https://www.bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/celebrities-for-jesus/406890/
Celebrities
for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms and Profits are Hurting the Church
Katelyn
Beaty
Brazos
Press a division of Baker Group
Copyright
(c) 2022 by Katelyn Beaty
ISBN
9781587435188
ISBN
9781493437030
ISBN
9781493437047
Celebrities for Jesus is a short read. I read it in a single day. Beaty’s central
thesis is that there are distinctions we should make between “fame” and
“celebrity” and that while the former has been around as long as human history
the latter is a recent innovation in parasocial relationships. There may be
readers who might propose that Jesus was a celebrity but this would be to
misunderstand celebrity. Beaty’s core
thesis seems clear and defensible enough but I couldn’t help thinking her
delineation of celebrity as the product of the mass media era and broadcast
journalism would have been substantially bolstered by reference to two books by
Jacques Ellul whose titles might be too obvious. The first would be Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes
and the second would be The New Demons.
