Gig Luther
A Reformation Day Reflection; or, Why Big Eva Can’t Meme
Eight years ago, we were all celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. It seems quaint, a different world for many reasons. Back then, Big Eva was still doing fine. There were signs of fracture and weakness, but nothing obviously critical. Sure, she was struggling to cope with Trump 1.0, but Trump 2.0 was certainly impossible. “Racial reconciliation” was still compelling cutting-edge stuff, at least for white evangelicals perpetually 5-10 years behind the times. The far eastern pestilence had not yet arrived. Ferguson was bad but forgettable, though plenty of Big Eva talking heads embarrassed themselves talking about it. The Summer of Love 2020 was a long way off. Tim Keller was still at the helm and Manhattan was still the universal ministry model. Jack Dorsey was still running Twitter, though Trump wouldn’t be permanently banned until the 500th anniversary of the Diet of Worms. The world was safer, disruption contained, adults still in the room.
Back in 2017, a second-year seminarian, I was mostly occupied by the flood of Martin Luther biographies and Reformation reflections. Every church historian was cashing in on the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be relevant and popular. Only in a world where a Trump presidency coincides with the Reformation’s quincentenary does Alex Ryrie get published in Foreign Policy.
Andrew Pettegree’s Brand Luther (2016) is still my favorite addition of the period. Pettegree is such a superb writer and storyteller he makes what amounts to a history of printing captivating. (Pettegree’s The Invention of the News (2014) is comparatively less engaging but still fascinating.) What Pettegree reveals is the secondary, material, technological causality of the Reformation.
Luther really was a marketing genius and a master of communication. There’s a reason he became the most published author in European history. The formula seems simple now: short, polemical works, in the vernacular, geared toward popular readership, not insular academe. (He had tried academic channels initially, to no avail.) Direct, near instantaneous, popular communication. The analogy to so-called new media—socials, blogs, podcasts—springing to mind right now is entirely natural and appropriate. The same comparison can be made regarding the American Founding, especially Boston. The polemical pamphlet (like the pulpit) is a distinctly Protestant medium, and Luther was arguably the first to truly understand this technology. Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin consciously or not followed the trial blazed by Luther.
A Wittenburg friar revolutionized the printing industry, creating an entirely new, distinct brand for himself—when you held a Luther book you knew it. Pettegree describes all this in detail, as well as design innovations contributed by Lucas Cranach. Plus, Luther was a workhorse. His productivity was peerless, and he supervised seemingly every element of publication and dissemination. But the effect of this is more important than the work itself. Through Luther’s innovations he commanded new means of mass communication: print and pulpit. Luther circumvented established channels and, thereby, evaded censorship and market controls, speaking directly to his intended audience. The circumvented party reacted exactly as they always do.
Meme It to Make It
A quick detour into Ryrie’s 2017 piece is useful here. It opens with Barack Obama being time warped back to sixteenth century Germany and, to his dismay, encountering the first incarnation of Donald Trump. (At least Ryrie does not stoop to typical casting wherein Luther plays early modern Hitler.)
“He might be briefly glad for the change of scene — being an ex-president can get a bit dull, after all — but pretty soon he’d start witnessing some events that looked queasily familiar. He’d see a conventionally quarrelsome political scene disrupted by the emergence of an improbable figure who, at first, no one took very seriously. He’d watch as existing players tried to work out how they could best make use of this man before he inevitably flamed out. Obama would even bear witness to this Renaissance-era disruptor discovering how to use new media in a way that no one had ever done before: using new technology, the printing press, to reach a mass audience, not so much challenging the establishment as bypassing it entirely. This man wouldn’t use the language the establishment expected or observe the etiquette they demanded. In fact, he’d be vulgar, foul-mouthed, vindictive, and cantankerous, with a very tasteless sense of humor. But he’d communicate with a vivid directness whose power couldn’t be denied, leaving half of Germany horrified, half of it delighted, and all of it paying attention.”
Of course, Ryrie distinguishes between the personal morality of Trump and Luther, but, insofar as it goes, the comparison works, especially the populist use of new, democratized mediums of communication to relativize and subvert the establishment. Luther and Trump both illustrate “how long-standing political establishments fail to cope with disruptive outsiders, often hastening their own moments of reckoning.” The Papacy had no idea how to respond, as both Pettegree and Ryrie highlight. Luther had cracked the code. His pamphlets flooded the zone. They tried, but the papacy couldn’t meme back.
As everyone knows, Luther’s language and humor were, shall we say, populist, the kind the common folk used in the locker rooms. Per usual, this offends the establishment, mostly because it appeals to the vulgar classes as they really are. But as Machiavelli taught, the vulgar, who understand through touch rather than sight, know what is real and true better than their betters.
The fatal papal mistake: “Rather than engaging with Luther’s ideas, they simply labeled him a heretic, ordering him to shut up or face the legal consequences.” This typical, predictable approach only emboldened Luther and multiplied his supporters. Luther was never defeated in public debate not simply because he was good at it but because he was never really debated. Cancelation attempts fail when the target says something to the effect of, “I don’t really care, Margaret.” When papal bulls of excommunication proved ineffective, Rome revealed its weakness to the world. Assassination (or at least abduction) attempts came up empty too. As one of my old church history professors used to say (tongue in cheek), if the papacy had just done to Luther what they did to Hus, then the latter’s prophecy at Constance never would’ve been fulfilled. The papacy was too confident in its ability to absorb insurrection and misunderstood, or did not understand at all, rising popular sentiment.
Why couldn’t the papists—Tetzel, Eck, and the rest—compete in print? Several instructive reasons are advanced by Pettegree. Papal advocates generally refused to engage in vernacular. Doing so would have negated part of their critique:
“Part of the scandal of Luther was that he had appealed over the heads of his clerical brethren to a wider popular audience. Many of his opponents deplored that a theological quarrel should, in this way, be brought into the glare of public controversy; such a discussion should be conducted in Latin, the language of academic debate… matters of faith should not be disputed before the ignorant common folk.”
And yet, some refutations of Luther were published in German; they simply did not sell. Why? Papist authors complained of the partisanship of printers, but Pettegree suggests that it was less partisanship of the printers themselves and more a pragmatic recognition of market demand, and the decentralization of printing shops in Germany allowed them to meet that demand. Nothing about dry recitations of established dogma excited the new class of book buyers. In other words, Luther was just better at playing a very new game. He had his finger on the pulse both of what was actually wrong with Christendom as well as the grievances of the people.
Complaints that Luther was skirting all accountability structures, defying credentialling hierarchies, circumventing longstanding institutions, and airing dirty ecclesial laundry in public and exposing commoners to dangerous ideas fell flat. The papacy was beaten as much by the force of Luther’s ideas and the discontent of the German people as they were by a new media economy they were ill-adapted to. They were the taxi driver being beaten by Uber, the hotel chain beaten by Airbnb, and the MySpace beaten by Twitter.
Gig Eva
In some sense, Protestantism is inherently populist. Nothing is more Protestant, it turns out, than sidestepping established credentialling systems and hierarchies with new media technology, new style, new means of rapid, mass dissemination. Old media is never able to cope, and those reared in the environment of old media are rarely able to adapt.
A recent First Things piece warning of the rise of Gig Eva is, given the history above, a bit strange. Carl Trueman’s largely detached analysis is, per usual, on to something. A transference is happening. Big Eva, a term Trueman coined, has come to stand for the evangelical establishment. Such is the life of terms and slogans adopted at scale. Generally, it is a sign of success, or at least influence, when ideas or phrases take on a life of their own extending beyond original authorial intent.
In any case, Big Eva was meant to refer to celebrity pastors who ran the conference circuit and garnered influence apart from their pastoral ministry but as speakers within a growing parachurch apparatus. They were, in a word, influencers who predated the captivity of that term to social media users with large followings. When Trueman introduced the moniker, he was identifying a real problem. As he recalls, most of his seminary students pointed to celebrity pastors, not their local pastor, as the greatest spiritual influence in their lives. The Big Eva scene was always extra-ecclesiastical. Through massive conferences and media, it dwarfed the reach any local preacher could ever have no matter how big his church. Big Eva institutionalized itself by creating its own “institutions,” like the Gospel Coalition, and exerting significant influence over pre-established institutions, i.e., seminaries and churches. It was, at its inception, an outside game, but through that strategy, it became the establishment.
But Big Eva is over. “The conservative Protestant scene in the U.S. is no longer dominated by a few big-name celebrities or by a handful of large conferences.” Gig Eva, says Trueman, is replacing Big Eva. Gig Eva has circumvented the Big Eva gates, its institutions, conferences, and publishers. If Big Eva diminished (or replaced) accountability structures and screening processes, Gig Eva has totally ignored them, developing its own, online sifting standards. As Trueman rightly points out, both Eva’s are shaped by “the economy of their chosen media.” Gig Eva’s media ecosystem features even less friction. Whereas Big Eva policed its boarders with passive aggressive, behind the scenes ostracization, Gig Eva litigates it all in public. A key advantage of Gig Eva is that public engagement like this simultaneously defines the movement and builds the platforms of its actors at the same time exactly because it is public. I think Trueman is wrong to say that Big Eva performers will have had more influence than Gig Eva influencers. That conclusion is simply not accounting for the reach of new media. The estimates of Charlie Kirk’s global reach through the internet—an exceptional case, to be sure—suggest that Big Eva returns might be dwarfed by Gig Eva’s.
My only point here in recounting Trueman’s argument is to add that this is what always happens, just like it happened 508 years ago. It is a totally foreseeable occurrence when you consider the democratization of communication coupled with broad dissatisfaction of the incumbent ruling class. But let’s talk about how Big Eva got to this place, why it is being supplanted.
Big Eva
Why the angst? What is the occasion for Big Eva’s demise?
In short, Big Eva has proved itself an appendage of the broader American establishment against which populist backlash was in full swing by 2016-2017. At least as it appeared to many evangelicals, the only difference between the New York Times and Christianity Today on, say, Michael Brown or George Floyd or Hilary Clinton, for that matter, was that the evangelical outlet was a downstream version of the Times, baptized in Christian lingo and sentiment. The same went for Covid and race riots and J6. TGC still has the Why I Hate August article up but no corresponding Why I Hate September one this year following the death of the most famous and effective evangelist in America. In other words, the third wayist weren’t so third way. They whiffed on every major cultural flashpoint stretching back to the 2016 election. No single Big Eva figure distinguished himself on even one of these contested points. The thing about the water downstream of the Times is that it is still the same current; it still flows in the same direction. Maybe the water downstream is a bit murkier, less pure, but it’s still the same water.
When you have an unrepresentative oligarchy that also fails to lead effectively—maybe they tried—and at least in some way register the sentiments of the proles, revolt is inevitable. Basic Polybius stuff. That’s what happened to Big Eva. Except for obligatory trappings, it became indistinguishable from the mainstream establishment and thereby swept up in the popular discontent with said establishment. Again, this is quite natural and predictable.
Maybe it wasn’t predictable that a no-name, thirty-year-old, unpublished friar working at a community college at the edge of the civilized world would become an overnight celebrity and split Christendom in two. But it was predictable that something like that would eventually happen. Since the Renaissance, the papacy had been the butt of jokes, its corruption well known and well criticized. Constance fixed nothing. A three-way contest for Peter’s chair instilled little confidence in the legitimacy of Christ’s vicar(s). France had basically had a pseudo-independent national church for decades and once Bohemia achieved a special national settlement, the jig was up. Plausibility structures were already expanded—the Avignon papacy, for one—before Luther was even born. Throw on top of all that rising national sentiment and corresponding boldness from secular rulers and the harsh material conditions of most people in the Holy Roman Empire, and Ottomans on the march, and something explosive is bound to happen. Dissatisfaction with the status quo was high. All that was missing was technological means to opt out of mainstream lines of public communication, and someone bold enough to use it. Revolution was inevitable because the establishment had failed to govern well, to maintain its integrity, and to meaningfully sympathize with—or even satisfactorily explain—the grievances of the people.
Recall too, returning to more recent history, that the founders and leaders of Big Eva were themselves revolutionaries who quite effectively pivoted into an establishment, founding their own alternative venues and institutions to proliferate their vision which then thoroughly influenced most preexisting evangelical institutions. They won—a model of outside gaming. Their moment in the sun lasted a good while, navigating quite nimbly minor uprisings. But then they whiffed (see inexhaustive list above).
Influence was found outside of denominational structures and seminary campuses. In the open market, appealing to the unstructured masses, new messages could get out and shape evangelicalism rapidly. The conference circuit created occasions for the performance, and profit, but it was already new media acting as a force multiplier. Ten thousand at a conference is nice but 10 million on YouTube is nicer. New institutions built for this cadre, like the Gospel Coalition, provided new (self-referential) credentialling, and, eventually, new gatekeeping. Was this real “accountability”? Reciprocal back slaps and book blurbs? That Big Eva came to stand for the evangelical establishment—the conferences, the seminaries, the publishers—is no surprise. The only people elevated to leadership and influence were the ones who dutifully played the game. What Trueman described in his original coinage was true of more than just popular speakers. It was true of the whole apparatus of parachurch organizations that profoundly influenced and conditioned evangelical institutional leaders. Big Eva was always more than the Mark Driscoll’s. It was always more than platforming celebrity pastors.
No revolution can be perpetual. Eventually the revolutionaries have to govern, for good or ill. There’s always gatekeeping, just as there are always barriers to entry. Big Eva disposed of Driscoll, for example, and it shunned Doug Wilson. It was a sure sign of weakness and nervousness when the cone of silence was lifted from Wilson by TGC world last year. I am not deriving causality from this, but it is interesting that a flurry national media attention almost immediately followed public concern about the Moscow mood.
Boomer Boom
What was Big Eva’s secret sauce? Aaron Renn has pointed this out before.
“A gigantic generation, the Boomers were the center of attention throughout their lives, and society has continued to reorder itself around their life experiences, orientations, and preferences. That generation, especially the early half of it, came into positions of power relatively early in life – and in many cases are still in them.”
Renn highlights their “incredible self-confidence.” Not just anyone would stand up in front of 40,000 people at a conference and tell them to reorient their entire lives like John Piper did.
“This might sound like a critique of the Boomers, but in reality it is a critique of those of us who came after them. The joke is on us because we did not have the confidence necessary to assert ourselves to the extent we should have. The fault for generational underperformance is in part our own.”
And let’s remember that Big Eva has lasted so long, in part, because of its entry into the gig economy. Years ago, Arthur Brooks realized that the point of in-person conferences and events was not so much ticket sales or attendance but the views of the online recordings that followed. That’s how audience and success were measured. Small events could become big events this way. Big Eva knew the same thing and had their own podcast circuit and YouTube feeds for a good while.
Well, now a generation has found comparable confidence, or at least dissatisfaction with the status quo, and they’re using the means of mass communication at their disposal to offer correctives. Why did they have to pull a Luther? Why avoid the established credentialing process and forms of “debate”: approved evangelical (probably Southern Baptist) seminary to big box church associate to TGC blogger to Crossway author to conference speaker and panelist? Why do they have to do it this way, with tweets, blogs, and podcasts?
Michael Clary described it well the other day. Trueman complains that Gig Eva—like Big Eva but only worse—doesn’t root credibility in an ecclesiastical context, that influencers aren’t rooted in the real life of the church. But Clary is. He is a church planter and pastor in Cincinnati. He only gained any online attention and reach after a decade of ministry. He wanted to write a book on pastoral issues he had encountered, especially challenges of sexual ethics in an inner-city, collegiate context. No Big Eva publisher would entertain it. Clary didn’t have the requisite profile. He had to turn to new media and small publishers to get his writing out. No Big Eva figures would endorse a book from an unknown publisher, so Clary turned to evangelicals outside Big Eva who had big online profiles. Without the marketing machine of Big Eva, Clary had to tweet, blog, and podcast about his book. He took any interviewer that would have him. So, why did Clary join Gig Eva? “I became part of ‘Gig Eva’ because ‘Big Eva’ wouldn’t give me a shot.” Colorado pastor, Chase Davis, has a similar story. Both Clary and Davis demonstrate the failure of Big Eva to reward what it claims to be for: real pastoral ministry and church life. The hypocrisy only compounds the transition in question.
There’s another thing. His analysis is contestable, but E. Digby Baltzell argued that the decline of the WASP establishment was largely due to its inability to integrate new talent, at least not fast enough. Jews, Catholics, and new money types were not welcomed into the churches, schools, colleges, the clubs, the events. Eventually, new churches, schools, colleges, clubs, and events sprung up in competition and a new parallel elite emerged by completely circumventing the approval process of the other.
Gig Eva is a natural corrective. It appears chaotic and destabilizing to the beneficiaries of Big Eva. It is chaotic and destabilizing. Disruption is the point. None of this was orchestrated. It’s very organic and many people have been doing it for a long time.
Of course, Trueman doesn’t tell us who he has in mind, but many popular commentators online have risen to prominence not because they followed a tried and true roadmap to a platform. Rather they simply began addressing problems, theological, ecclesiastical, cultural, and political, publicly in a way that resonated with people looking for answers. At least some of them have done this whilst maintaining Big Eva cred.
Think of Gavin Ortlund, for example. He has built a sizeable streaming audience by doing apologetics for Protestants. He identified a gap in the online space: Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox were dominating online apologetics and getting reasonable returns. No Protestant was doing it. I recently interviewed Austin Suggs of Gospel Simplicity for the American Reformer podcast, and he’s done something similar. He was actually earlier to market than Ortlund and probably appeals to a younger audience because of his use of diverse forms of streaming platforms and content types. Others have done something similar with other niche topics. Someone like Jon Harris has built a big audience through broad commentary but especially his critiques of Big Eva itself. All of these figures have developed sizeable audiences through independent platforms, yet their levels of palatability to Big Eva vary. What explains this?
It may all start with an individual, a personal brand, but these are the ingredients of movements, hence the irresistible urge to compare Luther to modern day populist figures. Eventually, things will solidify. New leaders will acquire requisite power to shape a new establishment, defining its boundaries and directing its aims. These moments always unleash radicalism—enthusiasts and opportunists alike. Luther had to deal with it. What’s instructive is that Luther was patient with disparate elements until he had sufficient power to deal with them. The sifting cannot start until you have sure footing. Had Luther not been in a position to take his lumps and survive a decline in popularity, he never could have dealt with the Zwickau prophets or the rebellious peasants. Timing and prudence are everything. Patience is a virtue. Gig Eva will eventually have such moments. Things are still too new to tell when or why that will be, or who will have the authority to deal with it. What should be remembered even now is that these cycles are perennial. What is happening to Big Eva will one day happen to Gig Eva too.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.