RT Article
T1 Cool Christianity: The Fashion-Celebrity-Megachurch Industrial Complex
JF Material religion
VO 17
IS 5
SP 580
OP 602
A1 Rocha, Cristina
LA English
PB Taylor & Francis
YR 2021
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1780259875
AB In this article, I analyze the ways in which fashion, megachurches, and celebrity and youth cultures coalesce in the 21st century, giving rise to the phenomenon of “Cool Christianity.” I contend that this repackaged Christianity, directed at the middle-class Millennials and Generation Z, is created not only by megachurches in a bid to attract new generations, as it is usually argued. It is also produced by celebrities, the fashion industry, and young Christian entrepreneurs. I argue that this assemblage of different elements generates a “Fashion-Celebrity-Megachurch industrial complex” that makes Christianity attractive to middle-class youth who do not find a home in more conservative churches that reject youth cultures. I show that this industrial complex creates an “aesthetic formation” that bonds and binds particularly young people as they transition into adulthood. I also demonstrate that because Cool Christianity is a relatively new aesthetic style, it becomes highly visible and needs to be negotiated with older styles of Christianity. This paper draws on six years of multi-sited fieldwork with the Australian megachurch Hillsong in Australia and Brazil, and monitoring and analyzing media reports on this church, its many social media accounts, and how followers interacted with them.
K1 aesthetic formations
K1 youth cultures
K1 Megachurches
K1 Celebrities
K1 Fashion
K1 Hillsong
DO 10.1080/17432200.2021.1996942