I’ve tried to stay out of this whole Duck Dynasty thing. Really, I have. As a fan of the show and a fan of Louisiana’s economy (which has been bolstered by the show), I guess I felt like it would be something akin to a conflict of interest to write anything about it. Plus, anything I could have written was already being written by plenty of other, better writers. I’m not a bandwagon kind of gal. Why rehash and regurgitate? It’s boring.
But, today I read Trevin Wax’s excellent blog post: Duck Dynasty Debrief, and he said something that got me thinking (he’s really good at that). So much so, that, late to the party or not, I had to write about it.
“The popularity of Duck Dynasty is a double-edged sword for evangelicals. The show reinforces the stereotype that devout Christians are a bunch of backwards rednecks. “
True, that stereotype is out there. It’s even been laid on me a number of times by non-Christians.
And guess what? I’m OK with that.
Why?
Because if anyone is at “fault” for the stereotype of Christians as uneducated, rough around the edges rednecks, it’s Jesus. He started the whole thing by picking people like Peter, Andrew, James, and John as His disciples. Fishermen. Uneducated. Not sophisticated. As Trevin rightly said in his article, we shouldn’t make Phil Robertson Christianity’s spokesman simply because he’s a celebrity. But the disciples? Those guys ARE our spokesmen despite their blue collar status and the fact that they put their feet in their mouths occasionally. And I’ll bet they had beards, too.
Jesus is also responsible for saying how difficult it is for a rich (which, in His day, went hand in hand with “educated” and “sophisticated”) man to enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:24), for thanking God “that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children;” (Matthew 11:25), and, through Paul, “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,” (1 Corinthians 1:27-28).
So, maybe it’s not so much a stereotype as it is, well, true. We’re the ones who have become pridefully elitist. If rednecks were good enough for Jesus, that’s good enough for me. Grab the camo, quit looking down your nose, and embrace your inner redneck, brothers and sisters. It’s in our blood.
Michelle Lesley 