yourself how you’d respond to a neighbour who made the same profession or comments.
If you see a difference in either case, it’s likely because we are unwittingly focusing more on celebrity than conversion, said Wax as he concluded his argument.
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