"Christian Pop Culture": An Oxymoron?

I recently posted on the sad state of Christian Pop music, and I was thrilled to get a handful of like-minded responses as well as a string of great suggestions on good bands. One of the comments was from Kenny:

I think that the problem is just about "Christian pop culture" (a contradiction in terms) and how this culture demands that everything be watered down into the Prayer of Jabez and the Purpose Driven Life and can't deal with any real content. It doesn't encourage artists to show their struggles. It also allows artists to become popular without really being any good musically.

I think he is right on the dot with this insight. I think there are some productive ways of thinking about the phrase “Christian pop culture” as being an oxymoron. What kind of traits and virtues does pop culture provoke in general?

Pop culture, the kind we encounter in grocery lines, on TV, and in the movie theatre rewards things like: fame for fame’s sake, shallow thinking, sound-byte discussion, herd mentality, concupiscence, covetousness, lust, influence as an automatic result of fame, gluttony, relatively blind obedience, style over substance, historical myopia, age discrimination (no respect for elders), and so on.

None of which are compatible with a Christian worldview. So what are we doing to our Christian culture if we inject into it things like Christian celebrities and protean Christian niche markets? Well, one result many of us seem to agree upon is that it makes Christian music fairly one-dimensional and pathetic.

And what in the world does it mean to our culture to have Christian celebrities? Do they command the same kind of following that movie or TV clebs command? Doesn’t being a celebrity automatically demand you exude a certain amount of pride and/or arrogance? And if you were a humble person, wouldn’t your celebrity status demand a certain amount of pride?

Anyway, just a handful of thoughts.