https://blog.ayjay.org/forgetting-and-propaganda/
Longtime readers most likely know how much I've drawn upon Jacques Ellul to explain things I observed at Mars Hill Church. Propaganda is certainly the main work I drew upon but The Politics of God and the Politics of Man has also proven useful, particularly when I relied on Ellul's work to propose that Mark Driscoll has not been a "King David" figure but a Jehu figure, a man who may have received some kind of divine commission at some point but swiftly transformed that moment into a blank check to do his own will--Ellul put it more starkly in claiming Jehu sought to do the will of God but everywhere used the methods of Satan. Of course I've also drawn upon Ellul's work to make a case that Mark Driscoll has never been a pastor or a shepherd in a traditional understanding of those terms but has been a propagandist. Ellul argued strenuously that contemporary (i.e. 20th century onward) evangelists were propagandists rather than traditional shepherds, pastors or priests who cared for the souls in their flocks and Ellul courted some controversy by singling out Billy Graham in The New Demons.
Longtime readers most likely know how much I've drawn upon Jacques Ellul to explain things I observed at Mars Hill Church. Propaganda is certainly the main work I drew upon but The Politics of God and the Politics of Man has also proven useful, particularly when I relied on Ellul's work to propose that Mark Driscoll has not been a "King David" figure but a Jehu figure, a man who may have received some kind of divine commission at some point but swiftly transformed that moment into a blank check to do his own will--Ellul put it more starkly in claiming Jehu sought to do the will of God but everywhere used the methods of Satan. Of course I've also drawn upon Ellul's work to make a case that Mark Driscoll has never been a pastor or a shepherd in a traditional understanding of those terms but has been a propagandist. Ellul argued strenuously that contemporary (i.e. 20th century onward) evangelists were propagandists rather than traditional shepherds, pastors or priests who cared for the souls in their flocks and Ellul courted some controversy by singling out Billy Graham in The New Demons.
Jacobs draws on Ellul's observation that propaganda depends on our innate tendency as humans to forget and the sheer speed of the news cycle to manipulate our responses so that we don't think about the headlines so much as viscerally react to them, to feel the news rather than think about it.
The excitement of Mars Hill going multi-site and multi-campus, for instance, could easily paper over the sheer debacle of the 50th street building purchase. Rather than try to dredge up all that history I'm including a tag to let you go down that rabbit hole if you're so inclined.
I know the CT series is continuing but the energy to tackle that is in short supply lately and there's other stuff going on but, I suppose, I can try to get back to it.
