Christian Influence The Subcultural Narratives of Evangelical Celebrities on Instagram Routledge Research in Religion, Media and Culture Series

Christian Influence examines how understudied evangelical media celebrities use Instagram to cultivate religious authority and to convey distinctive subcultural narratives about evangelical values and culture today.

The book explores the way that discrete kinds of evangelical celebrities?Celebrity Pastors, Women?s Ministry Leaders, Christian-Media Celebrities, and Secular-Media Celebrity Christians?all used Instagram across 2020?2021 to perform specific subcultural narratives to their followers. Detailing these narratives gives unique insights into how the authority of celebrity and the affordances of social media are combining to challenge the strictures of authority within evangelicalism and raises questions about celebrity power in the contemporary shaping and reshaping of evangelical culture.

Christian Influence is a useful and timely read for scholars with an interest in evangelicalism specifically, or religion and religious studies, media and cultural studies, sociology of religion, and communication more broadly.

Introduction: Evangelicals, Celebrity, and the Power of Influence 1. Christianity, Media, and Celebrity 2. Four Subcultural Narratives 3. Celebrity Pastors: Authority and Admonition 4. Women’s Ministry Leaders: Transgression and Tradition 5. Christian-Media Celebrities: Charisma and Commodity 6. Secular-Media Celebrity Christians: Balance and Blurring Conclusion: Social Media and the Future of Evangelicalism BibliographyIndex

Zachary Sheldon is a Lecturer in the Department of Film and Digital Media at Baylor University, USA. His research on religion and religious media has appeared in venues such as Communication Studies, the Journal of Media and Religion, and the Journal of Communication & Religion.