Summary: Christian Influence On Popular Culture

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Pages: 5

Effective and Relevant
Throughout history humans have had a fascination with entertainment. This fact has displayed itself over and over again in many different forms. From gladiatorial games to football and cave paintings to the cinema, people have always valued entertainment. But people value entertainment too much. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average person spends upwards of five hours a day on entertainment of some kind (BLS, 2014). With such an expenditure of time one might assume that entertainment plays a major role in the way people think and act. Entertainment does, in one way or another, affect the people participating in it. The media holds a prominent place in the entertainment industry as well as the news industry. Sociologist James Henslin gives mass media role of “disseminating information, reporting events, and molding public opinion” (Henslin, 2010 p. 130). With the rising prevalence of media in recent years it has become the most
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Journalist Mary Hess states, “What people know and think about the Bible today is just as likely to come from popular culture references as from the book itself” (Hess, 2014). It becomes of utmost importance, then, that Christians engage popular culture. The residual impact of Christian influence in the future will reflect the effort Christians put into engaging society in the present.
Proceed with Caution
Culture is plagued with fallacies and ambiguity and by appealing to the trendy and inconsistent nature of popular culture Christians may fall into the same pit of inconsistency. Billy Kangas of Relevant Magazine writes concerning the Church,
“By emulating culture people begin to see Jesus primarily through the lens of materialism and pop-culture, both of which by their very nature are constantly in flux. As a