Reviewed by: Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll's Evangelical Empire by Jessica Johnson Judith Casselberry Jessica Johnson, Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll's Evangelical Empire. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018. 248 pp. Jessica Johnson has given us a fascinating, eye-opening, and somewhat horrifying ethnographic study of the rise and fall of Mark Driscoll's Seattle-based Mars Hill Church. Driscoll merged the aesthetics and technologies of white, hipster, secular, 1990s Seattle with hyper-masculinized Christianity to grow his evangelical empire. According to the Mars Hill Visitors' Guide, "The goal was to create a healthy body of believers in what was, at the time, the least-churched city in the least-churched state…[targeting] the least-churched demographic…college men and women in their late teens and early 20s" (22). Started in 1996 as a small Bible study and worship group, over the next 17 years, Mars Hill grew to 13,000 members distributed across 15 churches in five states before its implosion in 2014. While the Mars Hill goal of growth was realized for a time, Johnson's text reveals the ways in which the church not only failed "to create a healthy body of believers," but in fact left disillusioned, depressed, and spiritually abused (ex)members in its wake. Johnson links rhetorical and performative analysis of Driscoll's sermons, writings, and social media presence with affect theory to unmask the biopower and biopolitics that shaped members' (religious) conviction, sense of self, community, and leadership. The provocative title, Biblical Porn, speaks to "the affective labor of mediating, branding and embodying Driscoll's teaching on 'biblical' masculinity, femininity, and sexuality as a social imaginary, marketing strategy, and biopolitical instrument" (7). Johnson argues that Mars Hill promoted a "sexualized culture" (12) that was built on Driscoll's frequent and graphic references to sex in sermons and printed literature, as well as savvy use of social media to disseminate [End Page 937] teachings, create a brand, and entice members—through a "biopolitical technology of contagion" (12)—into participating in the labor of desire and conviction. Johnson likens entering Seattle's Mars Hill sanctuary to "walking into a nightclub" (25). The dimly lit, windowless, high-ceilinged former warehouse (complete with large projection screens) exuded a "cool ambience of expectancy" (25). The stage at one end—with a rock-band rhythm section set up—and a large sound and light board with two DJs positioned in the middle of the room enhanced the "extension of Saturday night" feeling (25). The predominately white, 20 and 30-something membership (with a high male attendance) appreciated a Christianity that engaged popular culture by welcoming tattooed, pierced, beer-drinking, indie music-listening folks to come and worship. Driscoll used the singles club ambiance to both titillate and instill fear in followers. Johnson astutely employs affect theory to illuminate the ways Driscoll melded the rhetorical and affective sphere of spiritual warfare with sexualized and militarized rhetoric and worldly imagery to create an environment of surveillance, self-policing, fear, shame, and guilt that relied on members' conscious and unconscious complicity for success. For example, posting members' confessions on large screens in the sanctuary "primed an atmosphere of combat readiness [against sin], circulating fear and animating a pornographic imaginary" (38). By focusing on masculinity, femininity, and sexuality, Driscoll and the entire church community became mediating forces in members' intimate selves and relationships. Central to Driscoll's mission was establishing his version of biblical masculinity (and by extension femininity), which was under threat from worldly forces. "Jesus was a dude…a carpenter…callouses on his hands…rugged, [not the] drag queen [with]…long hair…[in] a dress and open-toed sandals" (44). Jesus was manly and rugged, unsurprisingly similar to Driscoll's image. The church had to fight against a "pussified nation" (51) overrun by Satanic feminism (if only Adam had been man enough to not listen to Eve…). At the same time, men's uncontrollable (hetero and homo) sexual weakness of lustfulness, demonstrated by the sins of masturbation and consumption of porn, could only be fixed by good Christian wives always at the ready to service their husbands' every sexual desire. On the one hand...
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Oct 1, 2019
D Tarasov + 4
Open Access
