Read the history of American celebrities backwards, and it will look something like this: Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Bono, Oprah, Prince, Cher, Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Hendrix, The Beatles, Mickey Mantle, and so on. And if you keep stepping back in history like this, you will eventually bump into America’s first celebrity — George Whitefield, who soon celebrates his 300th birthday.
The then-famous British preacher traveled to the colonies and single-handedly invented what we now call “the American celebrity culture.” Along the way, writes one biographer, Whitefield also invented “the celebrity preacher,” and what we now call “Christian media.”
Ever since Whitefield, the church has wrestled with what to do with her own celebrities. Should we embrace them as gifts from God, or reject them as products of the world? The question has been on the minds of Christians in the United States since before there were United States.
Read about several lessons we can learn to help guide us in thinking through how to properly respond to our Christian celebrities today from this article by Tony Reinke at DesiringGod.org.
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