With each new megachurch leader flashed across national news for financial scandals, abuses and promiscuity, it is easy to become skeptical of evangelicalism entirely. But what causes dynamic pastors to abuse their power? And what can churches do to hold them accountable?  

On a recent episode of the Biblical Mind podcast hosted by Dr. Dru Johnson and the Center for Hebraic Thought, Katelyn Beaty, author of “Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church” answers these questions. Johnson and Beaty discuss the dangers of American celebrity pastors leading large corporations with unquestioned authority. Beaty identifies secrecy, anger, self-promotion and pride as some of the key issues that lead to public Christian personas abusing their power. She advises churches across America to recognize the dangers of narcissism in their religious leaders and hold them accountable to sharing the true gospel.

This conversation is edited for brevity and first aired on the Biblical Mind podcast produced by the Center for Hebraic Thought. Honest five-star reviews help others find this podcast. Visit the magazine at the BiblicalMind.org for articles and videos that explore the deep structures of Scripture.

Katelyn Beaty: There are many people that we can probably think of, of course, figures throughout history who achieved fame, not because it was something that they were specifically seeking out, but because of otherwise good acts. I mean, even in the Christian church and Christian history, we have figures whose names and work went far beyond a time and place, and they achieved a kind of renown based on the goodness of their works or their writing or teaching. So I think fame is probably fine. It's neutral, let's say. If it comes to you as something that you weren't seeking but as a byproduct of virtue.

But when we get into the seeking of fame as the end in and of itself, as the goal in and of itself, that's where I think we get into spiritually dangerous territory. And even if you might think, well, I'm going to use my fame for good things — like once I achieve a certain level of notoriety, then I can share the gospel with more people, or I can offer a good Christian witness to the world. But I tend to think that the people who can handle fame the best are those that are not seeking it at all and do not actually want it. I think there's something about the deliberate seeking of fame that is inherently negative.

Dru Johnson: I think I've told the story before on this podcast, but one of my favorite stories about my wife and young daughter — when she was in her tweens, she was really obsessed with fame, like every tween is. And she asked my wife, ‘But Mom, don't you want to be famous? You know, someday.’ And my wife just immediately turned around and said, ‘Sweetie, if I get famous at this point in my life, it's not going to be for something good, you know? It's going to be it's some crime that I've committed or like I finally snapped and killed one of you guys.’

Beaty: [laughs] Yes, that is a negative type of fame. Just to be clear.

Johnson: Yeah. Fame for doing negative things. How then is fame different from celebrity?

Beaty: So I argue in the book that celebrity is a distinctly modern phenomenon that really relies almost solely on the use of mass media to cultivate an image of oneself or even a “personal brand” that people engage through mediated forms that offer a kind of false intimacy. And mass media is so easily manipulated. This is a really quick example. I talk in the book, in a chapter about the book publishing industry, how people can now buy fake followers — which they're essentially robots — but they can purchase fake followers online to deceptively amplify the appearance of their celebrity so that they can get sponsored content or book deals or speaking deals or whatever it is.

But yeah, it is the reliance on mass media to cultivate a personal image. And I think especially what's important for Christians to think about is the lack of proximity. The social power when you're standing on a stage or in the spotlight and you have thousands of people listening to you and hanging on your every word, and then kind of behind closed doors, very few people actually know who you are and what your daily life is like. And in that lack of proximity, and that distance and isolation, comes in all sorts of problems that I think we've seen exposed very publicly in American evangelicalism in the last five to 10 years.

Johnson: Yeah, and I'm sure some people are thinking about it right now. I've published nerdy books. But even in the nerdy Christian book space, when you're speaking to other nerds or nerdy people who are interested in the topic — I mean, it comes up from the marketing department of the publisher. How many followers do you have? What kind of people could you get to endorse this book? So it's old like Roman honor, shame culture, like can you associate yourself with honorable people, and that will bring more honor to your book.

And so, yeah, you definitely get a small taste of, oh, OK, this is a real thing. This is how we sell books these days. And now we’re on a podcast just going out to a couple thousand people. So are we not guilty of everything that you've discussed in this book? I actually was thinking about that, like, is there not a small way in which I'm in a microcosm doing everything that you're saying we shouldn't be doing in this book?

Beaty: That's why I came on this podcast to convict you of the sin of having a podcast.

Johnson: [laughs] Wait, are other people coming on to the line now? Is this an intervention?

Beaty: Well, I think the fact that you're asking that question, though, is probably a sign of health. I do think that anybody who has some measure of public-facing image or responsibility or calling, if we want to use like kind of a calling or vocational framing — and I include myself in that very much — has to be asking questions of motive. Am I doing this because I want to start a conversation that I think is helpful for the church, for my listeners? Am I wanting to teach and shape and inspire? All of those are very valid and good callings. And a podcast allows you to do that with far more people than would be able to attend your courses as a professor. Right? But it can be easy, especially when you're thinking about like book deals or growing a platform. It's almost like the platform becomes the point in and of itself, and then you forget why you're building the platform.

Johnson: Yeah. Let's talk about that for a second because — sorry, this is what I see on social media when someone goes on Twitter and says, ‘Hey, what books are you all reading?’ I know exactly what they're doing, right?

Beaty: Wait what are they doing?

Johnson: Oh, there's all of these, like, shiny little questions that you're given by social media. Like, I don't know what they're called — aggregators. People who teach you how to multiply your accounts. Because one of the things that gets the most response is people just asking people dumb questions like, ‘What do you guys think I'm thinking about right now? Or tell me about your dreams.’ You know, things that nobody, if you're in the room together, would ever say to somebody else. Right?

Beaty: But they're like icebreakers.

Johnson: Yes. Yeah, exactly. Icebreaker questions.

Beaty: And they work to drive engagement.

Johnson: Right. To get the bots lowered and the engagement higher, and then hopefully followers, if you're asking interesting questions. And I mean, I see like earnest people who I would respect and I see them do this and I think, Oh, are they just doing that thing where they're trying to get more followers to build the platform to get their number? And to be fair, like your book at some point went through some calculation at the publishers where they put in your platform numbers and whatever those look like and they generated like an advance for that. These are all good and necessary means to thinking about production, not wasting people's time, getting goods out into the marketplace of ideas. But they all have this edge that you discuss throughout the book — that's what I felt as I read your work. It was just like anything can turn on you if you don't watch out.

Beaty: So, yeah, going back to kind of the question of motive because I don't want to assume everybody who asks a question on social media, it's like they're just trying to gin up …

Johnson: You're right. That's not fair. Some people really do want to know what I dreamed about last night.

Beaty: Or, you know, some people are just chatty and maybe lack a lot of in-person community, which is a whole other maybe separate but related problem. So I don't want to presume too much about others’ motives, but I do want to interrogate — you know, even as I am hoping that people read my book — interrogating, well, why do you want that? Do you want it because you want people to seriously wrestle with ideas and ultimately lead to a healthier church or understanding of Christian formation. Or is it because you want this book to sell well so that you can get another book deal, so that you can keep on making money writing books and selling books and growing the platform to keep the whole thing going.

And I think what raises, I should say, yellow flags for me that I see on social media is when what is being put forth is more of a personality than ideas or thoughts, because that's where you get more into the possibility of like a false intimacy, where people feel an attachment to a figure that they don't know, they've never met. If they spend any time with them in real life, they may not like them very much, but they're attached in this. I talk about parasocial relationships in the book and why we get attached to these figures. And some of it is this need to feel an intimate connection to people we admire. Some of it is just plain old hero worship. Some of it is if I'm connected to this person, I feel like I'm part of this bigger community. I see this a lot on Instagram with like women influencers kind of building community around their personality. That makes me nervous.

And this, I think too, goes back to questions of discernment that we have to ask in book publishing. I mean, my day-to-day job is as editorial director of Brazos Press. And when we're looking at proposals, what is being offered? Is it just kind of personal, inspiring content that’s really just about the person? Or is there kind of an idea? Are there ideas and research and kind of more formational information that’s being offered? I feel more comfortable with that, at least in the world of book publishing, than books that are essentially just kind of a mechanism to keep driving numbers up, if that makes sense.

Johnson: Yeah. No, I think the book was helpful on so many fronts, even the Billy Graham section, because I think everybody's kind of used to dogging on Billy Graham these days. But I like how you kind of both properly dogged him where he has admitted fault and maybe where he hasn’t in some ways, but you also kind of highlighted him as an early example of somebody who was aware of their celebrity as they were gaining it, that social influence. But without the proximity. And maybe you could talk a little bit about the neglected parts of the Modesta Agreement. I forget what it was. Is that right?

Beaty: Yeah. The Modesto Manifesto.

Johnson: The Modesto Manifesto. That rolls.

Beaty: Evangelicals need things to rhyme.

Johnson: Yeah, of course.

Beaty: And they like alliteration.

Johnson: And the devil hates alliteration.

Beaty: [laughs] So, yes. Early in his preaching and evangelistic ministry, Billy Graham was relatively young. He was in his 20s or early 30s and had achieved an immense amount of celebrity attention because he was such a charismatic and dynamic preacher. He was plainly likable. He was handsome. He was exciting and energizing to listen to. And the newspapers and radio really started highlighting him and drawing crowds to his crusades. And as he and some of his closest ministry colleagues became aware of how their platform, so to speak — they didn't talk about platform then — was just ballooning and exploding. I think rightly they kind of were trying to wrestle with the some of the unique temptations that can come with that kind of social power, where people treat you like a VIP and then you let that go to your head and you start believing your own hype, and then you start believing you can kind of do whatever you want because you're that important. And so the aspect of the Modesto Manifesto that we hear most often now is called the Billy Graham Rule, which is essentially he and his colleagues agreed to never meet alone with a woman who wasn’t their wives. And I critique that. And I have in other spaces as well. But because that is such a lightning rod kind of issue, we tend to forget the other points of the manifesto and the broader context. 

So one of the things they agreed to was of course like financial reporting and integrity. So having very public records about how much Graham and other leaders were being paid and then crucially also saying we’re not going to set his or other salaries based on crowd attendance and ask for donations at the crusades, because that could obviously be very emotionally manipulative — put crudely, like you should give to the church or you might suffer eternal consequences. So they agreed to that and then they also agreed to always try to work with local churches. So I do critique the fact that Graham, I think in the shape of his ministry, tended to undermine the work of the local church, or maybe the centrality of the local church in a person's discipleship. But the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was always trying to kind of direct attendees to the local church to say it's not enough to just go to the crusade, have an experience, and then go home. Like you should get “plugged in” — but also to partner with local churches, to do outreach, to do, you know, kind of mercy ministry type of work, to always be building up the local church instead of tearing it down or trying to replace it.

Johnson: Yeah. And I think that was helpful too that they were actively thinking about. And even as you said in the book, almost every report would mention how good-looking Billy Graham was. And you just mentioned that he was handsome, right. And I just remember thinking to myself, I never thought about it before, but I guess he was kind of a looker back in the day.

Beaty: Yeah, I hadn’t I actually hadn’t thought about it before either. And then I read the book “Jesus and John Wayne” by Kristin Du Mez on masculinity teachings in the last hundred years in American evangelicalism. And she found in one of the many Graham biographies that his looks were commented on by a lot of people in the day. And he also talked about his physical physique like that he had a very strong like fitness regimen. I never knew this about him, but I guess he was — yes, he was considered an attractive man in his ministry.

Johnson: Well, I came up only knowing like the 70- and 80-year-old or maybe 90-something-year-old Graham.

Beaty: Right. We’re not saying that he wasn’t a fine-looking man at that time. We’re just saying that he was probably past his prime.

Johnson: Don’t hear what we’re not saying. I think one of the things that struck me — I was telling my wife as I was reading your book — is how often anger came up as a factor, as a as a prominent feature of people who you are highlighting as possibly celebrity pastors gone wrong, basically. And I wonder, did you notice that as well, or I might have been tuned into that for my own personal experiences. But did you notice that, or what role does anger play in celebrity?

Beaty: I’m glad you picked up on that because it’s something that the New Testament warns against repeatedly for all of us, but I think especially when we’re thinking about qualifications for spiritual leadership. But I think it’s really easy to miss because in so many of these kind of fallen celebrity pastor stories, the thing that is highlighted as either kind of sexual or financial impropriety — those are the things that we fixate on and are maybe more salacious or more easily identifiable. But it is the case — like looking at the story of Mark Driscoll, the story of Willow Creek, Bill Hybels, and Ravi Zacharias to an extent — it seemed to be that whenever others tried to hold these leaders accountable to some extent, or even just express thoughts and ideas that were counter to the leaders thoughts and ideas, there was a kind of doubling down or a real resistance. And it’s probably the case that the qualities that make you a really dynamic, charismatic builder of an organization are the same qualities that can so easily lead to narcissistic patterns — basically bullying and forms of verbal abuse. And I just think we have to kind of, in the wake of these stories, grapple with the lingering effects of that anger, a kind of unrighteous anger.

If your pastor is screaming at the staff for 45 minutes and you’re in that staff meeting and you are just berated for doing things in a way that is not in accordance with the pastor’s plan, that really affects you spiritually. That can really leave a lasting mark. And I would say we all have moments of anger. We all have moments of irritation. We all lose our cool. But I would say if there if there seems to be a pattern early on, that that seems to me like as much of a yellow or red flag as someone who is overly flirtatious or really secretive about their money or their technology. It is as serious as some of these more obvious problems. 

Johnson: Yeah, I was I was shocked by the more obvious problems. Like so when juggling multiple cell phones or having an arrangement with an IT (information technology) department to delete emails, you know? Even knowing some of the details, I did not know those. You also discuss that move from privacy. It was very helpful, again, that you said, ‘No, people need privacy. They need to have their private life, their private family.’ But how that creeps over into secrecy. And so this is another telltale sign that when privacy creeps to secrecy. Imagining that there are lots of people — I know a couple who listen to this podcast who have a couple thousand person congregation — like, how would you know when this has gone awry? What would be the key, the yellow flags, as you said earlier?

Beaty: Yeah. I mean, I think I don’t feel comfortable saying anybody should be able to read the lead pastor’s email inbox.

Johnson: That would not fly.

Beaty: No, it would not. I do think, though, looking at the requests for a kind of special privilege or exemption from rules that other leaders in an organization abide by. So that was something that came up in the Ravi Zacharias story, as you alluded to, with technology. He had multiple cell phones, and nobody was allowed to look at them, and nobody was allowed to question why you might have multiple cell phones. But also other staff at his ministry had to agree to only travel so many days of the year. It was like 100 days max. You know, the idea being like you need to be with your family, in your organization — you need to be at home in regular rhythms, not living out life on the road. Because again, life on the road leads to a kind of nobody knows what I’m doing, right? I can kind of do things in secret that I couldn’t get away with at home. 

Johnson: I thought a hundred days was a lot even. Just depending on what you do for the for the company though.

Beaty: Right. And he had a special exemption. He traveled up to 300 days a year. And I guess the idea among his colleagues was either, ‘Well, who are we to tell him he can’t travel? He’s the boss. You know, we work for the organization bearing his name.’ But maybe also, ‘Well, but that’s good for the ministry. Like we need him out on the road because he’s the figure. He’s the brand. He’s the name and face that people want to come see at fundraising events. So we can’t risk curtailing his privileges because of the effect it could have on our ministry and our effectiveness.’ The request of special privileges or exemptions from rules of accountability that other people have to abide by would be a yellow flag.

Johnson: And I’m sure — like me when I was reading, I was thinking, don’t these people report to anybody? And you point out that boards often just cannot do the things that we think they should be able to do to hold people accountable. Why don’t boards of accountability work, as you saw in these instances?

Beaty: Yeah. And it’s not to say that they can’t work, but they often are generally ineffective when — I feel like ‘wrangle’ is the best word that comes to mind when talking about such big charismatic figures who have obviously been deemed so important in an organization or church. Oftentimes, as we’ve already discussed, that person is kind of verbally abusive. Nobody wants to be the recipient of that kind of wrath, especially if it’s in front of other people. So it could be fear or intimidation. Some of it is, ‘I look up to you as a mentor, as a hero. You’re the person who brought me to faith. So like, who am I to try to hold you accountable because you’re obviously more spiritual or wiser than I am?’ That power differential can make it really hard to stand up to the person who you look to as your mentor.

And then some of it too, is that if there are people on the board who themselves are seeking a kind of celebrity or other forms of power, they don’t want to curtail the celebrity figures power because it means curtailing their own power. So, like, if I work at Mars Hill and I want to write a book and part of what’s going to make the book deal work is that I bear the imprimatur of Mark Driscoll and I need to be in his good graces to do that — well, I’m not going to stand up to him because he’s not going to like that, and then I won’t get the thing that I want via my my proximity to the celebrity figure.

Johnson: Yeah, Mark Driscoll is a difficult case, and I didn’t follow it closely when it was all unfolding. But I do remember I was a fairly new Christian. I’d only been a Christian for a few years when I went to the seminary. And I remember right around the time, like late ‘90s, early 2000s, Mark Driscoll had started doing some things, and the first thing I remember was hearing there was going to be a cage match at his church. And we were discussing that — as you know, a lot of males together at a seminary were discussing this. And I just remember people would give me quotations while he said this and he called guys this. And as a former military guy, I was just like, this just doesn’t sound right. It all smelled funny to me. And so there’s a point in the book where I’m thinking, I’m just going to hand this to anybody who goes to a church of more than 500 people because I feel like you need to have this as kind of a handbook for what to look for and what to be aware of.

And maybe that was the naive young Christian who was just reading the New Testament and thinking like, ‘Oh, I need to sell everything. Maybe I was a little overboard back in those days and take a vow of poverty.’ But there was a sense in which everything we’re talking about just seems ridiculous in some way, right? It just seems like clearly over the top, especially the way you discuss it and you juxtapose it against Jesus’ teaching and how some people have taken Jesus’ teaching, but what he really meant. So I wonder, how did we — you know, what you point out clearly is these people have a support network. They don’t get there by themselves. How did we get to the point where this seemed normal? That’s a real question because I actually do not know. 

Beaty: Yeah. I think some of it is a distinctly American problem. And it’s not to say that churches in other parts of the world don’t have their local celebrities. But there is something about an American fixation on numerical growth of corporations and the fusion of business and religion with the charismatic CEO at the helm, kind of drawing attention and excitement to the growth. I think the megachurch movement exists because, not to pick on baby boomers, but it was the baby boomers’ fault. The baby boomers were so tired of like rote — it was stuffy, boring church — and to their credit, actually wanted people to start coming to church again who were disenfranchised and looked at what was working in the worlds of business and decided we can learn from that world. And megachurches have been a very durable and some would say successful model of church growth in America — I mean, certainly the most successful by numerical growth over the last 25 years.

And yet I think now, or maybe at least in the last 10 years, I mean, there has always been a kind of countercultural dimension within American evangelicalism, asking these bigger philosophical questions about how we’re doing ministry. And maybe there was a problem in borrowing too much from the world of business when we’re trying to preach the gospel of Jesus. But I think now we’re grappling with the fact that how you do things is as important as what you’re doing and that celebrity is not just a neutral tool that can kind of be used to fuel this numerical growth, but it actually has deeply shaped our conceptions of what we look for in leaders. It is crucial to the kind of pair of church religious — like the worlds of publishing and conferences. But also, how is it shaping our understanding of discipleship and what it means to live an impactful, which is not a word that I like ….

Johnson: I’m glad you said that, because I’ve heard a lot more lately, and I cringe every time I hear it, but I know what you mean.

Beaty: Yeah. A meaningful, a fruitful — but even those metaphors are so much better, right? Because something can be fruitful and very unflashy and grow very slowly, to look at the agricultural metaphor. And I just wonder if we’re in a time when Christians have wondered, ‘If we just kind of have to play by worldly rules and in order to get a foot in the door. Like, maybe it’s okay that our pastor is kind of a celebrity figure who takes photos of himself with Justin Bieber because it’s showing his followers that Christians can be cool and it’s giving us a level of kind of cultural credibility, and maybe that’s what we need.’ So I think there are a lot of factors, but certainly the kind of mixing of business and religion, the rise of kind of individual authority over and against institutional authority, parachurch, religious, the world of publishing and conferences, and then maybe Christians just feel insecure and they’re just looking for like a cool Christian to attach to.

Johnson: Yeah, it struck me also that, because I’ve been to Willow Creek when I was a children’s pastor, I used to go to children’s ministry conferences there. And it was my first time being in a place that held more than 500 people that was called a church. And you talked about social influence without proximity. It seems to run both ways as well. If you just want to show up and not ever really be known. Of course, they talk about small groups, and they talk about smaller ministries. But even their second-grade ministry was like 285 kids or something like that, you know. So there’s a sense where it kind of affords both people the kind of thing they want. The light religious contact and the inspirational time together but no real deep connection.

Beaty: Like my celebrity pastor really isn’t going to ask me to do anything hard.

Johnson: And they’re not going to point out my personal sin from the pulpit — only by accident as well.

Beaty: Right, right, right. Like they’ll probably give some, like, generic call for people to be generous, but they’re not going to like sit down and ask me like, ‘Hey, you haven’t been at church for the last three months. We’ve really missed you. Like, what’s going on? Because how could they possibly know that you haven’t been at the church if there are 20,000 other people there?’

Johnson: And so last question. I think it’s still true that the average church in America is under 85 people. So there’s a sense in which you say what does this matter? Okay, so there are these one-off celebrities. Maybe we just put them all in a bucket where we say, oh, they’re all going to steal money and have sex with somebody else eventually and we just kind of throw them to the curb mentally. But is there a reason to think about this, even if even if we cut them off and say they’re not part of our Christianity? Is there a reason why we still need to all think about this in a small church setting?

Beaty: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the things that it’s — you know, the most egregious examples of celebrity power gone wrong in the church happened to be at very large, prominent churches that will get the attention of national media. And that’s why we know about the scandals, because we …

Johnson: And we know the details of the scandals, too.

Beaty: Right. They had reached that level of prominence. But I mean, celebrity dynamics can play out in small churches. They can play out in churches with really strong denominational ties. I don’t think it’s true to think, oh, this is this is just that weird, nondenominational world thing. And I am someone who is for denominational oversight and structure. But it can be the case where a denomination is struggling and they have that one kind of pastor that’s — maybe it’s not 20,000 people coming to church, but maybe the church, which has been struggling for years, is now attracting all these people. And denominational leaders can be really reticent to hold that person accountable because that person is seen as key to the denomination’s growth or existence in the next 10, 20 years. Like, ‘Oh, but we need Pastor so-and-so to be in the spotlight because they’re drawing so much good attention, so much good attention to our church.’ 

Johnson: So I literally feel like you’re addressing an exact situation that I’ve been a part of. I mean, really? I mean, yeah, it sounds like you’re talking directly about the situation. So, yes, this is real. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Beaty: Yeah. I mean, I’m very grateful to — no, that’s not true. I was just about to say I’ve never been in a church where the pastor acted like a celebrity. But I have been. But I wasn’t there for very long. But yeah, we are wise to be on the lookout for these dynamics of social power without proximity and putting anybody on a pedestal in any organization, regardless of the size of it. And that’s where I think we all have a role to play because people wouldn’t be on pedestals if we didn’t put them there. So really asking deeper questions about why we keep doing that, like why we keep acting as if there are certain people who are closer to God or act as God’s mouthpiece or are just too important or too spiritual to fail or to question. Yeah, that’s something that all of us can do regardless of the size of our organization.

Johnson: Katelyn Beaty, thanks for this book. “Celebrities for Jesus: How Persona’s Platforms and Profits Are Hurting the Church”. Highly, highly recommend. Thank you for your wisdom and guidance on this topic.

Beaty: Thanks so much for having me, Dru. It’s good to chat.

Visit the Biblical Mind pocast at biblicalmind.org. This conversation was published with permission.