Geez: culture jamming, just like Jesus
by Christina Crook
Published in BC Christian News, January 2007
http://www.canadianchristianity.com/
AIDEN ENNS, publisher of Geez magazine, presented a seminar at the Canadian Youth Workers Conference (CYWC), entitled ‘Make Affluence History: pursuing a gospel that is inwardly rich and outwardly just.’
He came with his crazy little booth in the exhibition space. While most booth displays were eight feet high, his was seven inches tall. Here he gave away miniature (one inch wide) ‘magazines.’
Vancouver-born Enns is former managing editor of Adbusters magazine. After completing graduate studies in journalism and religion, he founded Winnipeg-based Geez – whose motto is: “holy mischief in an age of fast faith.”
In its short two year history the magazine has already won an impressive list of ‘secular’ and church press awards including: Western Magazine Awards 2007: Best New Magazine, Magazine of the Year (overall); Utne Independent Press Awards: nominated twice for Best Spiritual Coverage, and once for Best New Publication; and seven Canadian Church Press awards.
Enns and his team founded Geez as the “Adbusters for people of faith,” a desire born during his time working in ‘secular’ media.
The magazine’s tongue-in-cheek approach goes well beyond mischief: the editors of Geez are responding to an urgent call to play whistle-blower in their own fold.
Critical of the unchecked affluence dominating the North American Church, the magazine has created an ad-free space for voices which promote the social gospel and a concept of Christ as radical reformer, all with measured grace and easy humour.
“The majority of my friends have left the church but I’m still there even though I don’t have to be. I’m old now you know, but I’m there because I keep finding hope in the teachings of Jesus.”
Jesus, he adds, “was a culture jammer.”
Aiden started university with plans to become a doctor. When he didn’t get accepted to med school he decided to try his hand at a master’s degree in religion, and soon after landed a job as western Canadian editor for the Mennonite Reporter.
“It was here I learned to use words to do the work of a preacher and a teacher.” And he never looked back.
But it was during his time at the preeminent ad-free magazine, Adbusters, that his faith journey took a sharp turn.
“My faith was enlivened because I felt the work of criticizing consumer culture to be prophetic. I had never experienced this type of feeling before. This was the turning point in my faith journey. I began to realize that I had to think of my faith expression in secular terms.”
In each quarterly issue of Geez, people of faith are invited to challenge structures of power and embody joyful alternatives. The magazine also aims to initiate and build community around social and spiritual initiatives such as Buy Nothing Christmas, Make Affluence History and De-motorize Your Soul.
Enns has a personal ‘no-fly’ commitment and took the Greyhound bus to attend the conference. For him, the choice to even show up at the CYWC was a moral dilemma.
“I had a lot of misgivings about us being in the hallways of power – a high class hotel in a world class city. I find this conflicting.” The conference was held in downtown Vancouver’s Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel.
“I oscillate between hope and despair,” he confides about the message he carries to the Church. “The more I learn the more I realize how entrenched injustice and suffering are and that is discouraging. I think hope should drive us to action, not absolve us of action and I don’t see enough of that kind of hope.”
Comment
Questions? Comments? editor@geezmagazine.org
Did you hear about Church v. Billboard?
This is like the nuns and Walmart thing..
It’s too bad they had to sound like they have higher standards than other communities somehow. Saying there’s already more than enough advertising would leave people more sympathetic.
Check out the ‘good corporate citizen’ backpedaling..
“A sign church group doesn’t want to see
Fears billboard will conflict with values Wed Jan 30 2008
By Bartley Kives
A Christian school and Baptist church want to banish a proposed billboard from Waverley Street because they fear the advertising could conflict with “core values” they seek to impart to their students.
...
Miller writes. “Advertisers often do use language and visual images that violate our church and school community standards.”
...
A public hearing about the sign will be held Thursday at city council’s appeal committee. Billboards have been appealed before, but never at such a high level of civic governance — and never because of the possible content of the advertising, said Chris Roubekas, Pattison Outdoor Advertising’s leasing and operations director on the Canadian Prairies.
“It’s never reached this level. Ever,” he said Tuesday from his Calgary office. “We’ve never had a church group appeal a structure before it went up.”
Pattison, a company known for shying away from controversy, typically errs on the side of conservatism when it chooses advertising content in Western Canadian cities such as Winnipeg and Calgary, Roubekas said.
Racier ads can be seen on Pattison billboards in more liberal cities such as Montreal, but the company tends toward the straight and narrow in Winnipeg, where tight municipal regulations already make it tough enough to erect billboards, he said.
“We’re not here to upset anybody,” he said. “We’d rather not be in the papers. We’d rather not fight interest groups. We’re good corporate citizens, putting a sign up where the city recommended it.”
Pattison not only adheres to Canadian advertising standards, but employs a strict set of internal rules, as well, he said, adding even if those checks and balances fail, signs can be changed within 48 hours of a complaint.
The company already shies away from racy advertising near schools, churches and retirements homes. It also has signs on school and church properties, and has not received complaints about those signs.”
Since it’s too late to buy yesterday’s paper, read the rest of the article at your library, or find it in your neighbor’s recycling bin.
What does ‘high level of civic governance’ mean? That’s pure spin if I’ve ever seen it.
The children at school vs advertising angle is an interesting one.. In other cases, advertising has lost because it is a ‘visual blight’, or because it affects traffic safety.
And did you know: “The context of expression subject to limitation is relevant to the standard of scrutiny applied under s. 1 of the Charter. “Commercial expression” is at the lower end of the scale of expression protected under the Charter. As a consequence, the City’s burden under s. 1 of the Charter is subject to substantially more relaxed scrutiny as compared to the context of the core form of an expression such as political expression.” – Her Honour Judge Maltby in City of Whitehorse v. Wharf on Fourth
— Fuzzybunny · Jan 31, 06:15 AM · #