News

The Other Kind of Angels

After leaving Capitol Hill, Mark Rodgers started helping investors find artists.

It’s common to hear conservative Christians, perhaps especially those in Washington, D.C., explain that politics is downstream from culture. But Mark Rodgers is one of the rare few who decided to move upstream.

Even when he was staff director of the Senate Republican Conference, a position he held after serving as chief of staff to Sen. Rick Santorum, Rodgers was fond of quoting Damon of Athens: “Give me the songs of a nation, and it does not matter who writes its laws.” While it may seem an odd sentiment from one of Capitol Hill’s top staffers, it didn’t mean that Rodgers didn’t see meaning in his work. But reading books by the likes of sociologist James Davison Hunter, John Stott, and Francis Schaeffer made him and others in the group eager to “make a difference”—which meant developing better ties with the entertainment industry.

“As we expanded our outreach to artists, we kept hearing, ‘I have a great idea for a project, but I need capital,’ ” Rodgers said.

When the Democrats won control of Congress in 2006 and his boss lost his reelection bid, Rodgers found his boat upstream. He’s still in the Washington area, but now he’s director of the Wedgwood Circle, an angel investment network.

“Angel investing” was originally an entertainment term used to describe the investors in Broadway’s unpredictable shows. Today, nearly all of the 300 or so angel investing groups focus on new technologies like software and biotech. They occupy the spaces between creators’ seed funds from friends and family and venture capital firms, facilitating deals between entrepreneurial investors and investment opportunities. In the case of Wedgwood Circle, potential members must have a net worth of $1 million and pay an annual fee of $6,500. Since Wedgwood’s launch a year ago, 26 investors have already signed on.

Wedgwood’s mission is broad: promoting redemptive work in all sectors of the entertainment industry. Some assume the group is out to promote Christian products. But Rodgers says the people who want to make those products and the people who want to invest in them are already connected.

“We want to invest in Juno, not the Jesus film,” he says. That’s the sensitive part. He likes the Jesus film. He was enthusiastic about The Passion. He listens to CCM. But Wedgwood isn’t about creating Christian-culture artifacts. He’s about creating artifacts that are “true, good, and beautiful for the common good.”

Others have seen the group as a stealth culture-war vehicle. But Rodgers emphatically denies it, noting that the network consciously rejected the idea of having a list of “issues” to address.

Still, an early Wedgwood deal focused on a documentary film and album on the modern slave trade, echoing the group’s abolitionist namesake, Josiah Wedgwood. The ceramics businessman, a peer of William Wilberforce, produced a cameo that became an icon of the anti-slavery movement: a naked slave kneeling in chains below the inscription, “Am I not a man and a brother?”

Rodgers likes the ambiguity: maybe the kneeling slave is praying, or maybe he’s pleading. The inscription, too, is provocative. “It raises a question: Where in our culture [do] we need to be? Art is better when it does that. It’s propaganda when it answers it.”

Rodgers also likes the cameo because it was well crafted and made Wedgwood a lot of money. The trick for Rodgers’s group, he says, is “to work out the tension between patronage and profit.”

Ted Olsen is CT managing editor of news and online journalism.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Wedgwood’s website has more information.

This article is the third of five profiles in Christianity Today‘s cover package on “The New Culture Makers.”

Christianity Today also wrote about artist Makoto Fujimura and the Prison Entrepreneurship Program.

Crouch spoke with CT about culture making on a local scale.

Also in this issue

The CT archives are a rich treasure of biblical wisdom and insight from our past. Some things we would say differently today, and some stances we've changed. But overall, we're amazed at how relevant so much of this content is. We trust that you'll find it a helpful resource.

Cover Story

Creating Culture

Hope for Troubled Times

When a Professor of Aramaic Meets Hollywood

The Ironic Faith of Emergents

McLaren Emerging

My Top 5 Books on Food

Bookmarks

On the Grand Canyon Bus

News

It's Primetime in Iran

News

Looking for Home

Review

Girls on Display

Missionary Myths

Theology in Aisle 7

News

The Father of Faith-Based Diplomacy

Should I Fish or Lay Low?

News

Richard Foster on Leadership

A Life Formed in the Spirit

Review

Debauchery and Crucifixes

News

Quotation Marks

News

Prayer at the Pump

News

Go Figure

News

Going to Bat for His Neighbors

Choosing Celibacy

Wire Story

Sunday Drivers

News

For the Love of Lit

News

No More Shortcuts

News

Re-Imagining Reality

Crouch and Culture

Cultivating Where We're Planted

News

Caesar's Sectarians

News

Healing ORU

Missional Misstep

News

'Dead Sea Scrolls on Stone'

News

Translation Tiff

News

Leaving Lakeland

News

Undue Attention in Algeria

News

The Party of Faith

News

Salvation through Buddhism?

View issue

Our Latest

Wicked or Misunderstood?

A conversation with Beth Moore about UnitedHealthcare shooting suspect Luigi Mangione and the nature of sin.

Why Armenian Christians Recall Noah’s Ark in December

The biblical account of the Flood resonates with a persecuted church born near Mount Ararat.

Review

The Virgin Birth Is More Than an Incredible Occurrence

We’re eager to ask whether it could have happened. We shouldn’t forget to ask what it means.

The Nine Days of Filipino Christmas

Some Protestants observe the Catholic tradition of Simbang Gabi, predawn services in the days leading up to Christmas.

The Bulletin

Neighborhood Threat

The Bulletin talks about Christians in Syria, Bible education, and the “bad guys” of NYC.

Join CT for a Live Book Awards Event

A conversation with Russell Moore, Book of the Year winner Gavin Ortlund, and Award of Merit winner Brad East.

Excerpt

There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Proper’ Christmas Carol

As we learn from the surprising journeys of several holiday classics, the term defies easy definition.

Advent Calls Us Out of Our Despair

Sitting in the dark helps us truly appreciate the light.

Apple PodcastsDown ArrowDown ArrowDown Arrowarrow_left_altLeft ArrowLeft ArrowRight ArrowRight ArrowRight Arrowarrow_up_altUp ArrowUp ArrowAvailable at Amazoncaret-downCloseCloseEmailEmailExpandExpandExternalExternalFacebookfacebook-squareGiftGiftGooglegoogleGoogle KeephamburgerInstagraminstagram-squareLinkLinklinkedin-squareListenListenListenChristianity TodayCT Creative Studio Logologo_orgMegaphoneMenuMenupausePinterestPlayPlayPocketPodcastRSSRSSSaveSaveSaveSearchSearchsearchSpotifyStitcherTelegramTable of ContentsTable of Contentstwitter-squareWhatsAppXYouTubeYouTube