Lee Camp
[00:00:00] I'm Lee C. Camp and this is No Small Endeavor - exploring what it means to live a good life.
Katelyn
I think it's safe to say that American culture is celebrity-obsessed.
Lee Camp
That's Katelyn Beaty, journalist and writer on faith and culture whose work has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and more.
Katelyn
Celebrity is a distinctly modern phenomenon that relies on the tools of mass media to project whatever we want the world to believe about us.
It's less about the work that we're doing in the world and more about ourselves.
Lee Camp
Today we discuss Beaty's book Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church.
Katelyn
The American church especially, its more evangelical permutations, has adopted a celebrity focus rather than resisting it or critiquing it.
Lee Camp
Our conversation, coming right up.[00:01:00]
I'm Lee C. Camp. This is No Small Endeavor - exploring what it means to live a good life.
News headlines of the past decade have featured headline after headline of evangelical Christian leaders falling from grace and falling from great heights of success. Pastors of tens of thousands, media darlings who were friends with powerful, and heads of their own media empires.
But how did Christianity become an arena for celebrity, when the virtues of humility and service seem to require eschewing celebrity, when the practice of trust appears to stand at odds with machinations to make one's own efforts wildly successful? And how does this apparent cult of celebrity shape contemporary conceptions of what it means to be a faithful Christian in the 21st century?
Katelyn Beaty [00:02:00] explores these questions at length, and today we discuss her book Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profts Are Hurting the Church.
Katelyn Beaty is a journalist, editor, and writer, having written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and more, has commented on faith and culture for CNN, ABC, NPR, Associated Press, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She's co-host of the Saved By the City podcast, and today we're discussing her new book, Celebrities for Jesus.
Welcome, Katelyn.
Katelyn
Thanks so much for having me.
Lee Camp
Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you with us.
I think it would be great if you started with some definitions that I found quite helpful and compelling, namely the definition of celebrity versus the definition of fame.
Katelyn
It's an important distinction because I think it helps us identify when fame can be used for good purposes and when it's kind of gone bad or gone astray.
So I think of fame as something that we [00:03:00] see in every time and culture, arising from, you know, good works in the public square, excellence, virtue, leadership, acts of courage, military prowess. It's a byproduct, and so if you find yourself with a measure of fame, then you have to determine, how do I steward this well without losing my soul?
Celebrity is a distinctly modern phenomenon that relies on the tools of mass media to project an image of ourselves, whatever we want the world to believe about us, whether that's impressive, or spiritually superior, or attractive, smart.
And from that, people develop a kind of attachment and affection and even an allegiance to our image, to what we are putting out in the world about ourselves. It's less about the work that we're doing in the world and more about ourselves. I define celebrity as social power without proximity. It's really the ability to [00:04:00] impress, to shape hearts and minds, to draw attention, but from the distance of a screen or a stage. And I think in that distance between a celebrity figure and the people they are shaping and influencing can come all sorts of temptations to misuse celebrity power, to abuse that power, to use that power for your own self glory. So the, the without proximity is really what makes it dangerous.
Lee Camp
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I, the-- and this is kind of reiterating some of what you just said, but the fame then being known-- one's known for one's virtues, whereas celebrity one is known, as you said in the book, one is known for being well known.
[Laughs]
Katelyn
So, you know, this didn't start with the Kardashian family. This is a dynamic, really, about the ability of the tools of mass media to shape and often [00:05:00] misshape our perceptions of what is important, or who is important, or who is worthy of our time and attention.
You know, I come across tabloid headlines about all sorts of celebrity figures in the course of my day, and I find myself on, [laughs] on probably not a very journalistic website, [Lee laughs] you know, reading about the details of someone's newest relationship, and then I step back and think, wait, why? Why do I care? Why is this captivating? Why is my imagination drawn to this?
And that is just the power of media, to tell us who's important, who's worthy of our attention.
Lee Camp
So in your book, you're uh, you're very in, in compelling ways pointing to the, the history of this unfolding in American Christianity. So tell us a little bit about then the, the historical roots of how we've gotten to where we are today.
Katelyn
Well, I think it's safe to say that American culture is celebrity-obsessed, and I argue in the book that the American church, [00:06:00] by and large, and especially its more evangelical permutations, has adopted and accepted a celebrity focus rather than resisting it or critiquing it.
I look at the, arguably the three most famous evangelists of the 19th and 20th centuries, Dwight L. Moody, Billy Sunday, and Billy Graham. All of them to different degrees and in their own unique contexts, were very bullish about using the tools of mass media. They were very pragmatic in their embrace of television, radio, even the newspapers, starting in the 19th century, to draw as many people as possible with the gospel message, without necessarily stepping back and thinking, okay, but how are these tools shaping or disfiguring the gospel message that we're presenting?
I focus on Graham. I knew [00:07:00] about Graham growing up in the evangelical movement of the 80s and 90s. This was kind of at the tail end of his public ministry, but my parents went to a crusade, I remember seeing his crusades on television. I'm grateful for a lot of what he did, and also I think, echoing a critique in Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, Graham was technologically naive about the ways that these media would tend to make him the star of the message rather than Jesus, whether or not that was his intention, his incredible communicative power, his charisma, his likability.
You know, Graham famously and perhaps infamously befriended many celebrities in Hollywood. He was intent on befriending all of the presidents from Truman to Barack Obama. You know, he was, he was trying to, in some ways become a celebrity himself as a way to [00:08:00] establish the church's credibility in the public square. And I think, you know, 20, 30 years out from Graham's public ministry, we can see that he and others helped to plant seeds that have born pretty bad fruit in the American church, and especially in American evangelicalism.
Lee Camp
And in your discussion of those historical routes, you point to three key practices that seem to be at the center of that sort of development. That is the focus on individuals, the focus on mass media, and the preference for individuals over institutions. So let's take just a few minutes kind of to talk about each of those.
First, how, how do you see this playing out in the focus on individuals?
Katelyn
Yeah. Well, this somewhat comes back to the ways that evangelicals articulate and understand the core message of Christianity, compared with more mainline traditions, even more historical, worldwide, [00:09:00] global expressions of the church. American evangelicals tend to think of the gospel as an individual primary relationship between God and a person being reconciled to God through the work of Christ on the cross that comes through, you know, ideally a powerful, individual, born again experience, often very intense and emotional, and then discipleship. The idea of following Jesus is really understood as being oriented around, kind of personal Bible study, personal devotion.
Of course, evangelical churches would also say, yes, but we have community and we have small groups and we want people to gather together. But I think evangelicals have certainly prioritized individual experience, and even individual authority in reading scripture, over and against the authority of the institution of the local church, or a denominational body, or authority figures within [00:10:00] those institutions. There's a sense that, you know, being a Christian has to be more than just belonging to a Christian institution.
One must have a very powerful individual commitment to Christian faith. Just in terms of the way that evangelicals articulate the gospel, it is very much centered on the individual. But even with evangelical institutions, and I write in the book about the megachurch phenomenon, you see a centering of the church's identity, sense of mission, on a charismatic individual figure.
Much more so than, uh, a particular place or location, a particular denominational history, a decision-making power of an elder board or board of directors, it often kind of rises and falls on the strength of the charisma [00:11:00] of the individual figure, who is in many ways, in many of these cases, eventually becoming a celebrity figure in their own midst.
And, you know, goes without saying, this has created a lot of problems.
Lee Camp
So the, the idea there though, is that the way of construing the notion of salvation being very individualistic then opens these communities up to, or these collections of individuals, we might say, opens them up to a sort of emphasis upon individuals as celebrated celebrities, as opposed to communal, embodied traditions.
And so it, it kind of feeds into the particular temptation to celebrity and personality as central to church life. Is that, is that how you're seeing that?
Katelyn
Yeah. I think in a lot of evangelical churches [00:12:00] there is a sense that, you know, what is happening on stage every Sunday morning, or what, what even we're doing and we're up to during worship on Sunday morning, is we are receiving personal inspiration and edification from the preaching of one specific person. And yes, there might be music and there might be announcements and an offering, but you know, I can go into the church and not really have to interact with anybody there and have spiritual, personal felt needs met and leave at the end of the service.
And this body of believers, at least in the beginning, isn't really going to ask much of me because the understanding of what we're doing on Sunday morning is so much about that individual preacher, speaker delivering, you know, felt needs type of content. So in this way, I think the celebrity fixation in a lot [00:13:00] of these churches is a real detriment to the spiritual development of people in the church.
That they are not being given an understanding of Christian faith that is participatory and communal, when in fact, the description of the church in the New Testament is, precisely that, as precisely participatory communal might actually require something of you, is not really about getting your felt needs met.
So I think we're, we're due for a, a course correction.
Lee Camp
Katelyn
Lee Camp
I was reminded in reading that part of your book about a conversation I had with a gentleman I'd done an interview with years ago, and he was a recent convert, Anglicanism, and, and, and been ordained as a priest. And he, he said that one of the things that had driven his conversion was his weariness with the kind of cult of personality…
Katelyn
Lee Camp
...in the, kind of, evangelical world. And I I-- for, for me, that kind of stands out as, [00:14:00] as at least one of the sets of options here, in that highly individualistic-- there's, there's obviously some very, potentially healthy, good things about focusing upon the notion of one's personal relationship with God.
And yet it can certainly take wrong turns or wrong emphases in the ways you're describing. And for him, it was a sort of, it's taken this wrong turn so that rather than focusing, for example, on the liturgy, which is not concerned with the personality of the person standing up there...
Katelyn
Lee Camp
...it's the beauty of the liturgy, that he found that to be a more helpful route for him to take with the rest of his life.
Katelyn
Yeah. And I, I resonate with that. Well, I'm on that route as well.
[Both laugh]
Lee Camp
Katelyn
Um, you know, grew up in a very low church, seeker friendly United Methodist Church in Ohio in the 90s, 2000s. But my entire adult life has been in liturgical settings, and I think that primacy of the liturgy is reflected even in the church building and the [00:15:00] structure of the service in that, yes, there is a sermon, but it's not the main event. The main event is the Eucharist, and we're not looking at the preacher on a stage. You know, he or she is in a pulpit, and the pulpit is actually off to the side. So even just in the formal structure of a liturgical service, I do think it helps to correct against the kind of spotlight on the preacher or pastor.
Lee Camp
You're listening to No Small Endeavor and our conversation with Katelyn Beaty.
Heard from a lot of listeners about a recent interview with William Paul Young, the author of The Shack. One was taken by the way hearing another speak of their trauma allowed him to see his own in a mirror of sorts. Another who found themselves crying while cleaning their bathtub listening to Paul's story. I was moved, too, by Paul's [00:16:00] story, and grateful. If you have not listened to that episode yet, you can get it wherever you listen to your podcasts.
I do love hearing from you. Tell us what you're reading, who you're paying attention to, or send us feedback about today's episode. You can reach me at lee@nosmallendeavor.com.
You can get show notes for this episode in your podcast app or wherever you listen. These notes include links to resources mentioned in this episode, and a PDF of my complete interview notes, including material not found in this episode, as well as a transcript.
Coming up, how celebrity culture sets one up for failure, why technology is not a neutral tool, and some options beyond celebrity culture.
So in the, in this section, you also point to some of the recent, [00:17:00] quite troubling case studies of the ways in which we have celebrated leaders who have gone through very public, distressing falls from grace because of various forms of moral failure, moral lapse, both seen individually in themselves and communally in the structures that were around them.
And so, maybe without describing necessarily those case studies, um, or, or the individuals, what are, what would you say are some of the trends you've seen, in the mechanisms that make possible a spectacular failing of a celebrity pastor?
Katelyn
Well, yes, for your sake and mine, and for your listeners, I will not rehearse the particular details, but it, it, I think it is instructive to look at those stories and try to pick out trends. Are there commonalities here, that then we can be on the lookout for moving forward?
So, I would say in a lot of these cases of fallen celebrity leaders, [00:18:00] actually a lot of them started really young, maybe with some formal theological training, some seminary train-- training. Others of them, very entrepreneurial spirit, they were founders of the church. Very gifted communicators, very gifted at being able to cast a vision of the church, what the church is doing, and draw people in very quickly with a sense of, you can be a part of the mission that we're on. You know, people really responded to these pastors' sermons, public speaking.
There was something conveyed, a vision that people found really compelling. There was often really quick growth, kind of overnight success and attention from other churches, from ministry networks, [00:19:00] even from media.
You know, going back to the media coverage element of this, that there was a subtly and kind of self understanding that what we are doing is really important, or kind of at the epicenter of God's work in the world. Look at how many people are coming, look at how many people are responding and wanna copy our success. Success being, of course, defined by numerical growth. [Laughs] I think that, you know, it, it, it's not surprising that many American churches think of ministry success as growth in numbers and budget.
And I get that impulse. And also I think, you know, what can happen over time is that that numerical growth, you know, starts to be the driver, and then unhealthy, un-Christian, abusive dynamics among the leadership of the church start to be minimized or [00:20:00] justified because, well, at least the church is growing. So yeah, our pastor is kind of a bully and has an anger problem or isn't really being forthright with his use of technology or the finances of the church. But gosh, we're, we're growing so quickly, we don't wanna stop that. We're on a really exciting train that's going somewhere exciting. So, you know, if he's the conductor, who are we to kind of question where we're going and, you know, to, to voice questions over, you know, concerning issues.
I think in a lot of these cases you see the pastor having an aversion to real accountability. [Laughs] Oftentimes, you know, of course there are accountability structures like a board of directors or an elder board, but when you start to dig into the interpersonal and power dynamics within those structures, there's often a, you know, such a deference to the [00:21:00] pastor.
Maybe, you know, the board is stacked with friends or supporters or people who are going to kind of cheer the pastor along instead of ask hard questions, or even be able to ask hard questions. So kind of accountability in name only.
And then, I would just also note that, going back to that definition of celebrity as social power without proximity, over time, these celebrity leaders...it was maybe started out really embedded in their community. They were approachable, you could easily set up a meeting with them, they had accountability groups or small groups where they could be honest about, you know, temptations or struggles. They could be just a person, just a Christian, not 'The Pastor', not the person who has all the answers.
And then, over time they really start to experience a kind of isolation and loneliness. And that's [00:22:00] why, you know, celebrity is bad for the celebrity figure, not just for the people who have put that person on a pedestal. There's a deep isolation and loneliness there. As that person, star is rising, it's harder to actually know them in a real embodied way, and I think in that isolation comes in all sorts of temptations and coping mechanisms to deal with the loneliness. So those would be some yellow flags to look out for.
Lee Camp
So the Billy Graham rule, let's talk about that just a little bit. So here you have, in that kind of famous commitment, a desire to practice some accountability, and yet, especially as that's kind of been more recently expressed in the so-called Mike Pence rule, [00:23:00] you know, it's, it's been quite critiqued as well.
So how do you see this sort of, there seems to be in that a sort of sincere desire to practice some for-- some form of accountability, slash transparency of some sort, right. And yet it's been hotly critiqued. So talk to us how you see that, and maybe, maybe for those who, who are listening and not, not, not exactly sure what the Billy Graham rule is, or the Mike Pence rule is, first maybe summarize that.
Katelyn
Yeah. Well, having been in Christian professional spaces my entire adult life, this is something I have thought a lot about, because I'm, you know, a young woman who is also, in every workplace I've been in, working with men, as I think is common for most women in the workplace.
And so the Billy Graham rule is, you know, it was not called that in its original iteration, but it was part of a broader set of rules that Graham, kinda early in his ministry with some of his closest [00:24:00] confidants, rules that they instated for themselves as measures of self-accountability.
So it was mid to late 40s, they found themselves in this hotel room in Modesto, California, they committed themselves to never meet alone with a woman who wasn't their spouse.
And I think we have to put that in the context of its time. Just given that in their day-to-day ministry life, there actually weren't that many women, if any, on their staff. So in some ways, they didn't have to wrestle with the fact that, actually this rule, if applied in a workplace setting, could really disempower women who were on staff, who had a voice, who had something to contribute, who perhaps wanted to rise to a position of leadership.
You know, if you have a boss or a colleague who's a man, who says, I'm never gonna meet alone with a woman who isn't my wife, [00:25:00] well, that's a lot of meetings, that's a lot of mentoring, that's a lot of travel that's just not gonna take place because this person has this specific rule. I don't think that the Billy Graham rule translates well into the 21st century, at the least because I have, on one occasion, been the recipient of the rule and found it to be incredibly awkward.
At the same time, I think, you know, something that you just said, Lee, I think we can look at the spirit of the rule and say that the spirit of sexual integrity, of, you know, to use an old kind of biblical phrase, to not give the appearance of sin. These are good impulses. So I, I can honor the spirit of the Billy Graham rule, even though I don't think it actually works in application today.
I also think, you know, it's really important to remember, the Modesto Manifesto wasn't just about [00:26:00] sex, you know, it was about financial integrity, it was about honesty, kind of how Graham's associates were reporting crusade numbers, it was about committing to local churches to say, we always wanna partner with the local church, we are going to be setting Graham's salary based on what a board determines, not based on crusade numbers or kind of giving in a particular moment. So there are lots of things about the Modesto Manifesto that I can still affirm, and think, you know, there's something for us to learn even today.
Lee Camp
Yeah, yeah. That's very helpful.
So before we get off of the notion of, of kind of some of the failings, what, what would you say you would see as some of the, maybe we might say 'meta vices' of a community that makes this possible. That is, so, we've talked a little bit about the potential vices of the celebrities themselves, celebrity types themselves, but what would you say is kind of meta vices of the [00:27:00] communities that facilitate this or make this sort of celebrity culture possible?
Katelyn
That's a really good question and I, I like that phrasing. Kind of, what are the deeper, darker impulses or beliefs that are fueling this?
I wonder if some of this is really about the need for control, [laughs] which is obviously a very old sin and has been expressed in every time and place, including by Christian communities, from the beginning. But I wonder if some of this reliance on celebrity power, celebrity attention is about thinking that, you know, we can adopt the tools of the world and we don't need your help or guidance, God. We found this tool, it works, why not use it?
So certainly a desire for control and perhaps a naive understanding of the nature [00:28:00] of power, any kind of power, to corrupt and to distort even good initial desires, you know, that power is not neutral. And it, it shapes us in often subtle but very pernicious ways that have, you know, detrimental effects oftentimes on the people around us. You know, that it has massive human costs, power used wrongly.
I would say, you know, a kind of shallow understanding of discipleship, going back to a fixation on entertainment and felt needs, a kind of understanding of Christian faith as being always up and to the right, rather than cruciform. You know, that our notions of success and what success can and should look like are often in direct contradiction to Jesus's quote unquote [00:29:00] "ministry success", which ended in a horrific, you know, humiliating death where all of his followers initially walked away thinking, what was that all about? What a horrific failure.
Jesus was not seen as being particularly impressive or successful by his contemporaries, that that was not the point. So, failing in much of the American church to really embrace the cruciform nature of Christian life together and to embrace the idea that perhaps, you know, following God and, and trusting God is going to look like a smaller and less impressive and very ordinary, even boring church, rather than something that is impressive and glitzy and attractive in the world's eyes.[00:30:00]
Lee Camp
You've, um, used the word 'tool' several times in our interview, and you use it a lot of times in the book, and I was reminded of, in a lot of the sort of reflection on ethics, philosophical ethics, sometimes Christian ethics, on technology.... Or with somebody like Jacques Ellul, the famous French sociologist and, and theologian and writer, you know, he, he did these kind of devastating critiques of technique and technology in which he debunked the notion that we should think of technology simply as a tool.
And in, in the literature, a lot of times people who write on this will speak of an instrumental view of technology in which-- this is thinking that technology is simply like a wrench. You know, it's, it's not good or bad in and of itself, it's amoral. The question is, do you use it to fix the widow's car or do you use it to bash your head in and steal her purse. And it's just a, it's just a [00:31:00] tool, and you d-- you determine the goodness or the badness of the use of that.
And Ellul and others point to the fact how naive this is, about, thinking about technology, and that, Ellul has this very unwieldy term 'characterology of technique', where he's asking us, let's look at the character of the people, our communities, that we become as individuals, or that our communities become, by employing given technology or given technique.
Um, and I see that I, I see you, you don't use that, that same kind of language but I see you pointing to that same sort of set of questions of, it's not a question simply about a tool. It's a question about what kind of people are we becoming. But thoughts or reflections on that?
Katelyn
Well, my first thought is I really wish that I would've come across that before I was writing my book.
[Both laugh]
'Cause it would've been very helpful to-- a helpful philosophical framing of, you know, the fact that technology is not a neutral tool. It is best analyzed by looking at how it's [00:32:00] shaping us as a community, or as people of character or lacking character.
So yeah, I think, you know, another, another analogy might be something like bad fruit, an agricultural analogy with obviously, like, a lot of biblical resonance, but what kind of soil are we planting the gospel in, and what kind of fruit is that soil bearing. And you know, if we're using shallow-- I don't know about, enough about, um, gardening to, [both laugh] to explore this metaphor well, but essentially, gosh, if we are trying to grow this garden and all the fruit we're getting is spoiled and rotten and tastes bad and nobody wants to enjoy it or partake in it, and you know, it's kind of turning our neighbors off, maybe there's something wrong with our technique in growing this garden. You know, maybe we applied too much fertilizer and it's [00:33:00] toxifying all of the fruit.
Lee Camp
The, the notion of loneliness and intimacy, and perhaps that a desire for intimacy, a legitimate desire for intimacy, may be driving some of our so-called celebrity worship that leads to bad ends, uh, you know, bad, bad expression of that. Give us a little bit of commentary about how you saw those sorts of dynamics at play and what you discovered.
Katelyn
Yeah. Well, I think that, you know, when we think about the difference between fame and celebrity, you know, fame is something that really, at the end of the day, is focusing on someone's work in the world.
So we can celebrate someone's creative work or activism or leadership, but the focus is really on the effects of their work, whereas celebrity, you know, it really-- there's a reason we call it celebrity worship. I think it [00:34:00] speaks more profoundly to a desire for attachment, connection, a kind of self-understanding.
By our attachment to a specific kind of celebrity or a specific person, as we kind of consume their content or their image, we start to understand ourselves in relation to the celebrity, in a Christian context or any spiritual context. You know, some of this is really about humans wanting a touchpoint to the divine, and feeling that our attachment to a specific, impressive, charismatic figure is in some sense an avenue to God. You know, where as, as embodied people we're looking for touchpoints in the world. And it is really easy to start thinking, in a lot of these stories, you know, no one is going to flat out say, "I worship this person", in, hopefully, in most of these cases.
But in terms of the kind of loyalty [00:35:00] that people will give to the celebrity figure, there is, there is an idolatry at play. There is a kind of, an attachment that is spiritual in nature, and therefore more dangerous. Somebody who we see as kind of speaking for God, or being God-like, or being appointed by God. That's a lot of authority. That's a lot of power you can have in someone's life - for good or for, for ill.
I also just think that we are in, you know, I'm certainly not the first person to comment on the fact that we are in a profoundly lonely time, you know, not just with the pandemic, although I think that's exacerbated it, but certainly we live fragmented lives. We live lives where many of our connections are, are shallow. And so, how much greater the need for an attachment to someone who kind of promises in some ways to speak to our [00:36:00] ultimate needs, to speak to our ultimate desires for meaning and purpose and mission and transcendence. There's a kind of spiritual hunger at play in our attachment to celebrity figures.
Lee Camp
We're going to take a short break, but coming right up, how might a community move beyond the cult of celebrity?
So I want to transition to, kind of, you beginning to point us towards alternative practices. But before we do that, let me ask one more question about diagnosis here, and it being diagnosis of, of how you think about this for yourself. That is, here you are, you've got a new book out, and you know, and I've had books out, and I want people to read them. And I always think the numbers are not as big as they should be. [Laughs]
Katelyn
Of course, of course. Yeah. I [00:37:00] know that feeling.
Lee Camp
Um, yeah. So, so how do you, how do you think about navigating for yourself the-- this world of platforms, numbers, social media follows...how do you yourself work through that?
Katelyn
Yes. I think an accurate way to ask that would be, how are you working through that, [Lee laughs] because this is very much a live question for me, and truthfully, a live tension in that, as you just articulated, you know, book authors want people to read their book. You know, you work on a message or an idea and a body of work that you wanna share with the world in hopes that it will help people, that it will connect so that it will shape heart and minds.
So it'd be weird to publish a book and then decide, I'm never gonna talk about it again 'cause I don't want to feed into celebrity dynamics. But I am very-- I, I try to be aware of motive, of kind of interior [00:38:00] examination of, why do I want people to read my book? Is it because, you know, I really believe in the message of it and want to help people? Or is it to sell a lot of copies to make money to get another book deal? Is it to get, you know, is this ultimately self-serving or other serving?
I do think some of this comes down to deliberate limits on social media. Just thinking about, okay, how much time am I spending in front of a screen versus how much time I'm spending with other people who don't, you know, they know that I write and speak and whatever, but that's not the, the basis of our friendship. They just wanna connect as friends, not as, like, let's scratch each other's backs, or...it's not transactional. So I, I think that, you know, as, as someone's public presence and persona, especially on the internet increases, [00:39:00] how much more it is important to deliberately choose embodied, in-person connection, community in comparison to whatever you're getting from the screen, whatever that is feeding in you.
Lee Camp
That reminds me of a distinction I make, that I learned from Alasdair MacIntyre, with my students of-- he, he speaks of internal goods of a practice and external goods, and that the, you know, the internal goods, say, of being a writer, or books and publishing is, as you said, you wanna write well, you wanna learn to write well, continue to learn to practice the craft better and better in a community of writers, and so forth. And be producing, writing things that, to use your language, changes hearts and minds, makes a contribution to the world, and so forth.
Whereas the external goods would be things like publishers that help facilitate the publishing of books. It would be a platform, it would be the [00:40:00] money that has to be involved in producing books, and so forth. And so he, he suggests that a way to think about the corruption of a practice is when we pursue external goods as an end in and of themselves, rather than seeing them as a means to an end. And once you pursue those as an end in and of themselves, you've corrupted the practice, which I think is just terribly, terribly helpful, right.
It's, it's a sort of-- at, at some point people have to know about some stuff if, if I'm gonna get a book out there. But once I start pursuing that as an end in and of itself, I've immediately corrupted the practice, or at least have to rectify my, my motive and intentions. But thoughts on that?
Katelyn
Well, I think that's a helpful framework even for thinking about, again, going back to this kind of fame versus celebrity, celebrity being an external good that is pursued in and of itself, rather than a means to an end. Rather than, okay, yes my platform might grow, but that's not the point. That's not why I am teaching or preaching or speaking. It [00:41:00] is to shape heart and minds - that's the internal good.
And I think I wanna say that over time, and this is true probably for a lot of internal goods, is that we lose sight of them, you know? And over time, the external goods start to become the main thing. And that's where we go, that's where we go wrong, and that's where our good works in the world are corrupted.
Lee Camp
Yeah.
So in your, in your closing, you just kind of point us back to several practices as-- not, not a program of reform, but potential practices of antidote. One being the hiddenness of holiness, or I like your pointing me again to Henri Nouwen's integrity, humility, simplicity. So tell us a little bit more about those.
Katelyn
Yeah. Well, I, I should start by saying, I recognize that Celebrities for Jesus is mostly a book of diagnosis.
And when it comes to the final chapter, where I try to hint at [00:42:00] possible solutions, that is not my forte as a journalist.
[Both laugh]
I'm, I'm, I'm better at telling you what's wrong, than, um, trying to fix a problem. And even here, you know, thinking about Nouwen's work around integrity, humility, and simplicity.... Nouwen of course, you know, he wasn't reinventing the wheel. He was recapturing and reintroducing classical Christian concepts and spiritual disciplines of a life of holiness. So in that regard, I felt like my job in this last portion of the book is really just to point to what other people have said, because I don't think I can say it better than people like Nouwen or Stanley Hauerwas or Thomas Merton, Dallas Willard, some of the great-- you know, Eugene Peterson...just, you know, the end of the book should just be like, go read Eugene Peterson's books.
Lee Camp
Katelyn
Um, but integrity - you know, who you are behind closed doors is who you are in public, and you [00:43:00] seek a, an interior integration of the self to stave off a kind of duplicity or deception of other people.
Humility. This seems like a, an obvious antidote to the problem of celebrity - thinking, not less of yourself, not self-flagellating, but thinking of yourself less. And there, I'm just riffing on C.S. Lewis and Tim Keller. Humility, too, is connected to, like, the word 'human', which is connected to the word 'ground', which I think again brings us back to the primacy of in-person, tangible, like keeping grounded in our day-to-day embodied lives, over and against whatever our digital worlds want to take us out of, right?
Simplicity. I write in the book about finances. Uh, you know, there-- and I could have said [00:44:00] a lot more, but obviously, in following the spirit of Christ and so much of the church's witness over the years, seeking to live lives of simplicity so that we have more to give others. Seeking not to draw attention to ourselves or impress others with what we have, but seeking to bless others with what we've been given. Understanding that everything we have is a gift from God.
Lee Camp
Yes, very helpful, and a lifetime of challenge in those three in there. You also point us to the practice of friendship in a interview that you did with Andy Crouch. I, I love this line from Andy where he said, "We're meant to have people in our lives who are so close to us that nothing can impress them and nothing can shock them", which is a, a beautiful form of accountability, I think.
But, uh, any other commentary on friendship?
Katelyn
Yeah. Well, I'm so grateful for that insight from Andy, and [00:45:00] it's, it surprised me when I asked him about antidotes. I wouldn't have thought, I mean, yes accountability. We all know, you know, leaders need more accountability than they have. And we all need to kind of welcome accountability in our lives.
But, I think even going beyond that, you know, accountability can still sound like a transactional kind of relationship, whereas the, the whole-- the, the essence of friendship is that it is - of, of true friendship, I would say - is that it is non-transactional. That regardless of whether your star rises or falls, regardless of what you can give to this other person, or how the attachment could benefit each other, you're committed to each other for the long haul.
And, you know, we're in a time where we all sense we need more friends, we need more friendships, we need to cultivate more friendships. We want to cultivate the kind of friendships that will last a lifetime, where there are people who will show up at the end of our lives, [00:46:00] regardless of whether our path has been great or a spectacular failure, who are, who are committed to us in the way that that God is committed to us, and who can, who can see beyond any potential hype. You know, I think we all need people who are like, yeah, but I know you and I've seen you in some really dark places and I know that what you're posting on social media isn't the full picture, so like, let's be honest and let's be transparent with each other, because in that place of being honest about both our strengths and weaknesses, our limitations, our doubts, that's transformative, to be-- to show up in that place and find that you are loved and accepted regardless of where you are.
Lee Camp
Yeah. You close, uh, your last few chapters of the book with a synopsis of George Eliot's Middlemarch in a beautiful passage. I was wondering if you might, um, summarize that for us and close us out with that passage. [00:47:00]
Katelyn
Yes. Well, I decided to read Middlemarch at the beginning of the pandemic. It took me three months. This is not a light read, but it is a beautiful read. It's really the story of a woman named Dorothea Brooke, who starts her life with very lofty ideals about the kind of Christian life that she is going to live. She's attached to Teresa of Avila, she wants to be a kind of modern Teresa of Avila, and then through a series of rather unfortunate life choices, [laughs] um, she finds herself, you know, married to an unsuitable man and then eventually a widow, and having to navigate all sorts of complicated social dynamics in her, in her life. And over time, you know, that early passion and all those early ideals give way to an embrace [00:48:00] of a life of ordinary faithfulness, to, to a life of friendship with the people she's most intimately connected with.
And George Eliot is saying, this is, this is what keeps the world going, is people like Dorothea who are committed to ordinary practices of common goodness. And the final passage of Middlemarch is just, I just think it's the best ending of a book I've ever read.
Eliot writes, 'Dorothea's full nature spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth, but the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive. For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.'[00:49:00]
And I just, I have that vision of a hidden life, and that call to embrace a life of faithfulness that no one may ever notice or see. But believing that those acts actually keep the world running.
Lee Camp
Katelyn
We can't see their effects now, but perhaps we will...
Lee Camp
Katelyn
...in eternity. And can we be okay with that kind of life? [Laughs]
Can we be okay with the life of ordinary hidden faithfulness? And I think, here, that's the challenge for all of us, not just for the people on stage or with big platforms. It's for all of us. Can we embrace the ordinary and the hidden?
Lee Camp
We've been talking to journalist, editor, and writer, Katelyn Beaty on her new book, [00:50:00] Celebrities for Jesus.
Thanks so much, Katelyn, for your time and your, your good work in the world.
Katelyn
Thanks so much for your time and good conversation, Lee.
Lee Camp
You've been listening to No Small Endeavor and our interview with Katelyn Beaty. If you liked today's episode, make sure to check out her book, Celebrities for Jesus, as well as Katelyn's podcast Saved by the City.
The end of our conversation there evokes mention of the brilliant Terrence Malick film, A Hidden Life, which ends with that same line from George Eliot's Middlemarch. It's a deep meditation on integrity, humility, and simplicity about an Austrian conscientious objector who refuses to fight for the Nazis in World War II. I commend it for your consideration.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of Lilly Endowment Incorporated, a private philanthropic foundation supporting the causes of community development, education, and religion, and the support of the John Templeton Foundation, whose vision is to become a global catalyst for discoveries that contribute to human flourishing.
Alright, thanks to all the stellar team that makes this show possible. Christie Bragg, Jakob Lewis, Sophie Byard, Tom Anderson, Kate Hays, Cariad Harmon, and Tim Lauer.
Thanks for listening, and let's keep exploring what it means to live a good life, together.
No Small Endeavor is a production of Tokens Media, LLC, and Great Feeling Studio