An apostle to the hip: these are the anti-megachurches.I admit that I am not the most up-to-the-minute, in-touch, cutting-edge sort of guy these days. We haven't had cable TV at home for 10 years. We've given away two satellite dishes that came with our houses. And high-speed Internet See broadband. still hasn't reached my hilltop. For instance, I know that the Sundance Channel for independent film exists, but I've never actually seen it. So when I turned on the car radio in the middle of a World Cafe This article is about the radio program. For the World Cafe communications process and community, see The World Cafe. World Cafe is a two-hour long nationally syndicated music radio program that originates from WXPN, a non-commercial station on the campus interview with someone named "Jay Baker," I searched my brain to find an association with the name. Whoever he was, this Jay fellow was being interviewed about his version of Christianity and the music that helped inspire it. And he had really good musical taste. At his request, Cafe host David Dye spun "I Do Believe" by Waylon Jennings Waylon Arnold Jennings (June 15 1937 – February 13 2002) was a respected and influential American country music singer and musician. A self-taught guitar player, he rose to prominence as a bass player for Buddy Holly following the break-up of The Crickets. , Johnny Cash's recording of "Sunday Morning Sunday Morning may refer to:
Then, a couple of weeks later, there he was again, in one of my other windows on the world For the theme park in Shenzhen, China, see Window of the World. For the novel by Frederic Beigbeder, see Windows on the World (novel). Windows on the World was an elegant restaurant and adjoining bar that operated between 1976 and September 11, 2001 in New York City , the celebrity gossip page of that magazine that comes with the Sunday paper Sunday paper n → (periódico) dominical m Sunday paper n → journal m du dimanche . And it all clicked. The guy's name was Bakker--as in disgraced televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye. Now, like the rest of America, I had some rethinking to do about that infamous family. Turns out Jim and Tammy's little boy grew up to get lots of tattoos and body piercings, lead a "come-as-you-are" storefront church for postpunkers, and become the subject of One Punk Under God One Punk Under God is an original observational documentary that airs on the Sundance Channel. It focuses on the life of Jay Bakker, only son of Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Messner (formerly Bakker), formerly evangelical ministers and hosts of The PTL Club. , a six-part documentary series on Sundance. The series ran in December and January and made 31-year-old Jay a celebrity in his own right. AS ALL BUT MY youngest readers know, Jay's parents were Christian media superstars of an age past. Their PTL PTL Praise The Lord PTL Preterm Labor PTL Parent Teacher League PTL Pedro the Lion (band) PTL Pass The Loot PTL Photovoltaic Testing Laboratory (Arizona State University) Club (short for "Praise the Lord") was a fundamentalist hybrid of Johnny Carson
The rest of the tale is in young Bakker's book, Son of a Preacher Man (reviewed in Sojourners, September-October 2001) and in the Sundance series. Bakker has become founder of a mini-chain of three "Revolution" churches (in Atlanta, Charlotte, and New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. ) that meet in bars and minister to searching, alienated members of Generations X, Y, and Z. "Church for people who've given up on church" is their pitch line. These are anti-megachurches. They are deliberately small and scruffy and low-key. And, far from cultivating big conservative Christian donors, Jay Bakker has deliberately alienated them, most notably by accepting gays and lesbians into his faith community, just as they are. Despite his black garb and extensive body art, Bakker comes off on TV and in his sermons (audio available at revolutionnyc.com) as a humble, self-deprecating guy--even a bit of a fumbler but smart and serious beneath the surface. Still, he wouldn't be a public figure if it weren't for his infamous family background. So, believe it or not, good has finally emerged from the PTL debacle. Jay Bakker is actually helping give Christianity a good name in some very unlikely places. Danny Duncan Collum, a Sojourners contributing writer, teaches writing at Kentucky State University Kentucky State University (KSU, or less commonly, KYSU, to differentiate from Kansas State University) is a four-year institution of higher learning, located in Frankfort, Kentucky, the Commonwealth's capital. in Frankfort. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion