CELEBRITY CULTURE
By John Drane
Rutherford House. 93 pages. £3.99
ISBN 1 904429 08 4
In reaching out to celebrities, millions of people long for their lives to be touched by ‘greatness’ and in so doing betray their own sense of insignificance and lostness as human beings.
It is with such ideas that John Drane stimulates us to consider the cult of celebrity which now dominates the Western world and increasingly beyond. Celebrities fulfil a social function in society. You can tell much about a society from the people it considers to be famous. Celebrities (for good or ill) act as role models, embodying the ideals of the masses and often become centres of unity and celebration for a nation.
The re-emergence of heavy shepherds
What would you think if you received a letter from your church leaders that read like this? ‘Are church members …