One of the discussions that came up in a few places last week after the whole controversy with Rob Bell was about how we do theology. I was having coffee with a good friend last week and we were talking a bit about the continued influence of celebrity culture on the church, particularly on how theology is done in this context. Both of us, having gone through seminary, recalled that often young people would come to seminary and their bookshelves would be lined with the books from many of these evangelical celebrities. All their theological formation up to that point would be from the influence of these celebrities.

This is not all bad, of course. Many of these leaders say good, biblical things worth knowing and remembering. There are a number of points to consider, though, if the act of doing theology is limited to seeking answers from a few of the celebrities we consider worth listening to. With the Rob Bell controversy, this became especially poignant as many lashed out and condemned Bell before actually reading his book, following in the unwise footsteps (in this particular case) of their leaders. They were praising the theological insights of these leaders to a set of theological questions that the leaders had preempted or misconstrued, or in some cases were not even aware of.

So what of this celebrity theology, then? I think there are a few characteristics that make this problematic if it is your sole source for theological formation. In the first place, it often lacks historical consciousness. Many of the leaders who write theological books often do so without much consideration of what has been written in the past on the subject. Reference will be made to the theological heavyweights of the golden age of the church – Calvin, Edwards, maybe a passing mention of Augustine – but for the most part, there is a disconnect with the past.

Really, this is symptomatic of the evangelical church at large. I was looking at a book some time ago by one of the celebrity leaders and throughout the course of the book, almost every single one of the hundreds and hundreds of footnotes was a Scripture reference. It is rather clever to do this, of course, because it gives the appearance of biblical fidelity (and I'm sure that much of the time, it was). But the problem here is that the theology in the book is not particularly original. Nonetheless, the followers, because of the lack of references to theologians of the past, understand it as entirely novel. And so this leader gets celebrated all the more for his theological and biblical insight.

Connected to this is a lack of independent thinking, both on the part of the leaders and followers. In April of last year, Brett McCracken had a very interesting piece in Christianity Today comparing the Together for the Gospel Conference and the Wheaton Conference, which were held days apart not too far from each other. He made the point that at Wheaton, there was serious wrestling being done with big theological questions, while T4G seemed 'more like a club patting each other on the back for their mutual buttressing of the "unadjusted gospel" against threats from various corners.' Perhaps that conclusion is a bit unfair, but I think he makes an important point. It is right, I think, to be wary of theological inventiveness, especially if you are doing so just for the sake of being original, but if all you are doing is applauding the slogans of your own team are you really even doing theology?

Since their leaders are not thinking independently and originally, neither do the followers. I can't remember how many times I have been in conversation with people who have answered a theological question by saying, 'Well, Celebrity Pastor A says this,' or 'I disagree because Celebrity Leader B doesn't see it that way.' It may very well be that A and B have it right in response to the issue at hand, but the follower has merely ingested the thought of the leader instead of exploring the question himself, thoughtfully and biblically. There is certainly a case to be made for relying on the church as your guide as you do theology, but it is also of profound importance to explore these questions in Scripture.

Third, if a person's theological formation is limited to what is gleaned from the celebrity leaders, it often has a very limited scope of focus. In part, this is due to the limited focus of the leaders themselves. Since the leaders, due to their celebrity status, find themselves increasingly separated from the local church, they turn their focus to theological issues that they perceive to be major problems in the wider church. It is no secret which issues have occupied many of these leaders in recent years – justification, penal substitution, now universalism, and so on. While these issues are certainly worthy of attention, they become focused on so exclusively that the theological vision of the leaders and followers becomes increasingly narrow. I have been openly critical of the whole gospel tweeting phenomenon before, in part because I think it is representative of this narrow theological focus. There are a lot of other issues out there that need to be thought about theologically, but attention is often diverted from these because they are not understood as pressing theological matters.

My next post will turn to focus on the idea of doing theology locally, and understanding theological formation as something that happens in communally. For now I just wanted to lay these thoughts out there as a way of prefacing the forthcoming discussion. In the meantime, what do you think? What are your observations regarding the influence of celebrity leaders on theological formation?