Looking Into Our Parallel Universe: An Interview With Daniel Radosh

I feel like it should be mentioned up front that Daniel Radosh was an editor at my favorite magazine of all time – Spy - and last year joined the staff of what is becoming one of my favorite TV shows of all time – The Daily Show.  With a bio that includes those powerhouses of sarcastic, pointed comedy, when I saw Radosh was taking on the world of Christian pop culture, I was a little frightened.  Like any subculture, I prefer to be the one making fun of the embarrassing aspects of our little bubble, instead of someone on the outside, like Radosh with his Jewish background and current religious indifference.  When Rapture Ready hit bookstores, I realized I should have had more confidence in Radosh’s sensibilities; the book does take on some of the low hanging fruit of evangelical culture (Bibleman, Christian wrestling and the oddly bearded creationist Ken Ham), but also gives fair consideration to why we’ve created a parallel existence to begin with.  Plus, the book is often hilariously funny while being insightful.

Rapture Ready is now available in cost-conscious paperback, so I talked to Radosh about the book and how writing it affected his view of Christianity.  Also, as a bonus for those of you who actually bothered to read this introductory paragraph, Radosh is giving away a limited edition of a soundtrack he compiled while on his Christian pop culture journey, with tracks by genre pioneers like Larry Norman and Bob Dylan, obscure geniuses of the eighties and nineties like Undercover, Over the Rhine and the 77′s, and current acts like mewithoutyou and Underoath. To win, send an email to music[add that at sign here]burnsidewriters[dot]com with the name of your favorite Christian rock track of all time.  One winner will be selected, and it’ll probably be someone who mentions a 77′s or Daniel Amos song, just so you know.  Entries must be received by 11:59 pm, Saturday, April 3rd.

Now, the interview with Daniel Radosh.

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Dan Gibson:  Even though I was familiar with your writing before I read Rapture Ready and expected that you’d be fair, I was still pleasantly surprised that your book was a mix of pointing out the absurdities of Christian culture and trying to actually understand the reasons behind the good and bad.  Were you surprised by what you found during your journey through the world of Evangelicalism, for better or worse?

Daniel Radosh:  Thanks. I definitely didn’t shy away from criticizing and sometimes mocking things like gospel golf balls and Christian pro wrestling. But even then I made a real effort to first understand what I was making fun of, and to explain why it doesn’t seem ridiculous to the people who embrace it. This was partly wanting to be fair, but also a genuine desire to learn about something I really didn’t get at first. Frequently that meant shutting up and getting out of the way.

And I think because I was willing to do that I was indeed constantly surprised by what I found, and largely for the better. I came away very impressed with a growing subset of people who are rejecting the stereotypical advertising jingles for Jesus or anodyne platitudes of praise and seeking to create genuine art within (and beyond) the context of the Christian subculture.

Radosh:  My interview with Aaron Weiss was excerpted by Utne Reader, and even if people don’t want to buy the book, I hope they’ll read this, because he’s got a message that really deserves to be heard. A lot of fans treat Aaron like a prophet, and maybe that’s not too far off. He lives in a way that serves as a rebuke to the rest of the church, even if it’s too radical for other people to fully emulate. I doubt we’ll ever see many Christians exactly like him, but I do think he’s the future in that he points in the direction that evangelicalism needs to head and is heading. The reason I’m cautiously optimistic about this is because his music is great. That’s not a coincidence. Most of the genuine art in the Christian scene is being created by the people who are most open-minded, tolerant, intellectually curious, and truly dedicated to the best of Jesus’s teachings. And because their art is so vital and so appealing, they influence evangelical culture in important ways.  They serve as a grass-roots antidote to the insularity and fundamentalism being imposed by the self-appointed leaders of the community.

I actually have noticed that in the last couple of years, the secular world no longer seems quite as clueless as it was (and as I was) when I first began my reporting. I think that’s partly a result of some of the trends I identified in the book, of more Christians escaping from the evangelical bubble.

Radosh:  Wow. Well, the top five media items for understanding the world in general would probably be pretty much the same for Christians and non-Christians and it’s way too big a task to undertake here — although interestingly at least some of them probably would be Christian of a sort (Fellini’s 8 1/2, Dylan’s Shelter from the Storm).  I met enough evangelicals who could quote those South Park and King of the Hill episodes about Christian rock to know that most do have a pretty good idea of how the secular world perceives them. I do wish more Christians would embrace the movie Saved, which I think is both pretty sharp satire and more affectionate and less offensive than its reputation among evangelicals suggests. Looking at this question from the reverse angle, I think by far the best secular media representation of evangelical life right now is the TV show Friday Night Lights which paints extremely nuanced portraits of all different kinds of believers and of religion as an integral part of the fabric of American life rather than as this separate thing to be spun off into its own subplot.

Radosh:  The publishing world hasn’t moved on at least. There’s an excellent new book called In the Land of Believers by Gina Welch, and last year we had Kevin Roose’s The Unlikely Disciple and Benyamin Cohen’s My Jesus Year. So really the problem my paperback faces is not lack of interest but more up-to-date competition. That’s a joke. All these books actually compliment each other. You should buy all of them.

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Daniel Radosh’s Rapture Ready is highly, highly recommended, and available in paperback now.  The book’s website can be found at getraptureready.com.  The Daily Show airs Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central, although I can’t imagine you didn’t know that by now, and as Daniel Radosh mentions “if you have a DVR and quick remote reflexes you can freeze-frame the credits and see my name.”  He’s also on Twitter.