Opinion: Celebrities and saints

(ABP) — Americans’ obsession with celebrities seems inexhaustible. The ubiquity of the Internet and the rise of social media have added a whole new dimension to this social phenomenon. Today, one can read about, watch and “follow” a favorite celebrity — or try to achieve celebrity status themselves — on everything from cable television to Twitter to YouTube.  

For every bona fide celebrity (by whatever definition), there are thousands of wannabe celebrities craving the spotlight and thousands more momentary celebrities angling for ways to stretch their 15 minutes of fame into something bigger.

So-called "reality" TV feeds the appetites of celebrities and celebrity wannabes while entertaining the masses — including the curious, the bored and the voyeuristic. Network and cable television are densely populated with “docusoaps,” game shows, talent searches, makeovers and cops-and-crime reality shows.

Between bites of raisin bran in a hotel breakfast nook earlier this week, I caught a glimpse of a network-TV-news host interviewing the host of the “Celebrity Rehab” cable reality show and the VIP-nightclub-hostess-turned-instant-celebrity sho is the alleged mistress of golfer Tiger Woods. She said she checked into the clinic for “Celebrity Rehab” because she’s “addicted to love.”

That was enough to make my bland breakfast truly tasteless. But it got me to thinking about celebrities and non-celebrities.

A few days earlier I heard a presentation by David Oliver Relin, co-author of Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time , the New York Times bestseller about the remarkable adventures of an American mountain climber and nurse named Greg Mortenson. After an accidental, life-saving encounter with the residents of a remote village in Pakistan, Mortenson has devoted his life to building schools and promoting education and literacy, especially among girls, in the rural communities of Pakistan and Afghanistan.  

I had read the book and knew about Mortenson. I did not know much about the journalist who helped tell Mortenson’s story.

When he graduated from Vassar with a journalism degree, Relin’s gift from his parents was an airline ticket to anywhere in the world. He chose India, he recounted, because it was completely outside his frame of reference, and he wanted a challenge. On his third morning in Bombay, he arose early and nearly stumbled over a family sleeping in the doorway of the guesthouse where he was staying.

That encounter planted the seeds of a fierce determination to write about subjects — both topical and human — that are truly important.

A few years later, Relin attended a workshop where writer and social activist Grace Paley boldly asserted that “the first step” for writers who want to make a difference in the world “is to get over themselves.”

“The duty of a writer,” she added, “is to listen to the stories of the powerless and to tell those stories to the powerful.”

Relin heard those words as “orders to try to follow.” Along the way, the award-winning investigative reporter, editor and author has discovered repeatedly that “people with the least offer the most.”

As a journalist, Relin is familiar with America’s infatuation with celebrities and with countless magazines that cater to celebrity coverage. Even organizations committed to addressing critical global issues such as hunger, poverty and HIV/AIDS, he noted, increasingly rely on celebrities to promote their causes.

Relin recalled an incident that solidified his resolve to pursue important stories while steadfastly sidestepping celebrities. After repeatedly and unsuccessfully pitching to magazine editors a story about a worldwide social-justice issue, he was suddenly given a green light to travel overseas for a publicity event where an American film star was to make a much-hyped appearance in support of the cause.

The star backed out at the last minute. Relin decided then and there that other journalists could track the celebrities.

A few years later he was trekking across the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan with Greg Mortenson. Relin signed on to the book project, he said, because of Mortenson’s passionate and unique approach. Rather than dealing with age-old symptoms, he was “treating the disease itself — the poverty and ignorance from a lack of education — and the people in power who were taking advantage of the powerless.”

During this Advent season, as Christians once again await the birth of the Christ child, there is much to ponder in the biblical story about the powerful and the powerless, about the celebrities of this world and the ordinary people God chooses. Few of the characters in the story of Jesus, told and lived through the centuries, would fit our contemporary American culture’s idea of a celebrity.

But there’s a better, more apt description for these women and men of faith. We call them saints.  

–David Wilkinson is executive director of Associated Baptist Press.