Actor Gene Hackman and his wife found dead in their home

Gene Hackman, the two-time Oscar-winning actor, and his wife, classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, were found dead yesterday afternoon in their New Mexico home. Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza reported just after midnight Thursday that the couple had died along with their dog. He said there was no immediate indication of foul play, though he did not provide a cause of death or say when the couple might have died.

Celebrities make the news daily. It can be tragic news, such as the death of actress Michelle Trachtenberg at the age of thirty-nine. It can be good news, such as late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s update on his son Billy’s third open-heart surgery, saying the seven-year-old is now “in perfect health.”

It can even be mundane news: Kansas City Chiefs star quarterback Patrick Mahomes got a new hairstyle after his team lost the Super Bowl. And famed Chiefs tight end (who’s even more famous for his girlfriend) Travis Kelce shaved his beard after the loss.

What makes celebrities so famous (despite the obvious fact that they are by definition)?

One factor is our desire to look up to authority figures. This is good when we’re being protected and mentored by our parents or other people in positions to benefit us. However, the explosion of social media, coupled with a decline in religious interest, has made celebrities the new authority figures for many.

In addition, celebrities serve as aspirational heroes for those who see them as successful and wish to emulate and imitate them as a result. And there’s a bit of escapism in celebrity culture today: following their lives can relieve the monotony and stress of ours.

Has the decline of Christianity in the US “leveled off”?

By now you’re perhaps wondering what any of this has to do with an article that is supposed to discuss cultural issues in the context of spiritual truth. For the answer, let’s turn to good news on spirituality that may not be as good as it seems.

Pew Research Center has just published a study that is generating headlines this morning. Titled “Decline of Christianity in the US Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off,” it reports that the Christian share of the US population has stabilized after years of decline, increasing from 62 percent to 63 percent (though down from 79 percent in 2007).

In addition, large majorities of us say we have a spiritual or supernatural outlook on the world. Quoting from the report:

• 86 percent believe people have a soul or spirit in addition to their physical body.
• 83 percent believe in God or a universal spirit.
• 79 percent believe there is something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we can’t see it.
• 70 percent believe in an afterlife (heaven, hell, or both).

Here’s what bothers me: Many “spiritual” Americans treat God like another celebrity. We view him as an authority figure and see Jesus as an aspirational hero we want to emulate.

But all of this spirituality is on our terms.

No one forces us to go to movies or otherwise pay attention to the celebrities of our day. We do so only when we think doing so will be to our benefit. It is much the same for much of American Christianity. We separate the spiritual from the secular and religion from the “real world.” We are spiritual to the degree that spirituality benefits us and not when it does not.

In a day when only 22 percent of Americans are satisfied with our nation’s “moral and ethical climate,” how’s this working for us?

“An aspirational desire for tolerance of everything”

In their new book The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, technology billionaire Alexander C. Karp and his deputy Nicholas W. Zamiska lament:

A significant subset of our leaders, elected and otherwise, both teach and are taught that belief itself is the enemy and that a lack of belief in anything, except oneself perhaps, is the most certain path to reward. The result is a culture in which those responsible for making our most consequential decisions—in any number of public domains, including government, industry, and academia—are often unsure of what their own beliefs are, or more fundamentally if they have any firm or authentic beliefs at all.

They warn that this “abandonment of belief” has “left us unable to confront issues with moral clarity.”

Karp and Zamiska trace our secularism to Sigmund Freud’s depreciation of religion and especially to those in elite universities who have conflated belief in objective truth with “colonial” oppression (they particularly cite Edward Said’s very influential book 1978 book Orientalism). Then they show that communal commitment to the common good has been replaced by what Michael Sandel of Harvard describes as “market triumphalism”—we work not to improve the nation but our corporate and personal bottom line.

As a result, “An aspirational desire for tolerance of everything has descended into support of nothing.”

Their theme seems like something a Christian philosopher like me would write, doesn’t it? But even secular publishers like Penguin Random House can recognize our need for “moral clarity” and the consequences when it is abandoned.

“When they saw the boldness of Peter and John”

“Spirituality” on our terms is not enough. Treating God like a celebrity we can follow as we wish is not enough.

What every human soul needs is the relationship for which we were created with the God who created us. Nothing less than intimacy with the living Lord Jesus can transform us into the Christlike people our fallen society needs us to be.

In words that serve as a thoughtful critique of our celebrity culture, the British writer Nick Hornby noted:

“It’s not what you like but what you are like that’s important.”

I would amend his assertion to read, “It’s who you are like that’s important.”

For example: “When they saw the boldness of Peter and John . . . they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).

Will someone be “astonished” by you today?

Quote for the day:

“By opening our lives to God in Christ, we become new creatures. This experience, which Jesus spoke of as the new birth, is essential if we are to be transformed nonconformists. . . . Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.” —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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