Jennifer McKinney's book is called Making Christianity Manly Again: Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church, and American Evangelicalism
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/making-christianity-manly-again-9780197655795?cc=us&lang=en&
I've picked it up and will start reading it. I must confess that, having written as much as I have about Mars Hill since maybe 2008 or so, I am not sure I'm going to see anything new in McKinney's book. What's more I attended the little school by the canal and got a journalism degree there.
I must confess I'm not holding my breath thinking there's going to be anything new in this book. In fact I find the likelihood that it will have anything new to say compared to earlier works to be somewhere close to zero.
I do want to take a moment to mention it because I'll be reading it and because I've got a list of stuff I've already that is thematically or directly related to Mars Hill Church that i do recommend. I don't anticipate McKinney's book being a bad book but I'm about to share a list of books or dissertations I've read so far that touch on Mars Hill that will explain, I trust, why I don't anticipate any surprises in the new OUP volume. Books and thoughts on them after the break:
For a discussion of the musical culture of Mars Hill Church, or at least the punk/indie-rock aspect of it, read the following.
"Punk Rock Calvinists Who Hate the Modern Worship Movement": Ritual, Power, and
White Masculinity in Mars Hill Church's Worship Music
There's no mention of the earlier period in which Brad Currah was more involved and that part of early Mars Hill musical history may remain a black box for a while. You would not know from the dissertation that there were any people interested in classical music in the Mars Hill orbit but you can take it from Wenatchee The Hatchet people like that were part of Mars Hill. What I appreciate about Haynes Marchesini's dissertation was her discussion of attempts to develop a hip-hop musical culture within Mars Hill and how that got snubbed. Hip hop and contemporary classical music were not a "fit" for the DIY indie-rock/punk aesthetic of Mars Hill. Given what I had read and heard about how bands had to buy back their own IP rights in the wake of the demise of Mars Hill anyone whose music was snubbed by the powers that be at Mars Hill may have actually been better off for the snub! You dodged a bullet there, fellow musicians, it may just have not seemed that way at the time.
Jessica Johnson's Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll's Evangelical Empire has sometimes been described as "the" book about Mars Hill among former Mars Hill people. Johnson has never described it that way herself and I would say it is "a" book about Mars Hill and it's definitely the first book that dealt with Mars Hill that I thought was truly worth reading. It's an academic book but it has been the touchstone work addressing Driscoll's use of rhetoric and scripts of masculinity and femininity that I consider the best work on Mars Hill so far. I have complained about the implausible scripts of adulthood Driscoll shilled from the pulpit and Johnson's book has not been bettered on the nuts and bolts not only of how Driscoll wielded his message but how the other leaders within Mars Hill deployed the context of Gulf War II and cultural crisis as a way to furnish the scripts of adulthood with heft.
If you're read Johnson's book then you already know I thought enough of her work and scholarship that I gave her permission to quote me in Biblical Porn. I have to date not encountered other authors as careful or studious in chronicling Mars Hill as Johnson in academic publishing.
Which roundaboutly leads me to say this ... don't bother with Dale E Soden's Outsiders in a Promised Land: Religious Activists in Pacific Northwest History, I'm afraid, if you want to read about Mars Hill. While it was a fun and informative survey of religious activism among religious practitioners in the Pacific Northwest in general I found it wanting at best when dealing with Mars Hill in particular. I'm not saying don't read it, just don't read it for Mars Hill stuff.
For a pretty solid if Captain Obvious overview of Mars Hill as a subset of the New Calvinism I recommend the spendy but informative book by Brad Vermurlen, Reformed Resurgence: The New Calvinist Movement and the Battle Over American Evangelicalism. There has been so much misinformation and shoddy work done about Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill in press coverage and punditry that the bar for Vermurlen was, for me, making sure that there was nothing egregiously inaccurate.
His proposal that the very emergence of New Calvinist signaled how fractious and fractured evangelicalism has been is an interesting idea. If evangelicalism 1.0 had actually been "working" the Mark Driscoll of the New Calvinism wouldn't have been appealing. Vermurlen's other point may be more contentious, that the influence of New Calvinism is paradoxically real but in many ways confined to a self-affirming hype machine. I.e. they think they're famous and game-changing but it's a matter of platform cultivation and media empire building more than a feat of actually making new disciples. So I'd put Vermurlen's book second after Jessica Johnson's book in terms of "must read". An anthropological and a sociological survey of Mars Hill and New Calvinism respectively, these two books are the biggest reasons I have little confidence the newest OUP entry will have anything new to say.
The third book that I'd say is a "must read" will seem out of left field. Crawford Gribben's Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest is a must read despite his never mentioning Mars Hill. The reason is because he charted the evolution of Doug Wilson's brand and fiefdom and during a critical period in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Mark Driscoll had that calling experience praying by an Idaho river. In other words, Mark Driscoll's conversion and calling experiences are explicable within the context of the American Redoubt and if you don't know what that is you should find out. Much punditry attempting to make sense of the newer movements that are religious right are just catching up to the kind of work Crawford Gribben has been doing on millenarian utopianists over the last twenty years.
For a discussion of Christian celebrity and its largely deleterious influence see Katelyn Beaty's Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church
Len Oakes' Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities
There is no substitute for having familiarized yourself with Mark Driscoll's books. This is, in the end, one of the problems with Mike Cosper's sprawling podcast series The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, he did not seem to have actually read many of Driscoll's books. I assure you there are far more fun things to do. I'd rather be reading Ephraim Radner, John Neville Figgis, Emil Brunner, Richard Sibbes, Richard Hooker, Christopher Heilig and going through more books on music theory than to have kept abreast of Mark Driscoll's Charisma House era publications but if you don't know what he was claiming in Spirit-Filled Jesus, Win Your War or Pray Like Jesus then you won't know if he has made any claims in those books or post 2014 interviews about his departure from Mars Hill that are ... very difficult ... to coherently reconcile with all previous primary source accounts of his resignation.
So I do have the new OUP book and I will read it. How soon I'll write about it remains to be seen but this wouldn't be Wenatchee The Hatchet if I didn't try to give you a run-down on the book so far that tackle Mars Hill, Mark Driscoll and related topics that I think are helpful so far.
It's only half a dozen books or so.
6 comments:
I need to read Jessica Johnson's Biblical Porn book.
I really do.
I am listening to an interview with her on the Dangerous Dogma Podcast right now.
But there is still that part of me that is asking, 'How re-involved do I really want to be in this Mark Driscoll Schtuff?" I have a life to live that has nothing to do with him and his B.S. How much more of my life do I want to waste on him?
So part of me wants to read it, part of me isn't sure I'm ready for that deep dive. Not when I have so much else going on.
While you may likely want to postpone reading Biblical Porn until a later time I would say that in the years since Mars Hill collapsed Johnson's book is the only book published about Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll that I regard as a "must read". She spent a few years attending and participating in activities as part of her anthropological work. She has put her cards on the table and I regarded her work and honesty as impeccable so I gave her permission to quote me and we discussed my time at Mars Hill in person. You can guess how many people I've stonewalled on those kinds of issues. ;)
At this point the burden is on anyone coming after Johnson's book to prove they have anything to say by way of anthropology or social observation about Markulinity that she didn't already say perfectly well the first time.
I gotta admit I'm not really anticipating much new or interesting stuff from the new OUP entry so far. While OUP has published some exciting work on formal analysis in music theory in the last fifteen years on the topic of sociological and anthropological takes on religion I'm far, far less impressed with their out put. Even Gribben's magnificent book is light reading compare to some killer work he did in smaller press books on the evolution of millennialism in Puritan thought.
Okay, I broke down. I ordered the book last night.
I should get it shortly. Johnson mentioned in her interview that she goes over parts of the peasant princess series, another place where Driscoll just makes Schtuff up. Thinking of your post about Driscoll making false claims in "Pray Like Jesus."
But I rewarded myself by buying another book that has nothing to do with Driscoll.
"When the Drummers Were Women" by Layne Redmond. Yes, I've actually used videos from Redmond at my work for our female 'at risk' youth to encourage them that drums are not just for boys. Music and learning about it can be therapeutic and helps to wash the nasty Driscoll taste out of the mouth.
The McKinney book is, I'm afraid, off to a very unpromising start. Stick with the Johnson book in terms of reading.
Just finished the Intro to Johnson's book.
You are right. It is very good. Worth the money and time reading so far.
Belatedly, now that I've read the McKinney i'd say skip it. Johnson's book is the more substantial work and significantly better documented.
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