The Righteous Gemstones is an HBO comedy series created by Danny McBride about a fictional family of megachurch televangelists — the Gemstones — whose enormous wealth, family dysfunction, and hypocritical Christianity are played for dark comedy. It is one of the most direct satirical critiques of celebrity Christianity in recent television.
The Righteous Gemstones is, in its satirical targets, sometimes uncomfortably accurate. The Gemstone family's use of Christianity as a wealth and status mechanism, the family dysfunction beneath the televised smiles, and the way celebrity church culture protects its own from accountability — these are real phenomena that deserve critique. The show has clearly done its homework on televangelism, megachurch culture, and the prosperity gospel.
Some Christian critics have noted that the show functions as an accidental argument for genuine Christian faith — by depicting Christianity so thoroughly corrupted by money and celebrity, it implicitly asks what authentic faith would look like. This is not nothing.
The show delivers its critique through relentless crude sexual content, graphic violence, consistent profanity, and deliberate blasphemy. The Gemstone family's prayer, worship, and religious practice are depicted with contempt throughout. While mocking prosperity gospel televangelists may be warranted (we share some of those concerns — see our Prosperity Gospel guide), the show does not distinguish between celebrity Christian fraud and genuine Christian faith — it mocks Christianity wholesale.
For Christian viewers, this creates a formation problem: regularly consuming a show whose fundamental attitude toward Christianity is contemptuous, however accurate some of its specific critique may be, is not consistent with Philippians 4:8's call to dwell on what is "lovely and admirable."
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