Is Christianity still popular nowadays? In school, if you are caught reading a Christian Magazine, you are considered uncool. mystical teachings has always profited from marketing efforts as it has benefited by being one of the rationales for colonization. So how does a Christian Magazine get attention?
I think it would be good to ask why Christianity seems so corny to most non-Christians (and some Christians) to begin with. When you say Christian, you conjure up prim and proper white suburb family wearing clean knitted vests and perennial smiles. One can’t help it. It’s not like that stereotypical image was formed out of the blue. Christian entertainment media and shows for the past two decades helped form those assumptions. Pick up an old Christian magazine and that is exactly the image you will see in the cover. Only recently, with popularization of Christian rock and whatnot is Christianity attempting to put on an edgier image. But the general stereotype has not yet been fully dispelled.
One can’t help it. It’s hard not to present an image of Christianity while putting the best foot forward. How can you? Sex, alcohol, and any rebellious attitude are frowned upon by Christianity. How can you inject humor in any entertainment medium that promotes Christianity? It’s very hard to come up with good clean jokes. Some people pull it off, but the material can easily dry up.
It seems the best way for Christian media to put on edginess is when it presents the lives of people before they found God or before they were reformed. This way, can touch on sex, drugs, and alcohol while driving at a Christian subject in the end. Another great way is to delve into the lives of famous, controversial, and prominent people who are also Christian. One such media, an online Christian magazine called Risen is able to do so.
The magazine includes interviews from celebrities probing them about their lives and how they live out their Christianity despite the complications. They have interviews from the likes of Mike Shinoda (from Linkin Park), Jay Adams (the Godfather of Skateboarding), and Anne Rice (famous writer of Interview with a Vampire). The interviews are quite interesting because these people, at first look, would not be thought of as Christians. In this regard, they have more in common with actual Christians as opposed to the cliché images presented to us by the media. They are just regular people who try to live out their lives within the moral code and spiritual height of Christ’s example.
