Sermon Illustrations on Media

Double Standards In the Middle East

Discussion of both sides of double standards in reporting of Arab/Israeli conflict. Double standards of: American politicians, American media, Israeli politicians, liberals, conservatives.

Biased News

American Journalism has an anti-christian bias. Media in America used to take a biblical attitude toward sin, repentance, etc. Olasky thinks Christians should start alternative news services.

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And That's the Way It Is

John 3:11

Discusses the biases and presuppositions of network news. The powerful are

favored, as well as politics and finances. Religion is shunned. Personal

interest stories are relegated to the end of the broadcast. The movie, "Being

There," (Peter Sellers) shows how news shapes events.

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The Church of Oprah Winfrey -- A New American Religion?

Ruth 1:14

By any measure, Oprah Winfrey is one of the most successful women in America. Her net worth is now thought to exceed one billion dollars, and her expanding media empire is one of the great success stories of the modern entertainment industry. She recently celebrated the twentieth anniversary of “The Oprah Show,” and is committed to a contract that will take the show through its twenty-fifth season. She regularly appears at the top of the “Most Admired Women” listings and has become a cultural icon, complete with her own magazine and product lines. But is there more to the meaning of Oprah Winfrey?

Marcia Z. Nelson sees Oprah as a major American religious leader. In THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO OPRAH, Nelson presents her as the symbol and catalyst for a new American religion. “Oprah Winfrey, talk show host, film producer, and philanthropist, is not ordained. She is neither preacher nor religious professional. Yet her multimedia empire, built over two decades, has given her the scope and stature of an influential leader. Oprah has a prominent pulpit from which to preach,” Nelson insists. Oprah's television audience of ten million (according to Nielsen ratings) and her magazine readership of 2.7 million together represent a massive media phenomenon. As Nelson explains, “Oprah's whole enterprise, which includes many media that provide platforms for her gospel as well as sources of income, is vast.” Nelson's book represents an effort to understand Oprah Winfrey as an exemplar and prophetess of a new form of American religion. In reality, Oprah is probably best understood as a highly-talented representative of the religion of positive thinking that has shaped American culture for at least the last two centuries. In this role, Oprah continues and extends a line of religious thought that replaces the transcendent with the temporal and looks for fulfillment and success as the goods of a satisfying life.

Marcia Z. Nelson is a writer who covers religions and spirituality. In previous works, she has considered various aspects of modern American religion, including contemporary meditation movements. In Oprah Winfrey she has found a figure of such influence and reach that she may well represent the mainstreaming of her own life philosophy.

Of course, Oprah's primary audience is comprised of women. “Oprah is primarily the voice of women in the middle: middle-class middle Americans,” Nelson explains. Through her television show, magazine, and book club, Oprah reaches out to these women with a message of self-improvement, empowerment, and self-actualization.

Watching “The Oprah Show” is, Nelson insists, something like attending a worship service. “Go to this house of worship and sit down for an inspiring hour that will engage you and give you a lift,” Nelson encourages. “An hour-long show five days a week adds up to a lot more pulpit time per week than the average pastor enjoys, and Oprah commands a lot bigger congregation.”

Nelson's book is genuinely interesting, offering credible and helpful insights into the Oprah phenomenon. At the same time, Nelson gushes over the meaning of Oprah and seems to celebrate Oprah's redefinition of religious experience. Indeed, she goes so far as to refer to Oprah as a symbol of spiritual renewal. “In other words, it is not just talk, but talk that's been tested in life's fires -- talk is testimony,” she asserts. “As Oprah would say, this is about getting real. This is the language of authenticity. A preference for the freshness and vividness of experience over what can seem like the dull dryness of institutional faith is hardly new, of course. Spiritual renewal has ever been thus.”

Oprah Winfrey was born January 29, 1954 in Kosciusko, Mississippi. Originally, she lived there on a farm with her mother, Vernita, and her grandmother, Hattie Mae Lee. In later years, Vernita was unable to care for Oprah, and she went to live with her father, Vernon Winfrey, in Nashville. Interestingly, Oprah was supposed to have been named Orpah, after the daughter-in-law of Naomi as cited in Ruth 1:14. A misspelling of her name led to the name that has made her famous. She was raised in a Baptist church and developed her speaking ability in the context of the local congregation.

As an adolescent, Oprah was sexually abused by male relatives, became sexually promiscuous, and gave birth to a baby boy, who later died.

She got her big break in broadcasting at age 19 and left her college studies in order to become a TV newscaster. In 1984, she moved to WLS-TV in Chicago and began a local talk show. The show was so popular that it was eventually named for Oprah and then went into national syndication. From those roots, a vast media empire was born.

Nelson is candid in dealing with the way Oprah repackages spirituality. “She translates what religions would term transcendent into something that is inspiring but secular. She would call it a vision of possibilities. She has tried to develop her own unique language, which means talking about values in a secular and inclusive sense in a religiously pluralistic country.”

The Oprah phenomenon is based in self-disclosure, confession, testimony, and talk -- lots and lots of talk. Episodes of “The Oprah Show” often deal with abuse, frustration, and the search for fulfillment. Guests are routinely encouraged to confess their wrongdoing, claim their promise, and move into a new phase of their lives, empowered and encouraged by Oprah and the experience of sharing their inner lives with millions of television viewers. In this sense, Oprah's television show promises something like a secular catharsis -- complete with Oprah's validation of their problems, their desires, and their self-analysis. Nelson suggests that Oprah's influence is based in her gift for listening and her knowledge that self-disclosure and personal testimony offer a means of liberation. Of course, this dependence upon disclosure and confession also makes for good ratings -- and Oprah understands what interests a television audience. As Nelson explains: “On Oprah's show, abuse may be the subject of a show, followed the next day by an entertainer. However morally laudable or pressing, unrelieved focus on abuse or mistreatment of women or AIDS in Africa or any of the world's pressing needs doesn't make for good ratings, either. Without good ratings, the television platform Oprah needs to 'get people to think about things a little differently' would vanish.”

In the course of her research, Nelson approached several scholars of American religion, asking them “whether they could think of Oprah as a teacher who advanced a kind of entry-level religion that included the same core values many religions promote.” When Oprah was criticized for offering meaning without community, Nelson counters by suggesting that Oprah's television show and reading club offer one form of community, even as her expanding presence on the internet promises “virtual community.”

Oprah Winfrey's approach to life centers in self-analysis and positive thinking. Of course, material abundance also plays a part. “Oprah believes in abundance, a concept not generally associated with religion,” Nelson acknowledges. “A lot of people think of religion as requiring asceticism and poverty -- giving up goods, denying personal desires. And for good reason.” By offering a seemingly endless array of product recommendations and endorsements, and by filling her magazine with advertisements for expensive products and services, Oprah clearly associates the good life with material fulfillment.

In keeping with the theme of positive thinking, and with the ideology of spiritual movements of this kind, Oprah's secularized spirituality includes few rules or moral judgments. “Oprah is famously nonjudgmental and empathetic,” Nelson explains. Even as she features programs on romance, dating, marriage, and parenting, Oprah remains unmarried. Her nonjudgmentalism extends to her own lifestyle, even as she has publicly acknowledged the fact that she lives with her longtime boyfriend, Stedman Graham.

When Oprah refers to God, she is clear to insist that this means no specific god and entails no particular theological commitments. Nelson refers to Oprah's treatment of religion on her program as “a non-sectarian picture” in which theological content “is present but not primary.” In other words, “God is acknowledged as necessary, but the language doesn't insist on that. It's soft sell.”

As Nelson understands the Oprah phenomenon, forgiveness is at the center of Oprah's message. Nevertheless, Oprah offers forgiveness without atonement. Confession of inadequacy is presented as a sufficient remedy for sin and wrongdoing. God is effectively out of the picture as lawgiver or judge, and there is no room for the cross of Christ as atonement for sin.

“Oprah's 'New Age' talk about spirit was part of her ongoing, ever evolving attempt to find the right words for teachings she learned through religion,” Nelson suggests. “Her spiritually inclusive language is also intended to be unique -- the language she alone speaks that makes her inspiring and distinctly herself. For marketing reasons as well as for her own sense of mission, she's putting her own stamp on the language, on the words she uses, on the culture, where the 'Oprah effect' and 'Oprahfication' and 'She Oprah'ed it out of me' are terms that have been coined to describe her pervasive influence and style.”

Oprah's faith wears no labels, Nelson insists. Oprah “talks often enough about values that her audience can see she is value driven, even if the values and beliefs don't wear a specific denominational label,” Nelson observes. As she explains, “Oprah's clothes may wear labels, but her faith does not.”

New York University professor Paul Vitz once observed, “Contemporary psychology is a form of secular humanism based on the rejection of God and the worship of the self.” In her substitution of psychology for theology, Oprah has become a high priestess and icon of the psychologization of American society. When she features prominent New Age figures on her television show, she helps to mainstream New Age influences and philosophies among millions of Americans. Her substitution of spirituality for biblical Christianity, her promotion of forgiveness without atonement, and her references to a god “without labels” puts her at the epicenter of a seismic cultural earthquake.

At the same time, Oprah cannot be ignored. Marcia Z. Nelson's new book is intended as a celebration of Oprah's significance as a harbinger of a new gospel. In the end, the importance of this book is grounded in the fact that it draws attention to Oprah's influence and cultural impact. Oprah's newly-packaged positive-thinking spirituality is tailor-made for the empty souls of our postmodern age. She promises meaning without truth, acceptance without judgment, and fulfillment without self-denial. Marcia Z. Nelson is certainly right about one thing -- Oprah Winfrey's “congregation” cannot be ignored.

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[Original illustration at this number was deleted for being obsolete]

Hollywood vs. Religion

John 16:2

Medved, co-host of “Sneak Previews” on PBS and a devout Jew, castigates “The Last Temptation of Christ” as a bad film and anti-Christian. He sees an anti-religious bias in Hollywood. It is more than economics and first amendment freedom, because bad religious films lose money and positive ones make it.

“It is hard to escape the conclusion that there is a perverse sort of idealism at work here. For many of the most powerful people in the entertainment business, hostility to traditional religion goes so deep and burns so intensely that they insist on expressing that hostility, even at the risk to commercial disaster.”

Does Hollywood Hate Religion?

John 16:2

Michael Medved is a film critic.

"Why do savvy producers continue to authorize scores of projects that portray

religious leaders as crazed, conspiratorial charlatans, when similar films

have failed so conspicuously and consistently in the past? It is hard too

escape the conclusion that, for many of the most powerful people in the

entertainment business, hostility to traditional religion goes so deep and

burns so intensely that they insist on expressing that hostility, even at the

risk of commercial disaster."

(Quoted in Biblical Evangelist, 8/1/90, page 19)

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Violence, Reel To Real

Mark 7:15

Criminals in NYC copied the film “Money Train” when they torched a subway token booth on November 25, 1995. Filmmakers say they based the scene on what other criminals did in the 1980’s. However, copycat crimes involve only a minuscule fraction of the millions of people who watch the same movie or show. Far more troubling is the question of how our daily immersion in violent - in aggressive cartoons, brutal sporting events, graphic newscasts, shoot-’em-up movies and TV shows and harsh popular music - affect children and adults in the aggregate.

Forty years of scientific study lead to differing conclusions. A 22-year study in Michigan found that the single best predictor of later aggression - more than poverty, grades, a single-parent home or exposure to real violence - was a heavy childhood diet of TV carnage. Leonard Eron says, “Of course not every youngster is affected. Not everyone who gets lung cancer smoked cigarettes. And not everyone who smokes cigarettes gets lung cancer. But nobody outside the tobacco industry denies that smoking cause lung cancer. The size of the correlation is the same.” Epidemiologist Brandon S. Centerwall goes so far as to assert that without TV there would be 10,000 fewer murders in the United States, 70,000 fewer rapes, and 700,000 fewer assaults.

The type of violence seems to matter - punished aggression does not have the influence that rewarded aggression does. Also, those with a previous inclination to violence are most affected by it. Two compelling studies were done in Canadian towns before and after they received television. In the United States, Canada and South Africa the murder rates doubled 10 years after television was introduced. George Gerbner argues that it is not the violent acts on TV that influence so much as its cultivation of “feelings of insecurity, vulnerability and mistrust, and - despite its supposedly ‘entertaining’ nature - alienation and gloom.” TV uses violence to define social relations between characters. Women and minorities are most often victims. (In reality, men are one and a half times more likely to be victims.)

So far the entertainment industry has resisted any change.

No Graven Images: People of the Word

Luke 4:16

A few years ago, Neil Postman wrote a devastating critique of television called "Amusing Ourselves to Death." The book was welcomed by critics and reviewed in all the right magazines, but not once did we learn where Postman got his ideas.

It turns out he got them from the Bible.

Postman's thesis is that different types of media encourage different ways of thinking. The printed word requires sustained attention, logical analysis, and an active imagination. But television, with its fast-moving images, encourages a short attention span, disjointed thinking, and purely emotional responses.

The medium of communication actually helps shape the way people think.

Postman says he first discovered this connection in the Bible. As a young man, he read the Ten Commandments and was struck by the words: "You shall not make for yourself a graven image." Postman says he realized that the idea of a universal deity cannot be expressed in images but only in words.

As he writes, "The God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking."

This is the God Christians worship today -- a God known principally through His Word.

Many religions have a scripture, of course. Yet most teach that the way to contact the divine is through mystical visions, emotional experiences, or Eastern-style meditation. Judaic Christianity alone insists on the primacy of language.

Gene Edward Veith, in "Reading Between the Lines," explains why: The heart of our religion is a relationship with God -- and relationships thrive on communication. We cannot know people intimately merely by being in their presence," Veith says. "It takes conversation to share thoughts and personalities."

Christians are meant to have an ongoing conversation with God. We address Him in the language of prayer, and He addresses us in the language of Scripture.

Historically, this emphasis on the Word has had a deep impact on Western culture. In earlier societies, reading was confined to an elite. It was the Reformation that first aimed at universal literacy, so that the Bible could be put into the hands of every believer.

Today missionaries are still doing the same thing. In non- literate societies, they reduce the native language to writing and teach the people to read the Bible.

And from there they can go on to read anything. They can read about sanitation, health care, democracy -- things that often transform their culture, much as the Reformation transformed Western culture.

Yet here in the West we are in danger of coming full circle: The visual media created by modern science may ultimately undermine literacy, transforming us back into an image-based culture.

If that happens, will only an elite be taught to read? Will biblical faith still flourish?

In the Old Testament, God's people were tempted by graven images. Today the images are graven by electrons on cathode ray tubes.

Christians need to learn when to flip the switch -- in order to remain true to our historical reputation as the "people of the book."

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Exploiting the Generation Gap: Cosmogirl vs. Parents

Imagine if strangers approached your 12-year-old daughter and said they wanted to talk with her about her problems at home, at school, and with boys. You'd probably be pretty upset. After all, who has the right to give your daughter advice -- especially on what's going on at home? Shouldn't she be talking to YOU?

Not according to a hot new magazine called CosmoGirl! The way the editors see it, parents are preachy and out of touch with what teenage girls need to hear. And CosmoGirl! aims to fill that void. It's the latest example how advertisers are marketing over the heads of parents directly to kids.

CosmoGirl! is the brainchild of the Hearst publishing empire, which publishes Cosmopolitan magazine. Cosmo, of course, played a big role in launching the sexual revolution back in the sixties. Now they're poised to bring the sexual revolution to your daughter -- and they're not asking your permission.

In creating a Cosmo for kids, Hearst is capitalizing on a lucrative trend in magazines aimed at teens. It's loaded with horoscopes, celebrity gossip, and love guidance. It even has a sex advice column from Dr. Ruth, and another column that tells girls how to get their own way when their parents disapprove of their plans.

The CosmoGirl! Web site gives an idea of what Hearst has in mind for our daughters: "We can help you with questions about your changing body that you feel funny about asking your doctor or mom," it says. "[Are you n]ervous about the pressures that boys may be putting on you? [Are y]our parents totally stressing you out? You can look to Cosmogirl! for realistic advice."

The Web site boasts that CosmoGirl! is edited by "someone who's young enough to understand ... and can tell you the real deal -- without being preachy like a mom."

This trend to reach over parents' heads and appeal directly to kids has become pronounced over the last 30 years. Before then, parents were recognized as the arbiters of what messages their kids were getting -- and of what they purchased. But today's teens have plenty of money of their own -- and that's why companies market directly to them without much concern about whether or not parents approve of either the messages or the products.

And what is CosmoGirl!'s message? That kids can't trust their parents. After all, if they trusted their parents they probably wouldn't be buying magazines like CosmoGirl! And that would be bad for business. So companies have a huge stake in keeping children divided from -- and at odds with -- their parents. It's a cynical ploy, and one Christians must stand against.

Our best defense is to take an active interest in our children's lives. If we don't, they'll find it all too easy to turn to magazines like CosmoGirl! for advice. Remember, kids turn elsewhere for advice only if they don't get satisfactory answers at home. If you create a world that is loving and honest, you can neutralize the lure of magazines like CosmoGirl!

All children -- yes, even teenage girls -- long for an honest, open relationship with their parents. And no matter what the media tell you, that's worth far more than a whole truckload of make-up tips, celebrity gossip -- and unbiblical advice.

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The Rest of the Story: How Believers Made A Difference

A few weeks ago, BreakPoint listeners heard me discuss the partnership we shared with Amazon.com -- that is, until we found out the on-line bookstore was peddling books that promoted pedophilia.

We expressed our concern to a representative of Amazon.com, but the company's response was, in effect, we're sorry you feel that way, but Amazon.com is committed to serving all its customers.

We cancelled our partnership at once, thinking that was the end of the matter. But over the following weeks we received letters from several BreakPoint listeners who gave us the rest of the story -- an exciting story that reminds us that we should never give up on reforming the culture.

BreakPoint first set up the partnership with Amazon.com as a service to our listeners and Internet subscribers. We wanted to provide them with a way to purchase recommended books quickly and conveniently. But then we discovered that Amazon.com sold a book called Varieties of Man Boy Love, as well as other titles on pedophilia. Keep in mind that pedophilia is a crime in all 50 states.

So we decided to have nothing to do with Amazon.com, and I went on the air to inform BreakPoint listeners why we were ending the relationship. Almost immediately, we began hearing from our listeners with wonderful stories of Christian activism.

Instead of just getting mad and doing nothing, a number of BreakPoint listeners contacted Amazon. They asked the company to stop selling the offensive book. Several sent copies of the BreakPoint commentary directly to Amazon. One listener also emailed the commentary to his friends and urged them to contact Amazon as well. He later told us that his sister-in-law was so outraged that she called Amazon and threatened to cancel a huge shipment of Christmas books!

Some enterprising listeners then sent out the commentary to opinion-makers, including radio talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger. Dr. Laura recounted the entire story over the air, expressing her own outrage over a company that, in essence, supports illegal behavior.

A BreakPoint listener I'll call Elizabeth heard Dr. Laura's broadcast and contacted Amazon.com. She pressed the company to take into account the negative publicity it was receiving, both on Christian radio stations through BreakPoint, and on secular stations from Dr. Laura. A few days later, Elizabeth checked Amazon's listings again. She discovered that Varieties of Man/Boy Love was no longer being offered for sale.

Chalk one up for the side of righteousness!

"We believe God answered many prayers concerning this," Elizabeth wrote. "I am encouraged that change can be effected when women and men are willing to speak the truth."

Amen, Elizabeth. Too often Christians become discouraged over the culture wars, and think we cannot make a difference. But this story shows that we CAN reform the culture -- even cyber culture -- one battle at a time.

We at BreakPoint were delighted to hear from so many listeners. You showed that you are not passive complainers but active, committed, and willing to go out of your way to make a difference.

So don't listen to those who say we've lost the culture war and can't make a difference. We can change the culture if we are willing, as Elizabeth put it, to stand up and speak the truth.

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Columbine, One Year After: What, If Anything, Have We Learned?

Deuteronomy 30:19

For a year now, the nation has gone through an agonizing soul-searching over Columbine. For some reason, we can't seem to get it out of our minds. But what have we really learned from this tragedy?

Politicians talk about gun control as if it would solve problems like Columbine. But Harris and Klebold planned a cold-blooded murder. Anyone who saw the videos they made before the killings could see that these were angry, murderous kids who would stop at nothing, whether a gun were registered or not.

They were influenced by the darkest aspects of American popular culture -- saturated with the most violent and sadistic images imaginable. Violent lyrics and films filled their minds, and yet the public still continues to patronize the industries that produce it.

Just last weekend the President and Vice President were in Hollywood scooping up millions of dollars in contributions from the very people responsible for spewing this sewage into society. Can't they see the connection? It's time we ostracize those who put this kind of rot into the minds of young people.

But there is good news from Columbine. This tragedy sent a powerful message to the American people -- a wake-up call. Some have called it "the Pearl Harbor of the culture wars." Because suddenly the nation saw two worldviews in stark contrast.

On one side we saw Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott, their families and friends, the Christians who rallied behind them, and the incredible church services exalting Jesus. There were groups like Neighbors Who Care, a ministry of Prison Fellowship, that took the lead in the efforts to heal the emotional and spiritual scars.

Neighbors Who Care worked through churches to offer seminars and to minister to victims of crime. Their "Grace for Healing" seminars trained people in how to begin the process of recovery. And the whole community pulled together.

On the other side, we saw the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher who said "God is dead." This is the worldview that influenced Harris and Klebold, with their Nazi paraphernalia, their anger and profanity, and their agenda of death and destruction. They had abandoned any view of God or Western civilization, and sold out to a philosophy of evil.

Tragedies like this force people to see what happens when society embraces a secular worldview. It's as if God is saying to us today what he said to the Israelites of old, "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life" (Deut. 30:19).

Frankly, I don't think America will ever be the same. Polls show that public attitudes have dramatically changed since Columbine. A vast majority say that we must do more to create respect for traditional values. Youth violence is now the number one issue for many Americans, and people are talking again about restoring our moral values in American society.

We ought to remember Columbine today by renewing our dedication to speak to the secular world, which is hungry and searching for answers. We need to share biblical truth in such a way that they can see what it means to choose, not the way of Harris and Klebold, but the way of Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott. The answer to the modern dilemma of how we should now live is founded on this Christian truth: Choose Life!

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Brownies Make the Difference

Ezra 9:11

Many parents are hard pressed to explain to their youth why that some music, movies, books, and magazines are not acceptable material for them to bring into the home or to listen to or see.

One parent came up with an original idea that is hard to refute. The father listened to all the reasons his children gave for wanting to see a particular PG-13 movie. It had their favorite actors. Everyone else was seeing it. Even church members said it was great. It was only rated PG-13 because of the suggestion of sex–they never really showed it. The language was pretty good–the Lord’s name was only used in vain three times in the whole movie.

The teens did admit there was a scene where a building and a bunch of people were blown up, but the violence was just the normal stuff. It wasn’t too bad. And even if there were a few minor things, the special effects were fabulous and the plot was action packed.

However, even with all the justifications the teens made for the 13’ rating, the father still wouldn’t give in. He didn’t even give his children a satisfactory explanation for saying, “No.” He just said, “No!”

A little later on that evening the father asked his teens if they would like some brownies he had baked. He explained that he’d taken the family’s favorite recipe and added a little something new. The children asked what it was.

The father calmly replied that he had added ‘dog poop’. However, he quickly assured them, it was only a little bit. All other ingredients were gourmet quality and he had taken great care to bake the brownies at the precise temperature for the exact time. He was sure the brownies would be superb.

Even with their father’s promise that the brownies were of almost perfect quality, the teens would not take any. The father acted surprised. After all, it was only one small part of what was causing them to be so stubborn. He was certain they would hardly notice it. Still the teens held firm and would not try the brownies.

The father then told his children how the movie they wanted to see was just like the brownies. The movie industry would have you believe that just a little bit of evil won’t matter. But, the truth is even a little bit of ‘dog poop’ makes the difference between a great treat and something disgusting and totally unacceptable.

The father went on to explain that even though the movie industry would have us believe that most of today’s movies are acceptable fare for adults and youth… they are not!

Now, when this father’s children want to see something that is of such questionable material, the father merely asks them if they would like some of his special ‘dog poop’ brownies…. That closes the subject!

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Another version from Stephanie Johnson:

Homemade brownies

Last week, I walked into my office to find a sandwich bag on my desk containing three chewy, tasty, homemade chocolate brownies. Some thoughtful and anonymous person who knew my love for tasty homemade brownies had placed them there, along with a handwritten short story. I immediately sat down and began eating the first chewy, tasty, homemade brownie as I read the following story:

Two teenagers asked their father if they could go the theater to watch a movie that all their friends had seen. After reading some reviews about the movie on the Internet, he denied their request.

“Aw dad, why not?” they complained. “It’s rated PG-13, and we’re both older than thirteen!”

Dad replied: “Because that movie contains nudity and portrays immorality as being normal and acceptable behavior.”

“But dad, those are just very small parts of the movie! That’s what our friends who’ve seen it have told us. The movie is two hours long and those scenes are just a few minutes of the total film! It’s based on a true story and good triumphs over evil, and there are other redeeming themes like courage and self-sacrifice. Even the movie review websites say that!”

“My answer is ‘no,’ and that is my final answer. You are welcome to stay home tonight, invite some of your friends over, and watch one of the good videos we have in our home collection. But you will not go and watch that film. End of discussion.”

The two teenagers walked dejectedly into the family room and slumped down on the couch. As they sulked, they were surprised to hear the sounds of their Father preparing something in the kitchen. They soon recognized the wonderful aroma of brownies baking in the oven, and one of the teenagers said to the other,

“Dad must be feeling guilty, and now he’s going to try to make it up to us with some fresh brownies. Maybe we can soften him with lots of praise when he brings them out to us and persuade him to let us go to that movie after all.”

[About that time I began eating the second brownie from the sandwich bag and wondered if there was some connection to the brownies I was eating and the brownies in the story. I kept reading...]

The teens were not disappointed. Soon their father appeared with a plate of warm brownies, which he offered to his kids. They each took one. Then their father said, “Before you eat, I want to tell you something: I love you both so much. That is why I’ve made these brownies with the very best ingredients. I’ve made them from scratch. Most of the ingredients are even organic. The best organic flour. The best free-range eggs. The best organic sugar. Premium Vanilla and chocolate.”

The brownies looked mouthwatering, and the teens began to become a little impatient with their dad’s long speech.

“But I want to be perfectly honest with you. There is one ingredient I added that is not usually found in brownies. I got that ingredient from our own back yard. But you needn’t worry, because I only added the tiniest bit of that ingredient to your brownies. The amount of the portion is practically insignificant. So go ahead, take a bite and let me know what you think.”

“Dad, would you mind telling us what that mystery ingredient is before we eat?”

“Why? The portion I added was so small. Just a teaspoonful. You won’t even taste it.”

“Come on, dad; just tell us what that ingredient is.”

“Don’t worry! It is organic, just like the other ingredients.”

“Dad!”

“Well, OK, if you insist. That secret ingredient is fresh organic...dog poop.”

[I immediately stopped chewing that second brownie and I spit it out into the wastebasket by my desk. I continued reading, now fearful of the paragraphs that still remained...]

Both teens instantly dropped their brownies back on the plate and began inspecting their fingers with horror. “DAD! Why did you do that? You’ve tortured us by making us smell those brownies cooking for the last half-hour, and now you tell us that you added dog poop! We can’t eat these brownies!”

“Why not? The amount of dog poop is very small compared to the rest of the ingredients. It won’t hurt you. It’s been cooked right along with the other ingredients. You won’t even taste it. It has the same consistency as the brownies. Go ahead and eat!”

“No, Dad...NEVER!”

“And that is the same reason I won’t allow you to go watch that movie. You won’t tolerate a little dog poop in your brownies, so why should you tolerate a little immorality in your movies? We pray that God will not lead us unto temptation, so how can we in good conscience entertain ourselves with something that will imprint a sinful image in our minds that will lead us into temptation long after we first see it?”

[I discarded what remained of the second brownie as well as the entire untouched third brownie. What had been irresistible a minute go had become detestable! And only because of the very slim chance that what I was eating was slightly polluted. (Surely it wasn’t ... but I couldn’t convince myself.) What a good lesson about purity! Why do we tolerate any sin?]

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Another version by Don Johnson of Succasunna, New Jersey:

A father of some teenage children had the family rule that they could not attend "R" rated movies. His three teens wanted to see a particular popular movie that was playing at local theaters. It was rated "R." The teens interviewed friends and even some members of their family's church to find out what was offensive in the movie. The teens made a list of pros and cons about the movie to use to convince their dad that they should be allowed to see it.

The con's were that it contained ONLY 3 swear words, the ONLY violence was a building exploding (and you see that on TV all the time they said), and you actually did not "see" the couple in the movie having sex - it was just implied sex, off camera.

The pros were that it was a popular movie - a blockbuster. Everyone was seeing it. If the teens saw the movie then they would not feel left out when their friends discussed it. The movie contained a good story and plot. It had some great adventure and suspense in it. There were some fantastic special effects in this movie. The movie's stars were some of the most talented actors in Hollywood. It probably would be nominated for several awards. Many of the members of their Christian church had even seen the movie and said it wasn't "very bad". Therefore, since there were more pros than cons the teens said they were asking their father to reconsider his position on just this ONE movie and let them have permission to go see it.

The father looked at the list and thought for a few minutes. He said he could tell his children had spent some time and thought on this request. He asked if he could have a day to think about it before making his decision. The teens were thrilled thinking; "Now we've got him! Our argument is too good! Dad can't turn us down!" So, they happily agreed to let him have a day to think about their request.

The next evening the father called in his three teenagers, who were smiling smugly, into the living room. There on the coffee table he had a plate of brownies. The teens were puzzled. The father told his children he had thought about their request and had decided that if they would eat a brownie then he would let them go to the movie. But just like the movie, the brownies had pros and cons.

The pros were that they were made with the finest chocolate and other good ingredients. They had the added special effect of yummy walnuts in them. The brownies were moist and fresh with wonderful chocolate frosting on top. He had made these fantastic brownies using an award winning recipe. And best of all, the brownies had been made lovingly by the hand of their own father.

The brownies only had one con. He had included a little bit of a special ingredient. The brownies also contained just a little bit of dog poop. But he had mixed the dough well - they probably would not even be able to taste the dog poop and he had baked it at 350 degrees so any bacteria or germs from the dog poop had probably been destroyed. Therefore, if any of his children could stand to eat the brownies which included just a "little bit of crap" and not be effected by it, then he knew they would also be able to see the movie with "just a little bit of smut" and not be effected.

Of course, none of the teens would eat the brownies and the smug smiles had left their faces. Only Dad was smiling smugly as they left the room.

Now when his teenagers ask permission to do something he is opposed to the father just asks, "Would you like me to whip up a batch of my special brownies?"

Is Anyone Out There?: the Moral Universe of Film & Television

Ask most Christians what they think is wrong with movies and television shows and they’ll probably cite examples of violence, sexual content, and profanity.

But the problem with a lot of what we watch isn’t only what’s there, it’s also what is not there: namely, the notion that someone is in charge of the universe.

Christians call this idea “providence.” John Calvin defined providence as a “governing activity” rooted in the idea that God is the “Creator and Preserver [of the universe] ... [and] that he sustains, nourishes, and cares for everything he has made....”

Belief in providence went beyond matters of religion. Historically, belief in a governing activity enabled the various plot strands in drama and comedy to come together in a satisfying ending -- an ending that left the audience thinking that the world had order and wasn’t spinning out of control.

As Thomas Hibbs of Boston College points out, we see providence at work in the movies of Frank Capra, for example. Whether the movies had a religious reference, like IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, or didn’t, LIKE MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, the message is the same: some force is at work rewarding good and punishing evil.

But as Hibbs chronicles in his book, SHOWS ABOUT NOTHING, that has changed in the past three decades. Since the early 1970s, much of what we watch is characterized by what Hibbs calls a “demonic anti-providence.” These are films like THE EXORCIST, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and the recent hit, HANNIBAL. You can find something similar in shows like SEINFELD, which advertises itself as a show about nothing.

This goes beyond making television and the movies religion-free zones, or depicting religious believers in negative ways. The world depicted in movies and television is often one where “...ultimate justice is elusive,” and “where we are tempted to see the underlying force as malevolent and punitive.”

As a result, says Hibbs, this worldview sees “violence and ineradicable guilt as the underlying truth about the human condition....” In place of the hero, we have what Hibbs calls the “demonic anti-hero” who -- unlike the hero who knows what is right and seeks to do it -- is bound by no moral code and, in fact, invites the audience to celebrate his liberation from morality.

The demonic anti-hero, and the worldview that produced him, are the product of cultural attitudes towards belief in God. It’s true that most Americans profess to believe in God, but this God is a far cry from the God of Scripture. More than a century of naturalism has eroded our belief that God is providential -- that is, in charge of all events. Likewise, there is little sense that he rewards good and punishes evil. And what we see onscreen not only reflects these beliefs, it reinforces them.

Over the past three decades, the entertainment industry has become the dominant cultural force in our culture. Films and television have little effective competition when it comes to shaping our -- and our children’s -- moral imaginations.

This is why we can’t stop at knowing just whether a film contains nudity or violence. Even films without either one can teach a worldview at odds with historic Christianity. To understand the impact of media on our lives, we have to look at the worldview being depicted. And that starts with asking if, according to the show, anyone is really in charge.

============

Hibbs, Thomas S. SHOWS ABOUT NOTHING: NIHILISM IN POPULAR CULTURE FROM THE EXORCIST TO SEINFELD. Dallas: Spence Publishing, 1999.

or in trade paper:

Star Trek and the Church: Why Media Matters

Last summer, a friend of mine visited the "Star Trek Experience" in Las Vegas. While immersing himself in all things Star Trek, he struck up a conversation with another visitor -- a truck driver from Reno.

Looking back on the experience, my friend realized that the conversation with its instant bond, common vocabulary, and vital interest in the subject was just like the experience that we as Christians call "fellowship."

This observation applies to more than just Star Trek fans. Popular culture, particularly electronic media, is increasingly the only thing that many Americans have in common -- our one binding experience -- and, as such, it has emerged as the principal shaper of American culture.

The process has been underway for nearly one hundred years. During the Battle of the Bulge, American sentries asked three questions designed to distinguish real Americans from German infiltrators. Two of the three questions were about popular culture -- an indication of the sway that sports, popular music, and movies held over the American imagination.

This hold wasn't exclusive, as seen in the results of a 1948 survey that asked Americans which figure they most wanted to emulate. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Clara Barton topped the list with only fourteen percent of the respondents naming an entertainer.

But by 1986, every person in the top ten, save President Reagan, was a movie or television star. This survey illustrates the increasing hegemony of electronic media over American consciousness.

The emergence of this hegemony coincided with the weakening of other institutions that traditionally shaped what Americans thought and believed, like families, local communities, and especially churches.

It's not a coincidence that the institutions eclipsed by popular culture and electronic media were those that exercised moral authority and trafficked in norms and standards. Our culture had rejected both.

But rejecting these institutions isn't the same thing as rejecting what they traditionally provided -- ideas about morality and meaning. It simply means that something else, something probably ill-suited to the task, will have to take their place. That something is popular culture, especially movies, television, and music.

If the only thing electronic media did was provide Americans with shared references and experiences, it would be a cause for concern. But it does even more. It shapes our ideas about what's important and what a life worth living looks like. Stated another way, it answers the question I asked in my book: How Now Shall We Live?

Of course, it's hard to imagine someone less qualified to fulfill this function than the entertainment industry. But that's what's happened. And that's why it's imperative that Christians be concerned about more than vulgarity, sex, and violence in what we see and hear -- as important as these are. We need to understand both the messages contained in our popular culture and how media shapes our beliefs.

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Light Where It's Needed

John 1:5

“Mister Rogers is dead.” That was a tough newsflash for a whole lot of people. Fred Rogers, in his trademark cardigan sweater, had created a TV neighborhood that was an island of decency and innocence in the sea of not-so-decent television. He was an uplifting influence on generations of kids, with “Mister Rogers' Neighborhood” airing nationally in the United States for 34 years. In an interview a few years ago, Fred Rogers was asked what motivated him to get into TV in the first place. I was surprised at his answer. He said, “I got into television because I hated it so.” That's an interesting answer.

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Light Where It's Needed.”

It sounds like Mister Rogers didn't like what he saw on television. But did he curse the darkness? No - he turned on a light. Which, as I understand it, is what Jesus had in mind for anyone who follows Him. John 1:5 described the impact of Jesus' coming to our world this way: “The light shines in the darkness.”

And according to our word for today from the Word of God, that seems to be what He expects you and me to be doing. In Matthew 5:14, Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.” And then, “Let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” He didn't say evacuate your world or hide from your world or complain about your world, but light your world! Like Fred Rogers and his antipathy toward television, you decide to invade a darkness you don't like with an alternative that illuminates that dark corner.

Our tendency as Christians is to put all the lights in one room together and then leave the rest of the house in total darkness. We need to spread out our lights into every dark corner, showing what Jesus is like in places where Jesus is little known or little honored. Jesus calls us to infiltrate our world, not retreat from it. That's why He prayed for His followers this way: “My prayer is not that You take them out of the world but that You protect them from the evil one.” (John 17:15)

There are plenty of dark places - places where much that happens there should be repugnant to someone in whom God's Holy Spirit lives. That's Holy Spirit. But those places are not to be abandoned to the darkness by retreating Christians. If we don't take the Light there, who will? You may look at your school, your workplace, your profession, your neighborhood, your local media as a place full of darkness. Or you may hate a lot of what you see in the military or in your particular interest group or your sport. Don't go there, of course, and change colors like a chameleon, taking on the color of your surroundings. You may be their only hope of seeing the Jesus-difference - unless you compromise it away. But they can't see the light if you abandon them for a corner that's already nice and bright.

Like Mr. Rogers, do something to redeem the darkness in your personal universe. You are the light of their world, according to your Savior. They need you. Don't blame the darkness for being dark - it's dark because there's no light shining there. Make up your mind that, in Jesus' name and with His power, you are going to change your environment instead of your environment changing you. You can hang out with believers forever in heaven, but you have just a few short years to help others be in heaven with you. And remember, a small light can illuminate a big, dark room. It doesn't take much light to totally transform a dark place. So, light your world!

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[original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #13206]

Network TV affiliates won't air ads for converting gays

America's boisterous marketplace of ideas has always operated on the premise that opposing groups can air their diverse views on the nation's airwaves. But when a coalition of 18 conservative groups tried last week to buy $250,000 worth of broadcast time for several 60-second ads about "coming out of" homosexuality, three Washington, D.C., TV stations turned them down.

"It is hypocrisy and an incredible double standard," says Janet Folger, director of the Center for Reclaiming America in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Her organization, which is affiliated with the Rev. D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, is the driving force behind the "Truth in Love" ad campaign.

Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council and the American Family Association were some of the other campaign backers.

"You look at all these network shows and it's well over 20 homosexual characters in them," Miss Folger says. "Now we can't even buy time to get the opposing view out."

The offending ad, which was to have kicked off a nationwide TV campaign, was designed with a Mother's Day theme. It shows an elderly woman, Frances Johnston of Newport News, Va., seated with her son, Michael.

"I love my son very much," the mother says. "I always have. Even when he told me he was using drugs and involved in homosexuality. But just because you love your children, doesn't mean you approve of everything they do. Sometimes they make bad choices.

"My son Michael found out the truth. He could walk away from homosexuality, but he found out too late. He has AIDS. If you love your children, love them enough to let them know the truth. There is hope for change, hope for the future."

Meanwhile, the film footage shows a photo of Michael as a child, blowing out birthday candles.

"A decade ago, I walked away from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ," the son says. A voice-over offers a phone number for people to call, a few photos of ex-homosexual activists, then fades to the sentence: "It's not about hate, it's about hope."

That was turned down by WUSA, Channel 9, the CBS affiliate; WTTG, Channel 5, the Fox affiliate; and WJLA, Channel 7, the ABC affiliate. None of the three returned calls yesterday to explain their decisions.

Washington's NBC affiliate, WRC-Channel 4, told the ad's sponsors it had no air time this week to spare. The lone network to air the ads is the UPN affiliate, WDCA, Channel 20. Miss Folger says the UPN buy cost $40,000. She's still waiting on a final word from WRC-TV.

At the same timew, young homosexual characters are being written into several prime-time dramas. A notable example was the May 5 episode of Fox's "Party of Five," in which show regular Julia Salinger, played by Neve Campbell, initiated a passionate kiss with a lesbian writing professor played by Olivia d'Abo. A third episode featuring Miss d'Abo runs tonight.

"To be young and gay is no longer a prime-time taboo," said TV Guide in describing the show.

In all, 25 homosexual characters are featured on prime-time dramas and sitcoms this season, according to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

The New York-based organization, which lobbies for positive portrayals of homosexuals on TV, says it approached networks urging them not to run the coalition's "ex-gay" point of view.

"We've been working behind the scenes to educate the media about the message behind these ads," says GLAAD executive director Joan Garry. "We really hope they reject them, because they are damaging, scientifically bankrupt and not about love or hope at all."

Furthermore, she adds, GLAAD is lobbying WDCA to discontinue the current ad.

"We hope the ad buyers will see it for what it is," she says.

Miss Folger said the networks are being inconsistent. "They said [the ad] was too controversial, a mother offering hope to people with homosexuality," she said. "But a lesbian kiss last week on 'Party of Five' is not controversial?"

The networks aren't saying what their policy is toward the Truth in Love campaign, but, according to a Nov. 27, 1998, article in the pro-homosexual weekly newspaper the Washington Blade, most executives would refuse to run the ads. The article quoted NBC Vice President Rick Gitter as saying that NBC does not accept ads that discuss "a controversial issue of public importance."

However, local affiliates can set their own standards, and many do, such as WUSA, which decided last year not to air "The Howard Stern Show," even though other CBS affiliates were doing so.

Pete LaBarbera, founder of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality and an ad co-sponsor, says it's payback time for a series of ads about ex-homosexuals that the conservative coalition ran last July.

"They're blocking out our viewpoint," he said. "If this is going to be TV stations' policy, that's a huge victory for the gays and lesbians. If the media doesn't run these ads here, we're really up a creek.

"It's a bad omen. I mean, this is not San Francisco. This is a conservative market."

Last summer's ad campaign, which opened with two full-page advertisements in the New York Times and The Washington Post, announced that "homosexuals can change" and showed faces of people claiming to have done so. The campaign garnered huge media coverage for its chutzpah and articles about the campaign showed up on several network newscasts, in all three major newsmagazines and in dozens of other newspapers.

The pro-homosexual Human Rights Campaign retaliated with a full-page ad in USA Today, touting homosexuals as "whole and happy."

About a month ago, the HRC issued a fund-raising letter touting its ad campaign and asking for financial support to counter what it said was the coalition's $4 million war chest for future ads.

"We will, of course, be closely monitoring where they will buy time and who will run it," says HRC spokesman David Smith. "TV stations are notoriously immune to public pressure. . . . I think the TV stations find these ads offensive to straight people as well."

His organization is trying to discern which cities the ads may air in next and has prepared a response manual titled "It's Not About Hope, It's About Anti-Gay Politics."

"Airing on UPN for five nights is a weak way to air a campaign," he says. "I would have chosen another city [in which] to launch it. I would have had my ducks in a row much tighter."

Miss Folger denied the coalition has $4 million -- or even $2 million -- and says its budget for the Washington ads is "under $250,000."

The coalition is not announcing in which other cities it will run the ads. "We would like to run more commercials here," she said. "There's room enough in the First Amendment for those who disagree."

Taking A Costly Stand Against Filth

Wick Allison is publisher of a Dallas magazine called "D". A few weeks ago, Allison flipped through an advance copy of his September issue and was shocked

to see two ads he considered obscene. He wouldn't describe the ads, but observers noted that several other magazines were currently running ads linking sex and violence.

Copies of D were already on their way to the newsstands, but Allison didn't hesitate. He ordered the trucks to make a detour -- straight to the local

recycling center. The entire September issue -- all 70,000 copies -- was turned into pulp.

It was a costly decision, as the Wall Street Journal reported, but it made Wick Allison a hero. Women he works with sent him thank-you notes. People stopped him on the street to thank him.

The moral fabric of a civilization can be seen in how it treats its most vulnerable members. When ads make light of violence against women, and when magazines like Vogue, GQ, and Elle are running ads I can't even describe on BreakPoint, we know the barbarians are in our midst.

Three cheers for people like Wick Allison who put trash where it belongs. But we also need to demand a little more respect from his less-civilized

colleagues. I don't know about you, but I don't plan on buying any Nike products. They ought to clean up their ads without being shamed into doing so.

To quote their own slogan -- they need to "Just do it!"

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Commencement Follies: Signs of the Times

Since the end of World War II, commencement ceremonies have been the occasion for some of the most memorable and important speeches of our time.

A good example is the 1963 commencement address at American University in Washington. It was there that President John F. Kennedy announced a halt to atmospheric nuclear testing and pledged to work for "not merely peace in our time, but peace for all time."

Thirty-nine years later, another commencement address on the same campus showed what our culture regards today as important.

According to THE WASHINGTON POST, nowadays what people are looking for in a commencement speaker isn't lofty rhetoric about "big issues." Rather, it's star power, combined with the ability to "amuse the grads."

To achieve this winning combination, the American University class of 2002 heard from actress Goldie Hawn, who told the audience that it was time for them to attend the "college of you."

In the same way, three years ago, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Anna Quindlen told graduates of Mt. Holyoke to "set aside" the expectations, demands, and requirements imposed by others. Instead, she urged her audience to do what they thought was best for them.

This emphasis on entertainment and the self was repeated on college campuses across the country this commencement season. New graduates heard from the likes of humorist Garrison Keillor, Oscar-winning actress Kathy Bates, and playwright Tony Kushner.

What the POST calls the "new favored focus" of graduation speeches represents the coming together of two of the dominant trends in our culture.

The first is what sociologist Philip Rieff calls "The Triumph of the Therapeutic." The values of psychotherapy with its emphasis on individual fulfillment, dominates our thinking. The therapeutic worldview urges us, as Hawn and Quindlen urged their audiences, to "find yourself." Instead of greatness or accomplishment or leadership -- the traditional themes of commencement speeches -- we should strive for emotional and psychological well-being.

The second trend is the impact of mass media. Several generations raised on cable television, movies, video games, and the Internet have come to regard not being bored as a right. Thanks to our twenty-four-hour-a-day media culture, they expect that every bit of information coming their way will arrive in an entertaining package. If it doesn't, they're likely to just tune out.

I wish I could say that Christians were immune to both of these trends. But as Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio has written, our churches also feel the need to entertain. And Christians are just as preoccupied with self as the rest of the culture.

Christians, of all people, should know that mighty acts and moral greatness are not achieved by people preoccupied with the self and insisting on being entertained. To rise to greatness requires just the reverse: a sacrifice of self and a willingness to conform our desires to a cause greater than ourselves.

No wonder these qualities seem to be in short supply in younger people. We spend four years giving them an education and then pander to their worst instincts as we send them off into the world.

For more information:

Charles Colson, "Doing the Right Thing," audiotape of 2002 baccalaureate speech at Parkview High School in Lilburn, Ga.

Amy Argetsinger, "On the Dais, Witty Replaces the Weighty," THE WASHINGTON POST, 20 May 2002, B1.

You can read President John F. Kennedy's commencement speech at American University (10 June 1963) here: .

You can read Anna Quindlen's commencement speech at Mt. Holyoke College (23 May 1999) here: .

Ken Myers, ALL GOD'S CHILDREN AND BLUE SUEDE SHOES: CHRISTIANS AND POPULAR CULTURE (Crossway, 1989).

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Same-sex Class Sweethearts and Media's Power of Suggestion

According to an Associated Press report Dec. 4, two girls will be listed in their high school yearbook as "class sweethearts" after the superintendent overruled the school principal and said same-sex couples were eligible for the title.

Seniors at Dover High School (Dover, N.H.) overwhelmingly voted to bestow the honor of "class sweethearts" on an openly lesbian teen couple when the yearbook staff conducted its annual survey to name students to categories such as "most athletic" or "most artistic."

Principal Robert Pedersen declared the results invalid because the students were asked to name one male and one female for the honor. "I considered it unfair to change the rules and intent of the balloting after the event," Pederson said.

The yearbook staff decided to eliminate the category of "class sweethearts" rather than award the title to the second-place male/female couple. Students began collecting signatures for a petition before the school superintendent, Armand LaSelva, stepped in, declaring the original results would stand. "Even if there was confusion about the ballot, the senior class members spoke [via their petition]," he said.

The positive attitude possessed by the Dover High senior class toward homosexuality is shared with students throughout the United States. In August 2000, a Zogby International poll found that 85 percent of seniors thought gay men and lesbians should be accepted by society and that two-thirds of those surveyed said gay marriages should be legal. The survey discovered that students are consistently more liberal on gay issues than "older" Americans.

Interestingly, more than half of the seniors surveyed (53 percent) said that gay issues had not been discussed in any of their classes. The Zogby poll raises a question: If students are not obtaining their "liberal" views on homosexuality from "older" family and friends or from school, how or what is shaping their attitudes?

Could popular media, that is overwhelmingly sympathetic to homosexuals and their place in society, be a significant factor in shaping the attitudes of students toward sexuality?

Print and electronic media constantly convey the message that gay is natural, normal and healthy. The power of a repeated message is very real and very persuasive. Just ask the advertising executive of any Fortune 500 company.

A prime example of the media's portrayal of homosexuality can be found in a most unlikely place - a popular sports film.

"Remember the Titans," a movie released in September 2000, is about how a high school football team helps its community overcome racism. The film is based on the true story of the integration of the high schools in Alexandria, Va., in 1971.

The players and coaches of the T.C. Williams Titan's overcome racial prejudice to become a championship team. Their example helps ease the community into a new era of race relations.

Near the beginning of the movie, the Titans are at preseason camp. After a practice a new team member, known as "Sunshine," approaches one of the star players in the locker room and kisses him. All the players are stunned and the "star" reacts violently.

In a following scene, another player, "Petey," attempts to ask Sunshine if he is gay. The exchange goes as follows: "Hey Sunshine, you were just messing with Bertier's mind. I mean it really don't matter, but you aren't really, you know," Petey says. Sunshine replies, "If it don't matter, then what's the big deal?" Petey asserts, "I got to know!" Sunshine calmly retorts, "Gotta know what?"

The key problem that I have with the scene is that it never happened. The real Titans of the 1971 season maintain a website at www.71originaltitans.com. There they answer frequently asked question about the movie. One of the oft-posed queries is whether the locker room kiss occurred. The answer to the question is an emphatic "no."

If the scene is not a part of the "true story" of the Titans, then why was it added? Simply put, the powers-that-be behind the movie were equating homosexuality with race, thus sending the message that being gay is as natural as being black, white or any other race -- and it just doesn't matter.

Expect popular media to continue to convey messages like the one in Remember the Titans as homosexual activists and those sympathetic to their cause seek to shape the attitudes of young people in America. The power of a repeated message is significant. Who knows, perhaps a high school near you will be the next to feature a gay couple as class sweethearts.

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Boggs, whose column appears in Baptist Press each week, is pastor of Valley Baptist Church, McMinnville, Ore.

They Will Tell the Truth About David Partridge

In a recent monologue (1-7-00) Jay Leno took his own network to task. He poked fun at the advertising for the new David Partridge movie. NBC claiming that this movie was more true to his life, nothing added only the facts. Leno said, “Good for NBC! They can change the Bible, they can re-write Noah's life but they will tell the truth about David Partridge.”

Fuzzy Grammar: Truth In the Age of the Image

According to the Hollywood Reporter, 89 million Americans watched at least part of the two-hour special, "A Tribute to Heroes." The program, which aired on September 21 to raise money for the United Way's relief fund, featured performances by various famous entertainers.

The night before, 7 million fewer Americans tuned in to any part of the President's address to Congress about the war on terrorism. Even fewer had tuned into the prayer service at the National Cathedral.

It's hard to imagine a clearer illustration of the centrality of popular entertainment in our culture. Increasingly, Americans -- consciously or not -- are taking their cues about the meaning of life, as well as right and wrong, from popular media.

The problem is that images cannot replace words when it comes to communicating truth. That's because the goal of visual media is not to convey ideas in a precise manner, the way words do; it's to elicit an emotional response.

That's why it's almost impossible to argue with another person's interpretation of what they've seen. The experience is subjective, not objective.

This quality of visual media is what columnist Terry Mattingly calls its "fuzzy grammar." You can see that "fuzzy grammar" at work, for example, in the ending of TITANIC. As Rose, the woman who tells the story, lies in bed, the camera takes us back to the Titanic, where the audience sees those who died when the ship sank. There the lovers are reunited.

Was it a dream or was it the afterlife? We don't know. This kind of ambiguity isn't only common, it's deliberate. According to film critic Roger Ebert, what's important is that any possible interpretation "provide emotional closure" for the audience.

And while that may be a good way to end movies, this subjectivity and appeal to emotion is increasingly being applied to all of life. As popular media has occupied the role formerly played by the church and family, Americans have begun to look at all experiences through that same lens.

The result is, as apologist Ravi Zacharias puts it, a generation that "hears with its eyes and thinks with its feelings." The fuzzy grammar of media is what allows people to believe things like "that may be true for you, but not for me." Our image-saturated culture is one in which almost everything is subject to interpretation -- and no interpretation takes precedence over any other. It is a world in which all truth is presumed to be subjective.

In Christianity, words are the medium through which truth is communicated. The Gospel of John describes Jesus as "the Word." The Greek word logos, means, among other things, "the ordering principle" -- that is, ultimate truth or reality. And it exists, therefore, independent of our feelings. It is our duty to discern it and argue on its behalf.

This is the great challenge posed by our media-centric culture. Apologetics in the age of the image requires Christians to help their neighbors understand the limitations of those images. It requires us to help people recognize that life isn't like the movies and treating it as if it were is a dangerous mistake.

They need to be reminded that all the "emotional closure" in the world is no substitute for truth.

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Faith and the Constitution: You Don't Have To Be Neutral

During his recent press conference, President Bush was not expecting to be accused of the likes of precipitating mass murder; but then, he wasn't accustomed to dealing with Helen Thomas either. She went after his faith-based initiatives with all the subtlety of a heat-seeking missile.

It's an indication of the hostility secular elites bear toward the influence of religion in public life.

When the President called on her, Thomas asked, "Why do you refuse to respect the wall between church and state? The mixing of religion and government for centuries has led to slaughter."

Bush tried to answer. "I strongly respect the separation of church and state," he said, but Thomas rudely cut him off. "You wouldn't have a religious office in the White House if you did," she snapped.

The President explained that his proposals would not violate the Constitution, but Thomas would have none of it. "You are a secular official, not a missionary," she snarled. Oh, the joys of an unbiased press corps.

Thomas is not alone in her hostility to faith-based initiatives. The New York Times last week went after Samaritan's Purse for its volunteers holding a prayer meeting before rebuilding homes destroyed in the El Salvador earthquake. And the government stepped in this week and cautioned Samaritan's Purse. Imagine!

Well, the President has to make his case. When it comes to government support of faith-based programs, constitutional law is, after all, well settled. The Supreme Court has ruled that government must allow secular and religious groups to compete on an equal footing for government grants.

Second, the Court has ruled that when the government funds programs run by faith-based groups, it cannot interfere with the group's right to define its own mission -- just as government may not interfere with a secular group's vision.

As George Washington University law professor Ira Lupu observes, this means that when Planned Parenthood hires a staff, it has the right to discriminate against people who don't share its ideological views. Equal treatment demands that faith groups have the same right.

Where the government does draw the line -- and rightly so -- is in how faith-based groups treat beneficiaries. Presbyterians, for example, can refuse to hire a Muslim drug counselor, but they can't discriminate against Muslims seeking help.

Of course, for 25 years Prison Fellowship has reached out to people of all faiths, and no faith. Prison Fellowship, by the way, takes no federal funds, though we've run very successful faith-based programs.

Many critics in my opinion are using the church-state issues -- sure to inflame passions -- to mask deeper objections. They know that faith-based solutions are only part of the President's broader agenda to pry power away from the nanny-state and invest it instead in community and voluntary associations. Bush seems intent on undoing the failed government programs of the last 40 years and empowering people in the communities and churches to help themselves. It's a profoundly conservative understanding of how society should function, but in pushing his proposals, Bush is taking on powerful vested interests.

You and I have to help make the case for faith-based programs. Helen Thomas notwithstanding, these initiatives won't lead to religious wars or the slaughter of millions. Instead, they will bless the poor, the hungry, the alcoholic, the neglected child, the prisoner -- and bring them peace of God.

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The Mc Veigh Execution: There's Money To Be Made!

Next week the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, will be executed by lethal injection. McVeigh waived all appeals of his conviction for the 1995 bombing. The attack that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more left a deep scar on this nation, but are we really prepared to compound the injury by turning McVeigh's death into a Roman circus?

Apparently so. From the look of things in Terra Haute, you'd think the circus was indeed coming to town. Mayor Judith Anderson says her phones have been swamped; she's besieged by shop owners and vendors who want to sell T-shirts, buttons, and trinkets celebrating McVeigh's death on May 16th.

Unfortunately, the city can't stop them from hawking their goods. "We have no control over what they sell," Anderson says. "We're just asking that it be in very good taste." Right!

Execution T-shirts are already being offered on the Internet's eBay auction site. One shirt features a syringe and the words: "Hoosier Hospitality/McVeigh/Terre Haute/May 16, 2001/Final Justice."

The owner of Little Cee's pizza parlor across the street from the prison wants to deliver pizzas to police and security guards working the event. With all the extra security, business should be good. And another man, who owns a downtown restaurant, said, "We've never had an execution. We don't know what to expect!" Well, restaurants in Terra Haute are getting ready for a windfall!

The city is in a frenzy, preparing for an onslaught of protesters, camera crews, reporters, sightseers, and visiting entrepreneurs. More than 1,300 members of the media have already signed up for press credentials. Articles are being written, T-shirts and buttons are being sold, and hotels and motels throughout the region are booked solid.

Some of the national TV networks have been calling Larry Taylor, a man who lives across the street from the prison, wanting to rent his property as a parking lot for 40 or 50 of their vehicles. And the public schools are closing, too, giving Terra Haute's 16,000 students the day off. The McVeigh execution is the biggest thing to hit Terra Haute in a decade.

In his Confessions, Augustine tells the story of a young man named Alypius, who vowed to avoid the brutal gladiatorial contests that were so popular in Carthage and ancient Rome. But one day his friends dragged him to the arena. He tried closing his eyes, but when he opened them, Augustine says, "his soul was stabbed with a wound more deadly than any which the gladiator had received in his body." Alypius was captivated, drunk with bloodlust.

The Roman poet Seneca warned that those who make sport of human misery and death lose their virtue, becoming less than human. The rush by the media, the souvenir vendors, and even those who'll be watching on TV -- making sport of Timothy McVeigh's final moments -- tells us that Seneca had it right.

I believe in capital punishment in cases where the crime is egregious; justice demands it. But we should carry out the law saddened that sin has caused such a dreadful crime. If we enjoy the spectacle, we mock justice, trivialize sin, and coarsen our souls.

_____________________

For further reference:

Rimer, Sara. "A City Consumed in Plans for McVeigh's Execution." New York Times, 19 April 2001.

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Recovering From A Tragic Loss: Touched By An Angel

As regular listeners know, I sometimes have to take the role of cultural referee. In those cases I find it necessary to blow the whistle on films or TV programs that go too far or misrepresent moral or biblical principles.

But today it's a pleasure to drop the referee's whistle and pick up the cheerleader's megaphone, paying tribute to a broadcaster who used a Christian concept on TV without distorting it.

I'm talking about this past Sunday's episode of Touched by an Angel on CBS. The plot featured a couple who had been married fifteen years, and who had been hosting an early-morning TV show all that time. But a media conglomerate bought the station and canceled their show without even giving them a chance to say good-bye to their regular viewers.

Back at home, the couple's bitterness and recrimination was interrupted one night by a knock at the door from a couple whose car had broken down. Before long, as they talked, the strangers uncovered issues that had been festering, tearing apart the TV couple's marriage.

At one point, while rummaging through her basement, the wife finds baby clothes that have never been worn. She had bought them shortly after their wedding, when she became pregnant. She told the visitors she had "lost the baby."

But accusingly, her husband corrected her; like their TV show, he said, the baby had been "canceled." When the offer came fifteen years earlier for the big break they'd both craved, the baby had to go. It turns out that one evening while her husband was away, the young woman visited her local "women's health service provider." Later, they never spoke about the incident.

Well, in this sad story, Martha Williamson and writers for Touched by an Angel were able to make a profound statement. Despite all the talk of controlling her own body, this woman realized that when she walked out of that abortion provider's office, she'd "left a part of her soul behind." She'd been struggling with post-abortion syndrome ever since.

The best part of the program was its realistic portrayal of attitudes I've seen in so many principled pro-lifers. It didn't do what the media usually does and portray the visitors as crazed gunmen, Bible-waving fanatics, or protestors.

Instead, it showed their genuine compassion for a couple who lost a child. Yes, the couple had sinned, but these messengers from God were not there to rail against them or consign them to eternal punishment.

For fifteen years, this ambitious couple had been choking on their sadness, suspicion, and guilt, pointing their fingers at each other and cradling the emptiness. But now that they were acknowledging their problems and facing the natural emotions, the angels helped them to discover that God was ready to forgive and restore them.

From there it was a healing process -- right from the first moment they handed their heavy burden to God.

So thanks again, Martha Williamson, for avoiding the stereotypes and helping viewers to see that abortion isn't just a "private choice" but rather a life-and-death matter. And for showing that God's love is big enough to cover even the most tragic loss. It's a thrill to see biblical truth portrayed so fairly in primetime media.

For further reference:

"The Empty Chair." Touched by an Angel. Episode 707; 19 November 2000.

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Learning to preach in fog

The question was so simple that Haddon Robinson wasn't sure he had heard it correctly.

"What is Christmas?" asked the man in the next airplane seat, once he learned that he was chatting with a seminary professor. The businessman thought he knew, since he was an ordinary American who had grown up surrounded by old movies and television specials. Then he asked, "What is Easter?" That led to, "What do you mean by 'resurrection?' " Robinson described the biblical accounts of God raising Jesus from the dead.

"This man said to me, 'Do all Christians believe that?' I said, 'All Christians should believe that,' " said Robinson. "Then he said, 'That's interesting. I think I knew about Christmas. But I didn't really know about Easter.' "

This puzzled Robinson, but later something clicked. Some Christmas hymns have made it into popular culture and almost everyone hears snippets of the story year after year. But where -- via mall, multiplex and mini-satellite dish -- would anyone soak up Easter images? For millions of viewers the resurrection is what happens at the end of "The Matrix."

If missionaries came to America, they would immediately spot the dominant role played by mass media and, especially, visual entertainment media. They would study the moral and religious messages in mass media, seeking insights into the lives of potential converts. This is how missionaries think. But this is not how religious educators think and, thus, few clergy are taught to think like missionaries.

Robinson has been studying these issues since the mid-1950s, during his doctoral work in communications at the University of Illinois. Today, he is a distinguished professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological outside Boston and, in 1996, received national media attention when Baylor University named him one of the top 12 preachers in the English- speaking world.

Effective speakers study the forces that shape the people to whom they speak, said Robinson. Today, that means taking visual media seriously.

"Television is omnipresent," he said, in a sermon that swept from oral traditions and clay-tablet libraries to satellites and computer networks. "The way in which people get ideas, the way in which they shape their ideals, comes not because they read books, but because they see it, they visualize it. It's on television. ...

"That has shaped the way we think. ... It affects the way that we preach. It affects the heart and core of communication."

Robinson preached that sermon exactly 10 years ago, while serving as president of Denver Seminary. Little has changed. Robinson said that he knows of no seminary that requires future ministers to take a single course on how mass media affect American life.

If anything, the situation has gotten worse, he said. While the ecclesiastical elites ignore the subject, megachurches often uncritically embrace virtually every new technology. Many churches are adding expensive digital equipment in their sanctuaries and leaping into multimedia music, drama, humor and sermons illustrated with movie and TV clips. Clergy quickly discover that they're expected to use this gear in every service. The audience demands it.

"The pastor is thinking, 'Now that I have all of this stuff, where can I throw it in?'," said Robinson. "All of a sudden, rather than thinking of the most effective way to communicate a message, you're thinking about all that money you've spent. ...You're thinking about media, where before you were thinking about your message."

Robinson's advice to preachers, young and old, is that they worry less about using mass media and more about learning what is shaping the souls of their listeners. Today, every flock includes many listeners who understand little or nothing about the Bible or basic doctrines. In fact, he said, their heads and hearts are full of conflicting images and values, the result of years of spiritual channel surfing.

This was already true a decade ago. Robinson said that preachers must realize that they work in a hostile technological environment, one that "communicates with images. It doesn't come out and argue. It just simply shows you pictures, day after day after day after day. Before you realize it, in the basement of your mind, you discover that you have shifted your values and many times you've lost your faith."

Terry Mattingly (www.tmatt.net) leads the Institute of Journalism at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities in Washington, D.C. He writes this weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service

Instant News, But Is It True?: Why the News Makes Us Dumb

In 1730, a London wag began publishing something called the Grub Street Journal. Its purpose was to expose how unreliable newspapers were by showing how rival editors printed conflicting reports of the same events. The Journal became extremely popular; but, ironically, people kept right on reading the discredited newspapers.

As John Sommerville writes in his book, HOW THE NEWS MAKES US DUMB, "even when we catch the papers in distortion ... we still come back to them for more. We know it is insubstantial fare, like enchanted food, but we still need that daily fix."

How right he is. Sommerville played the Grub Street game in his own book. Just listen to what he found: The Wall Street Journal announced one day: "Scores on College Entrance Tests Fall." On the same day, USA Today announced: "SAT Scores ... Up."

On the same day the Washington Post announced "Iran Offers to Accept Iraqi Kurds," the New York Times announced: "Iran Is Said to Close Its Border to Iraqi Kurds."

If I were a Kurd, I'd be a little nervous about that.

Bad as these headlines are, "the news" is inaccurate in a much deeper way. News people claim to give us "all the news, all the time," as CNN puts it. But this is absurd. By definition, "the news" is limited to whatever some editor decides to include in today's broadcast or newspaper.

But what about the thousands of other events that took place on a particular day that were not included? Some of those events may ultimately be judged far more important than the ones that grabbed the day's headlines.

As Sommerville says, "Historians may eventually tell us that the world turned a corner at just that time. Maybe in some embassy or boardroom or laboratory or monk's cell some lever was pulled that set history on a new course."

But these historic moments will never be "news" because they went unnoticed when they actually occurred.

In his book, SURPRISED BY JOY, C. S. Lewis urges against making young people read newspapers because, "nearly all that a boy reads ... will be known before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact." Moreover, Lewis adds, "most of it will have lost all importance.

"Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism."

Well, Lewis and Sommerville have a point -- and I say that as one who is a news junkie. But if we really want to understand what's going on in the world, we should discipline ourselves not to get hooked on so- called "instant analysis."

So the next time you're tempted to catch your third or fourth "news update" of the day, admit it: You're addicted. Now I don't say stop reading newspapers or watching TV, but balance it out by reading a good book -- maybe a history book or one that discusses the great thoughts that, in fact, move history. It will help you to keep perspective and balance.

You may not learn the details of the latest scandal -- but you will be acquiring something the Bible calls "better than jewels" ... Wisdom.

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Adrift In the Universe: the Worldview of " Cast Away"

Job 7:16

Recently, Patty and I felt like a relaxing evening with a good movie. But instead of opting for mindless summer faire in the theaters, we rented one that we had missed, "Cast Away." The film stars Tom Hanks and was, artistically speaking, very well done. And some Christians consider it a family-friendly film since there's no profanity or sexual content.

Well, there's a lot more to being "family friendly" than that. The worldview of the movie is of much greater concern.

In this film, Tom Hanks plays a trouble-shooter for Federal Express, named Chuck Noland. On Christmas Eve, just as he had planned to ask his girlfriend to marry him, he is called off to fly to Micronesia to fix a problem.

But halfway across the Pacific, the plane runs into a storm and crashes into the ocean. Noland, the only survivor, washes up on an unpopulated island. For the better part of an hour and a half we watch him honing his survival skills. The acting is brilliant.

Relief from his isolation comes, not in the form of someone like Robinson Crusoe's friend, Friday, but from a volleyball named Wilson -- which Noland talks to. Then, after nearly four years, Noland finally builds a raft and escapes. Adrift at sea, he's picked up by a passing freighter and is returned to a hero's welcome in Memphis. But there he realizes he can't just pick up where he left off.

At the end of the movie, we see Noland -- literally and figuratively -- at a crossroads. Bewildered and lost, he stands in the middle of the road, able to go in any one of four different directions. What does he do? He looks into the camera with an exquisite expression on his face and shrugs his shoulders.

So, what is the film telling us? That life has no intrinsic meaning. The only meaning it has is that which we find through acts of heroic individualism. In that, "Cast Away" reflects the worldview of existentialists like Albert Camus, who wrote that, although the universe is meaningless and God is dead, it is nevertheless our duty to refuse to accommodate ourselves to that meaninglessness. Indeed, we overcome it with our heroic efforts.

This is just exactly what Tom Hanks does on the island. Once rescued, he's not redeemed. His struggle and sacrifice ultimately amounts to nothing because, as the final scene tells us, his choices really don't matter when all is said and done, and he knows it -- hence, the look on his face. Life has no purpose and no meaning.

But what disturbs me is how little Christians seem to understand movies like this. Every Christian I asked about this movie told me how much they liked the film. Not one of them was able to identify the worldview being promoted -- not even close.

Part of our mission here at Breakpoint is to offer guidance on how various worldviews are portrayed by popular culture. We have a list of recommended films you may want to consult before your next trip to the video store. Call us today and we'll send you a copy.

One thing we can discover from films like "Cast Away" is the utter emptiness of life without God. Life gets its meaning, not from self-fulfillment or success or even heroic existential engagement, but from a personal relationship with our Creator.

And any life dedicated to that pursuit will have more than "family values" -- it will have eternal significance.

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Diagnosis: Murder: Teaching Worldview Lessons

A colleague of mine named Kelley was trying to help her son, 15-year-old Rand, bring up his grade in civics class. Students were supposed to read one newspaper each day. Every Friday, the teacher gave a current events test, and every Friday, Rand missed about half the questions -- not surprising, since all he ever read was the comics.

To bring him up to speed, Kelley began bringing newspapers along in the car on the drive to school each morning. During the half-hour commute, she quizzed Rand about Anthrax, the war in Afghanistan, politics, and how the Redskins were doing.

After a few weeks of drill, Rand was ready to be a contestant on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" His test scores improved dramatically. But he and his mother learned something else, something even more important. They learned that knowing about stories in the news is far less important than learning to identify the worldviews that undergird them.

For example, the Washington Post recently ran a story about a new prenatal test -- one that determines in the first trimester if a baby has Down syndrome. The test would replace amniocentesis -- a procedure administered during the second trimester.

Doctors hailed the new test a "major step forward." Why? Because it could bring the Down syndrome detection rate from 65 to 98 percent.

Kelley began asking her son about the story -- not about what it contained, but what it left out.

"Does this new test lead to a cure for Down syndrome?" she asked.

"No."

"If not, then why do doctors think it's good to use it to diagnose Down syndrome in as many babies as possible, as early as possible?"

Rand re-read the story, but couldn't figure it out. So Kelley told him: "It's so the mother can have an early abortion -- before anyone knows she's pregnant -- and avoid a riskier second-trimester abortion."

The story offered no quotes from people questioning the morality of using research dollars to fund "search and destroy" missions against the unborn. No arguments defending the intrinsic value of all human life at every stage and condition. No reminders that in some cities, there are waiting lists of couples wanting to adopt Down syndrome children.

Instead, the story assumed that the lives of these children aren't worth protecting -- and that you'd have to be out of your mind to give birth to a Down syndrome child.

Was the reporter allowing a pro-abortion bias to affect her work? You bet she was, and even worse, she didn't know it. Her presupposition was that anyone would get an abortion if she were pregnant with a Down syndrome child.

This little story offers a sobering warning: If we want our kids to defend and live out God's truth, we must help them identify the worldviews that lie at the heart of cultural conflicts. We must take advantage of every opportunity -- including rides to school each morning -- to help them grow in their awareness of unbiblical biases in films, newspapers, textbooks, and songs.

Biases that quietly deny the authority and presence of our Creator God.

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Churning the Culture: Why Religion News Is Always Bad

If the average person were asked to name the top religion stories of the past year, chances are they’d remember a scandal involving a minister, a battle over church-state relations, or maybe an assault on religious people or their churches.

In his new book, HOW THE NEWS MAKES US DUMB, John Sommerville says there’s a reason why the media’s coverage of religion is always so negative: it’s because religion and daily news simply don’t mix.

We all remember the headlines about how outraged Hindu and Jewish leaders became over the reports that Baptists were planning to pray for their conversion. The networks were all over that story.

Sex scandals involving clergy always make page one, so they’re hard to forget. And remember all those Y2K stories? Many focused on how those crazy religious folks were stocking up on Spam, and bracing for the end.

Sommerville says there’s a good reason why church controversies get publicity, while good works go unnoticed. It’s because religion and the news are polar opposites in their approach to life.

“Religion celebrates what we believe to be settled and even eternal,” Sommerville says. But the news is about change and excitement. So reporters yawn when Christians go to church or volunteer at soup kitchens.

Before news became an industry, Sommerville writes, society was held together, not by news, but by their cultures. People shared “fairly settled assumptions about what was reasonable, natural, expected or good.” Scholars call this a culture’s meta-narrative — a narrative that “binds our thinking.”

In Western culture, the Bible provided this meta- narrative. Even non-believers were familiar with its stories and ways of structuring moral and social reality.

But the daily news industry changed all that. Those in the news business tend to be far less religious than most Americans; and they’re distrustful of a culture built on the Judeo-Christian narrative. These elites think it’s their job to make us aware of the cultural restraints on our thinking, Sommerville says. That’s why they sponsor “a continuous referendum on our cultural inheritance.”

The result is that many people accept the idea that we should be constantly re-evaluating what we believe and understand about the world — including our religious beliefs.

It’s proper for news outlets to raise questions about dominant ideas — to reform or reshape traditional culture. But news stories cannot replace a culture’s META-NARRATIVE, because, by its very nature, the news gives priority to the shocking and the new. It is a cycle of endless deconstruction.

The good news is that Americans are recognizing that the “news” is becoming little more than vulgar entertainment, largely irrelevant to our lives — which is why it has so little impact.

In the end, Sommerville says, we must use news for the limited purposes for which it is suited — and realize our need for the more settled culture the news constantly questions. We should balance our appetite for daily news with a cultural diet rich in books, reflection, and discussion.

The news may make us dumb — but reading and discussing great books, especially the Bible, leads to the kind of wisdom that brings real understanding.

Dumb and Dumber

Luke 1:27

Nicholas Kristof must be a very smart man -- but a very slow learner. A columnist for The New York Times, Kristof is a Harvard graduate and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. But when it comes to something as significant as the nature of Christianity, Kristof and his columns are dumb and dumber.

Back in March, Kristof wrote a very strange column suggesting that his liberal media colleagues ought to give evangelical Christians a closer look. Not that they would like what they saw, mind you, but that the rising public influence of the evangelicals demanded media attention.

His argument came down to this: Evangelicals are strange people with radical religious beliefs that will do great harm to the nation, but they mean well and so let's be nicer in opposing them to the death.

An exaggeration? Kristof acknowledged that he tends to disagree with evangelicals on almost everything. And he intends to oppose evangelical influence at every turn, because, “I see no problem with aggressively pointing out the dismal consequences of this increasing religious influence.”

On the other hand, Kristof called upon his liberal colleagues to drop their “sneering tone about conservative Christianity itself.” If only he had taken his own advice.

On Aug. 15, The New York Times ran another Kristof piece in its editorial section, and it's a wonder to behold: Perhaps the worst opinion piece to run in that paper in years -- and that's really saying something.

In his new column, Kristof points to “the most fundamental divide between America and the rest of the industrialized world: faith.” Unlike the rest of the industrialized world (with the exception of South Korea), America is resolutely religious. Europe is overwhelmingly secular, with low church attendance and very little Christian influence in public life or politics. In America, on the other hand, more persons attend church than public sporting events, and both major political parties court the religious vote -- just in different sectors.

This is not news, at least to anyone even moderately informed about the national character of the United States. One would have to been locked in a monastery for the last 30 years to miss the religious dynamic of America's culture war, and even the most casual visitor to western or northern Europe would note its secularity.

But the divide between Europe and America is not Kristof's real concern. It's the divide between “intellectual” and “religious” America.

Got that? Intellectual and religious are now opposing terms? What Kristof really means is a divide between secularist/liberal America and Americans who are conservative Christians. As “Exhibit A” for his case, Kristof chose the doctrine of the virgin Birth of Jesus.

“The faith in the virgin birth reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time,” Kristof wrote. More mystical? Less intellectual?

According to Kristof's reasoning, no intellectually credible person could believe that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin. As authorities on this, he cites the likes of Hans Kung, a German theologian barred by the Vatican from teaching Catholic theology. Kung is a notorious liberal, who has called the Gospel narratives a “collection of largely uncertain, mutually contradictory, strongly legendary,” stories. Kristof is obviously unaware of the huge body of scholarship in support of the virgin birth. But, in all likelihood, he wouldn't care anyway. Quoting Hans Kung on the virgin birth is like identifying Hugh Hefner as a spokesman for chastity.

Kristof cannot believe that so many Christians [he cites 91 percent] take the virgin birth to be true, “despite the lack of scientific or historical evidence.” Is he demanding an ultrasound?

There are several important divides in American life today, and Kristof inadvertently pointed to one closer than he thinks: the divide between the secular media elites and believing Christians. The media elite is tenaciously committed to a worldview steeped in anti-supernaturalism. Miracles are out, along with the whole idea that modern people should be bound in any way by a 2,000-year-old book.

This is the most important American divide. On the one side are secularists who honestly cannot believe that intelligent people can believe Christianity to be true. On the other side are those who have staked their lives -- including their intellectual energies -- on the truthfulness and authority of the Bible.

It's too bad Nicholas Kristof didn't take his own advice. Instead, he offered up a caricature so ludicrous that it's hard to take it seriously. Have all the editors at The New York Times gone away on vacation? In the end, this sad column tells us all we need to know about the real worldview of the media elite. It's not like we didn't know already.

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Talking Hairdos and the Ten Commandments: the Warnings of Neil Postman

A few weeks ago, one of the most astute media critics of our age, Neil Postman, died at the age of 72. In remembering the long-time New York University professor, the press described Postman's warnings about the dangers of mass communication.

In his devastating critique of television, titled AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH, Postman declared that television turns even the most tragic news into mere entertainment, delivered by “talking hairdos.”

Postman's book was reviewed in all the right places, and it has been around for some time — but not once did we learn where Postman got his ideas. It turns out he got them from the Bible.

Postman's thesis is that different media encourage different ways of thinking. The printed word requires sustained attention, logical analysis, and an active imagination. But television, with its fast-moving images, encourages a short attention span, disjointed thinking, and purely emotional responses.

Postman says he first discovered the connection between media and thinking in the Bible when, as a young man, he was struck by the Old Testament words: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image.” Postman says he realized that the idea of a universal deity cannot be expressed in images, but only in words.

As he put it, “The God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking.” This is the God Christians worship today — a God known principally through His Word and incarnate.

Many religions have a scripture, of course. Yet most teach that the way to contact the divine is through mystical visions, emotional experiences, or Eastern-style meditation. Judaic Christianity insists on the primacy of language.

Gene Edward Veith, in his book READING BETWEEN THE LINES, explains why: The heart of our religion is a relationship with God — and relationships thrive on communication. We can't know people intimately by merely being in their presence, according to Veith. It takes conversation to share thoughts and personalities.

Christians are meant to have an ongoing conversation with God. He addresses us in the language of Scripture, and we address Him through the language of prayer.

This emphasis on the Word has had a deep impact on Western culture. Reading was once confined to the elite. But it was the Reformation that first aimed at universal literacy, so that the Bible could be read by every person.

Today's missionaries are similarly concerned with literacy. In nonliterate societies, they develop a written form of the native language and teach people to read the Bible.

They can then go on, of course, to read about anything — sanitation, health care, democracy — things that often transform their culture, much as the Reformation transformed Western culture.

Here in the West we are in danger of coming full circle: The visual media may ultimately undermine literacy. If that happens, can biblical faith still flourish?

Neil Postman's writings remind Christians of the dangers of television. We need to learn when to turn it off lest we lose our historical reputation as the “people of the book.”

FOR FURTHER READING:

• “Neil Postman, University Professor of Media Ecology, dies at 72,” New York University, 10 October 2003.

• Jonathan Zimmerman, “Postman as Prophet,” New York Post, 12 October 2003.

• Peter Kavanagh, “An echoing silence in his wake,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), 11 October 2003, R9.

• Gene Edward Veith, “Flex the brain,” World, 1 November 2003.

• Jay Rosen, “Neil Postman: A civilized man in a century of barbarism,” Salon, 10 October 2003. (Subscription required, or watch an advertisement to obtain a one-day pass.)

• Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (Viking Press, 1986).

• Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (Vintage, 1994).

• Gene Edward Veith, Reading between the Lines (Crossway, 1990).

• Neil Postman, “Informing Ourselves to Death,” speech given at a meeting of the German Informatics Society on October 11, 1990.

• Read more writings by Postman.

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 030804, “Our Shrinking Culture.”

• C. John Sommerville, How the News Makes Us Dumb (InterVarsity, 1999).

• Thomas Hibbs, Shows about Nothing (Spence, 1999).

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Scaring Witless: How the Media Distorts Reality

Luke 12:22

For the past month, the story of Carlie Brucia, the 11-year-old Sarasota girl who was snatched off the street and murdered, has dominated cable news. While Carlie's murder is tragic, the increased anxiety, almost hysteria, that Americans feel about their own children's safety is almost entirely a creation of mass media hype.

If I were to ask how many American kids are kidnapped by strangers every year, what would you guess? A thousand? Three thousand? The answer for 1999 is 93, down from about 300-a-year during the 1980s. That's still too many, but the fact is kidnappings are rare.

As Gregg Easterbrook points out in his book THE PROGRESS PARADOX: HOW LIFE GETS BETTER WHILE PEOPLE FEEL WORSE, wearing dark clothing outside poses a far greater risk to your children than kidnappers. (It increases the chance that they get hit by an automobile.) Yet, judging by what our kids are wearing, parents aren't worried about this far greater threat to their kids. Why?

The answer, Easterbrook tells us, lies in the role that mass media play in shaping Americans' perception of the world, that is, their worldview.

News organizations have an “incentive to emphasize the negative.” Sensational stories about crime, environmental threats, and possible natural disasters, often teased with the tagline “a report you can't afford to miss,” attract viewers.

The result is that “Western life is methodically made to sound perilous or precarious,” when, in fact, the opposite is true. Take, for example, a page-one NEW YORK TIMES story alleging that the administration had “canceled” regulations limiting arsenic in drinking water. The paper then editorialized that the White House wanted Americans to “drink poison water.” That would be bad if it were true. But there was no cancellation, merely a few months delay in implementing tougher new rules.

And TV distorts reality even more. “In a world of six billion people,” Easterbrook reminds us, “there will always be something burning, blowing up, or surrounded by officers with guns drawn.” By continuously showing images of disaster and violence without a larger context, the media fosters what Easterbrook calls “headline-induced” anxiety.

Television drama and the movies also “present a distortedly pessimistic view of American life.” Onscreen, “disaster lurks around every corner.” Every city has its own serial killer, even though such killers are very rare. We're on the brink of “ridiculous environmental calamities,” such as the polar ice caps melting or a “preposterous mega-epidemic” that will wipe out 90 percent of the population. No wonder we're nervous.

Fortunately, there are ways to counteract the effects of mass media. One is by more careful viewing habits. Never forget that both the news and Hollywood are trying to sell us something. We should regard their claims with healthy skepticism. Or, if we can't do that, unplug the TV.

Another is to be as well informed as possible about the issues that confront us: crime, culture, the environment. In many instances, even a cursory knowledge of the facts is enough to protect us from “headline-induced anxiety.”

This is especially true for Christians who are told by our Lord, “Be not afraid.” If this is the case when the threat is real, it is doubly so when it's imagined.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Gregg Easterbrook, The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse (Random House, 2003).

• George F. Will, “Nation's dark cloud,” Sacramento Bee, 11 January 2004.

• Steven Milloy, “Look at the source of the scary headlines,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 25 January 2004.

• John R. Lott, Jr., “Shocking Numbers, but Do They Add Up?“ Wall Street Journal, 30 August 2001 (reprinted by American Enterprise Institute).

• Roberto Rivera, “Kids: Obsession and Overcompensation,” BreakPoint Online, 6 September 2002.

• Anne Morse, “That's Entertainment: Watching the Mother of All Reality Shows,” BreakPoint Online, 11 April 2003.

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 030508, “Fear of Living: Being Scared in a Post-Christian Age.”

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040302, “Miserable in the Midst of Plenty: The Progress Paradox.”

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*

Examine the 'News'

Job 34:4

The expanding controversy over CBS News reports on President George W. Bush's National Guard service -- and the network's acknowledgement that it used faked documents in its report -- raises a host of issues about truth-telling, media credibility and evangelical responsibility.

We live in an age of unprecedented media access, as almost every American home has access to multiple media options. Cable news channels provide a constant stream of reports even as the Internet erases the final geographic barriers to information transfer. Newspapers, talk radio and the older network news broadcasts must be added to the mix, providing citizens with an overload of information and images.

Most Americans never even stop to recognize how revolutionary this level of information access really is. Previous generations relied on word of mouth, handwritten communications, the Pony Express, the telegraph or radio broadcasts. Those over 40 years of age can remember the limitations of a black-and-white television with news packaged in the form of 30-minute network broadcasts, supplemented by occasional special reports. If you missed the nightly broadcast, you were out of luck and uninformed. No longer.

The really important question is this: Are we any wiser? The explosion of media access has provided some real benefits for viewers. Competition has led to improvements in both style and substance, and the expanding number of news organizations has added new checks and balances to the system. Still, much of the additional coverage is more concerned with “infotainment” than information or analysis. Furthermore, many citizens feel as if they are drowning in an ocean of competing reports and programs.

Christian engagement with the news media requires intelligence, thoughtfulness and an awareness of how the media elite really think. As always, knowledge is power.

Let me suggest 10 principles for responsible evangelical engagement with the news media. Our responsibility is to consider the news -- and the making of news -- from a Christian worldview perspective. That makes a huge difference in how we analyze, assimilate and judge media reports.

Principle One: In a fallen world, everyone is biased. There is no such thing as absolute objectivity. As a matter of fact, everyone comes to the news with some bias. We are all creatures of our own limited experience and information, and we all come to the issues of the day -- controversial or otherwise -- with a specific worldview. Even research scientists acknowledge that absolute objectivity is an impossible achievement. This is especially true when dealing with issues of worldview consequence. As Christians, we recognize that bias is not merely a matter of political interest or ideological conviction; it is evidence of sin. In a sinful world, bias creeps into every discussion, every judgment and every news report. Evangelical Christians therefore have no excuse for being surprised when bias appears -- we should expect it, and judge accordingly. At the same time, we should be aware of our own bias and submit our own assumptions to careful analysis. Every single individual confronts the issues of the day from specific worldview commitments. There is no escaping this reality.

Principle Two: News reports are heavily filtered -- and the filters matter. The news we receive on televised broadcasts, in newspapers and in virtually any other form comes to us only after passing through numerous filters. All along the process, reporters, editors, producers, executives and others are making judgments about what stories are important, how stories should be reported, what sources should be used and what perspectives should be included. These filters are extremely significant, and the news reports we receive are but a fraction of what could be published and presented. Someone is making those decisions, and the worldview of those decision-makers is of the utmost importance. The decision about what to cover is as important as decisions about how to cover any given issue or event. If we are unaware of these filters, we will assume that the news presented to us reflects what is ultimately most important. Actually, it may reflect only what individuals in the filtering process want us to see, read or hear. As Marvin Olasky argues in his book, “Prodigal Press,” “Many scholars suggest that journalists have their prime influence on society not so much by coverage of particular stories as by the choice of what to cover; journalists are sometimes called 'gate-keepers' or 'agenda-setters.’ Readers and viewers should keep asking: Why was this story considered newsworthy?”

Principle Three: The media are driven by commercial interests. The vast majority of media outlets are commercial enterprises driven by a bottom-line desire for profit. This has a great deal to do with how the news is presented, how the readers or audience are addressed and how issues are framed. As media analysts Neil Postman and Steve Powers explained, much of what we see on television news is designed “to keep viewers watching so that they will be exposed to commercials.” Thus, producers and news directors are driven to cover stories that offer visual interest, regardless of news value. As the old newsroom adage goes, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Images often displace words, and a distorted picture of reality results. Furthermore, the commercial interest of broadcast news means that viewers must be held over a period of time by enticements. That is why news anchors advertise upcoming stories and, as C. John Sommerville of the University of Florida explains, “string us along.” As Sommerville argues, “The techniques of stringing us along show that the news industry is not as interested in satisfying a hunger as in creating an addiction.” The media have a commercial product to sell, and that product is television commercials.

Principle Four: The media elite are demographically and ideologically removed from the world inhabited by most Americans. As researchers S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman and Linda S. Lichter argued over two decades ago, the news business is now largely in the hands of a “media elite.” As these researchers made clear, these media elite are persons from a very thin slice of the American population. They are highly educated, socially mobile, metropolitan in focus and overwhelmingly liberal in terms of ideological bias. They have often attended America's most prestigious universities, they were often radicalized by the 1960s, Vietnam and the Watergate experience, and they see the news media as an opportunity to revolutionize society. As Robert and Linda Lichter and Stanley Rothman described the media elite, “In their attitudes toward sex and sex roles, members of the media elite are virtually unanimous in opposing both governmental and traditional constraints. A large majority opposes government regulation of sexual activities, upholds a pro-choice position on abortion, and rejects the notion that homosexuality is wrong. In fact, a slight majority would not characterize adultery as wrong.” Does the coalescence of leading journalists into 'media elite' make a difference? Bernard Goldberg, a longtime veteran of CBS News, poses the questions this way: “Do we really think that if the media elites worked out of Nebraska instead of New York, and if they were overwhelmingly social conservatives instead of liberals, and if they overwhelmingly voted for Nixon and Reagan instead of McGovern and Mondale ... do we really think that would make no difference? Does anyone really believe that the evening newscast would fundamentally be the same?” No sane person can believe this would make no difference, and in the case of media bias, naiveté is deadly.

Principle Five: Headlines often lie and language often misleads. Readers of newspapers are often unaware that the reporter usually has nothing to say about the headline of an article or report. Headlines emerge from the copy-editing process and are used to draw attention to a story and attract readers. Furthermore, the headlines are powerful editorial devices, casting a story in a particular context of meaning, even before the article is read. But headlines often lie -- and careful readers often will discover that the claim made in the headline is completely undermined by the content of the article. Some newspapers are particularly offensive in this regard, showing clear bias in their headlines and article contexting. Similarly, language and terminology within an article or broadcast can be used to mislead the public. What words are used to describe principle figures in a story? Will the reporter describe a suicide bomber as a terrorist or as a freedom-fighter? Will an individual be identified as a presidential aide or a political operative? Will a spokesperson be identified as an opponent of same-sex “marriage” or as a defender of traditional marriage? These decisions amount to both distinction and difference and can often mean the difference between understanding or misunderstanding. The choice of language is of vital importance, and with the culture of political correctness now invading newsrooms across America, this usually means that those arguing for an overthrow of moral restraint are referred to in a positive light, while defenders of traditional morality are referred to as repressive and negative. Beware the power of words!

Principle Six: The likelihood of being uninformed and misinformed increases as the number of news sources decreases. Dependence on just a few media sources, whether newspapers, Internet sites or television news programs, is dangerous. We can grow far too comfortable with familiar faces, trusted reporters and patterns of habit. The reduction of news sources means that the filtering process poses an even greater danger, and viewers or readers are far more susceptible to influence and bias. This is also true when it comes to the form of media input. Television reports must be visually interesting, fast-paced and energetic -- regardless of the story. Furthermore, television news broadcasts tend to rely on reductionism, making it more likely that bias can creep into a reporter's summarization without notice. Christian citizens should develop the discipline of wide reading and selective viewing -- checking reports against each other for accuracy and bias. Do not trust just one network, one cable news program, one newspaper or one commentator.

Principle Seven: Beware the error of following the crowd. As a commercial business, the media industry must produce a mass audience and must compete for viewer attention. Thus, the network or program that offers the most drama, controversy and excitement often draws the largest viewership. Similarly, the newspaper that is most salacious, most sensational and most superficial may well draw the largest readership. In other words, the crowd is often drawn to a spectacle, just as the ancient Romans demanded bread and circuses. As the crowd grows larger and larger, the content may grow smaller and smaller, and the opportunity for thoughtful engagement with the issues of the day may virtually disappear. When this phenomenon takes place, celebrities often replace specialized authorities in matters of public debate, energy substitutes for information, and the whole enterprise produces far more heat than light. As your parents warned you long ago -- beware of following the crowd. Far too many Americans rely on superficial reports and on entertainment wrongly packaged as news.

Principle Eight: Those who get their news only from broadcast media are missing much of the story and much of its significance. Limiting news intake to television programming is a special danger. Televised news reports tend to be image-driven, more superficial and more simplistic than the print media. Television news broadcasts tend to be framed as conversations, producing “talking heads” who often provide more drama than content and information. This produces an artificial understanding of reality. As Sommerville explains, “It turns out that being informed really means knowing what the people around you are talking about. Our reality is the news, not the world.” There is no substitute for reading, and a diet limited to broadcast news will impoverish the mind. As Postman and Powers argue, “anyone who is not an avid reader of newspapers, magazines, and books is by definition unprepared to watch a television news show, and always will be.” There is no substitute for careful and thoughtful reading. The visual medium is given to entertainment and visual dependence over content and careful analysis.

Principle Nine: When it comes to issues of importance, turn off the tube and think. As veteran newscasters sometimes lament, matters of grave and great significance are often strung together on the news and mixed with unimportant and inane items with the familiar formula, “and now this.” A report about genocide in Sudan can be followed by the latest development in reducing auto emissions, which can be followed by a story about a talking parrot. This leveling of significance produces a distortion of reality. Christians must learn to think about the issues covered in media reports and resist the temptation to be narcoticized by an endless stream of disconnected reports of unequal significance. This requires discipline and focus, which in turn require silence -- which means turning the television off.

Principle Ten: Use the news media as material for worldview analysis. When watching the news or reading the newspaper, Christians should learn continually to reframe the question. Thinking in explicitly Christian terms, armed with the full measure of Christian conviction, the Christian must reason from biblical truth to the issues of the day. We cannot accept the issues as framed for us by the news media, but we must continually reframe in light of Christian truth. For example, controversies about everything from the economy and abortion to the environment and animal rights must be reframed in terms of a biblical perspective. Otherwise, we will commit the error of attempting to reason to a Christian worldview from a secular premise. We must reverse the question, reframe the issue and subject every controversy and question to careful worldview analysis. This is important for all Christians, but it is especially important for parents as careful engagement with the news media affords an excellent opportunity for training children in Christian worldview thinking. They will be engaging the media for the rest of their lives, and faithful Christian parents will prepare their children for media engagement that is genuinely Christian.

As with every dimension of life, our engagement with the news media reveals our deepest convictions and our true beliefs. Christians must engage the news media as Christians, ready to think, to analyze, to make judgments and to draw accurate conclusions. Inevitably, Christians will either lead or be led.

*

Bottling Up Smut: Cleaning Up the Public Square

According to a new book, we have failed our children because we haven't fulfilled “our function as guardians of their cultural environment.” The “American media's obsession with sex,” says the author, “has gotten so out of hand” that “even the provocateurs are being provoked.”

Whose words are these? Chuck Colson? Jim Dobson? No. They're the conclusions of a “provocateur” himself, a “staunch believer in the First Amendment” and a “member of the American Civil Liberties Union” — someone who opposes “any element of government control of human expression.”

That's how Gil Reavill describes himself in his new book, SMUT: A SEX-INDUSTRY INSIDER (AND CONCERNED FATHER) SAYS ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Reavill has written for magazines like PENTHOUSE and MAXIM, as well as other even less reputable publications. Back in the 1980s, he fancied himself a “rebel” doing battle against a “stifling culture.”

Then he grew up. Getting older made him “put away,” as he put it, the “arrogance that delights in offending others.” And then he had kids, and that's when he really came to realize that smut is what he calls the “cultural equivalent of second-hand smoke.” People who don't want to be exposed — who work at avoiding exposure — still get it “shoved in their faces.” Instead of being content to keep “sexually explicit material contained and separate,” media companies, he says, put it in plain view where anyone and everyone can see it — kids in particular.

According to Reavill, “the boundaries of their world have been repeatedly breached ... by people interested in making money and dismissive of all other considerations.” By way of example, he describes a day he spent with his daughter. Within “one hour of one very ordinary day,” his daughter was exposed to sexually suggestive or explicit materials on television, radio, and on billboards.

Even though he and his wife can monitor what their daughter sees and hears at home, they can't catch everything, and they certainly can't control the billboards or other public advertising.

You see, even if you ban all media from your home, there's the chance that sitting in traffic you, like Reavill, will be treated to an X-rated movie on the DVD screen of the car next to you. Or a day in the park will be interrupted by a radio blaring Howard Stern at full volume.

While Reavill does a great job describing the problem, his opposition, as he puts it, to “government control of human expression” makes a solution difficult. What other than government action will cause people “dismissive of all other considerations” to restrain themselves? As the aftermath of Janet Jackson's “wardrobe malfunction” shows, sometimes it takes the FCC threatening fines to get the networks' attention.

Reavill writes about “segregating sexual expression from the public commons” the way it used to be, but he forgets that the “segregation” resulted from a strong moral code, one that our modern society has all but banished. So today, unfortunately, only the threat of criminal and civil sanctions can keep the smut peddlers from thrusting their garbage in the faces of kids.

It's a good thing when liberals like Reavill see the light. Now we've got to help them understand the real solution: responsible government-monitoring, on the one hand, and a reassertion of moral truth in the public square.

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*

C. S. Lewis At The Movies

When the Christian film FACING THE GIANTS came out in 2006, far more interesting than the movie itself were the reactions to it. Mainstream critics were almost universally dismissive — it “feels like an overly earnest church sketch of the type many evangelical congregations use as a teaching tool on Sunday between the worship music and pastor’s message,” wrote William Lobdell of the Los Angeles Times in one typical review. Meanwhile, much of the Christian community welcomed it with open arms. As PluggedIn Online’s Tom Neven and Steven Isaac wrote, “The messages and stories that God holds dear and wants people to hear make the rest pale in comparison.”

And yet some enthusiastic viewers unwittingly gave the impression that they had enjoyed the film because it was their duty to do so. That impression was perhaps best summed up by Ted Slater of Boundless, who wrote, “Let’s not knock a movie that encourages faith in God.”

The reaction to FACING THE GIANTS was not an isolated incident, but representative of a larger trend — one that has surprisingly wide-ranging implications, not just for the Church, but for the wider community as well. For many years now, a great deal of Christian culture has been valued not for its artistic worth, but for its effectiveness as propaganda and as reinforcement for our beliefs. That emphasis affects not just how we Christians see culture, but how the world sees us — and Christianity.

Oddly enough, one of the best tools to help us understand the problems with this way of thinking is a book by a man who devoted little thought to movies. C. S. Lewis’s unique insight into faith and culture, and the relationship between them, can help us understand where Christian thinking on film and other forms of culture has gone wrong, and how we Christians can form a worldview that truly appreciates the value of both faith and art.

In the opening paragraph of AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICISM (1961), Lewis proposes that literary critics might be able to understand better what makes a book good or bad if they reverse their usual method. Instead of judging books themselves, he offers, they might try judging, or at least analyzing, readers: “Let us make our distinction between readers or types of reading the basis, and our distinction between books the corollary. Let us try to discover how far it might be plausible to define a good book as a book which is read in one way, and a bad book as a book which is read in another.”

In short, Lewis is proposing that we judge a book by the motives of its readers — or, adapting the proposal for our purposes, a film by the motives of its viewers. (Most or all of what we learn about Christian film by doing this, however, will also be applicable to the majority of contemporary Christian fiction and art.) He suggests that if we discover that a certain work tends to be “used” rather than enjoyed or loved by the vast majority of its fans — or vice versa — this usually tells us something highly significant about the nature of the work in question.

FACING THE CRITICS

When Christian columnist Dick Staub wrote an article criticizing Sherwood Baptist Church’s efforts to make and promote GIANTS, he reported afterward, “The more common reactions were from people who a) loved the evangelistic themes; b) believed we ought to support the effort because it was made by good Christians (‘I thought Dick was “one of us;”’ c) agreed it didn’t meet Hollywood production standards but thought my comments were counterproductive in light of a) and/or b).” One particular correspondent scolded Staub:

What do you expect when the budget is ($)100,000 and the actors

are new to the acting profession? I saw the film and there were

some scenes that were weak but the story line was exceptional and

moving. I saw people openly crying and moved during this movie.

They were emotionally involved and impacted. That is more than I

can say for the majority of trash that comes from Hollyweird.

In the same vein, Ted Slater wrote the following about GIANTS:

I’m not ashamed to say that I really liked “FACING THE GIANTS,”

that I was moved to tears by God’s redemptive love portrayed

through the work of amateur church-going filmmakers.

Sure, some of the acting was a bit immature, and the script may

have tied up too nicely for modern sentimentalities, but I was

profoundly affected by it. My love for God was piqued. (And

isn’t that of more ultimate significance than my merely being in

awe of the cinematography or in appreciation of the dialog and

plot twists?)

We find that the following are usually some of the motives that lead admirers of FACING THE GIANTS and similar movies to call them “good” films:

• The explicitness with which the Gospel and related spiritual

messages are spelled out

• The extent to which Christian viewers are able to identify with

the characters and situations

• The good intentions and perceived sincerity of their makers

• The inspirational value of their stories

• The lack of objectionable elements such as cursing and explicit

sex scenes in them

• The Christian leaders who have endorsed them

• Obstacles they have overcome or battles that they are seen to

have won (for instance, if they managed to make money despite a

small budget and poor reviews)

This is the kind of viewing that Lewis would define as using a work, as opposed to receiving it. Those who use a work of art, he explains in An Experiment in Criticism, “rush hastily forward to do things with the work of art instead of waiting for it to do something to them.”

Lewis was writing before the emergence of the Christian subculture, which acts as a sort of parallel universe for those offended and disgusted (often justifiably so) by mainstream culture. He was writing about works of art, both good and bad, that existed as part of the mainstream culture of his own day (some of which was also offensive and disgusting). However, his insight into people’s ways of experiencing art helps us understand why the evangelical Christian movement has embraced substandard art so fervently.

EGO BOOST

Lewis wrote — with characteristic humility, never with artistic snobbery — of those who used art “as a self-starter for certain imaginative and emotional activities of [their] own.” For instance, they may enjoy a certain “narrative” quality in a picture, meaning that they like what the picture is about without really caring one way or the other about the picture itself.

To be moved by the thought of a solitary old shepherd’s death and

the fidelity of his dog [as the subject for a painting] is, in

itself and apart from the present topic, not in the least a sign

of inferiority. The real objection to that way of enjoying

pictures is that you never get beyond yourself. The picture, so

used, can call out of you only what is already there. You do not

cross the frontier into that new region which the pictorial art

as such has added to the world.

Christians who laud a film like FACING THE GIANTS for the sort of reason cited above — for instance, because the trials of the football coach remind them of what they went through in their own lives, and how it helped them to pray just as he did — are using it in the way Lewis describes. The idea that the movie brings to them is, “That’s us up there on that screen! We never get to see people like us onscreen, but finally, there we are!”

That we feel this way, as Lewis would say, is no sign of inferiority. Nor is it surprising. In a time when movie protagonists tend to be adorable bed-hopping ditzes, bloodthirsty vigilantes, or some combination of the two, being able to identify with characters understandably comes as a relief and a delight. But the phenomenon goes beyond mere surface identification.

The media constantly tells Christians, in myriad ways, that their faith is either completely out of touch or, at best, is nice to believe in but does not provide any relevant answers to today’s dilemmas. Whether we acknowledge it or not, that sort of steady, relentless drip has an eroding effect unless we are careful. Many of us spend our days making constant mental adjustments and allowances for what we are always hearing, in an attempt to accommodate ourselves to a world that uses an almost completely different frame of reference on nearly every subject that matters to us. Christian media usually takes away that necessity and gives us the feeling that, at last, we are hearing from people who understand us and whom we understand — people who “get it.”

The catch is that we are talking about works of art — whether highbrow or popular. And characters and environments that make us feel at home, while comforting, are hardly enough to make a work truly artistic. As Lewis says, when we are enjoying a work mainly in this way, we are simply enjoying its appeal to what we already know and appreciate in ourselves. You might even say, at least in some cases, that we are simply enjoying having our egos stroked.

What I have said could be said of any of a number of groups trying to preserve their own identity and ways of thinking in a culture that’s indifferent at best, and antagonistic at worst. But there is an even more serious danger for Christians. Judging a film by such factors can tend to lead to an “us vs. them” mentality, where the Christian viewer sees the film as triumphing over the enemies of Christians. This can often lead us to take up an attitude that is directly opposed to the attitude that the Bible teaches us to have.

IDENTITY CRISIS

For instance, Pastor Brian Tubbs wrote of Giants: “The movie is shamelessly committed to faith and family in general, and evangelical Christianity in particular. And this is no doubt why many critics have panned it.” Note that Tubbs assumes that the mainstream critics are thinking the way he does — judging the film on something other than its quality as a film — except he sees them as taking the opposite point of view and being bitter about a Christian film’s success.

To point out and analyze the flaws of such thinking is not to deny that there may be a grain of truth in it. A vein of aggressive hostility toward Christianity exists and makes itself felt in mainstream culture every day. Nonetheless, focusing on it to this extent often leads us to ignore valid criticisms of Christian films, and to become defensive and even judgmental about them — hardly an attitude that makes our faith look attractive to a watching world.

The sad fact is, we tend to dwell so much on this type of conflict that we run a serious risk of, first, building an entire “Christian” culture around it. In his book Rapture Ready: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, Daniel Radosh examines the contemporary Christian subculture from his perspective as a secular Jew. Over the past few decades, he notes, “Christian pop culture developed into a truly parallel universe, superficially similar to the mainstream, but separate and generally hostile. One result of that separation and hostility was that evangelicals could be safely ignored by the mass media — which only reinforced their separation and hostility.”

Aside from the futility and sheer wrongness of trying to win over a skeptical world through hostility, there is also the danger of forming a herd mentality that allows for little dissent. We begin to indulge in a sort of Christian “identity politics” instead of engaging in critical thinking.

There is a big difference between using one’s Christian worldview to evaluate the religious and moral ideas that a film conveys, and arguing that everyone should consider a film a great work of art because it conveys religious and moral ideas with which we agree. In other words, the idea that Christians should like a film because it is Christian fails to function as legitimate criticism. In fact, it is the attitude that has helped give Christian film a reputation for being substandard — and, unfortunately, give Christians a reputation for having no taste or discrimination.

The point could be made that secular audiences increasingly have the same problem. But we are the ones who claim to serve a God of truth and beauty. So to secular observers looking on, an “anything goes just as long as it preaches the Gospel” attitude is more off-putting than alluring. If we Christians are simply putting our own home movies, so to speak, up on the screen for our neighbors to see, they are going to be met with the same enthusiasm that neighbors usually have for home movies — that is, little or none.

CHANGING THE VIEWERS

Going by Lewis’s theories about art and audiences, we might speculate that if we want to change Christian film, we need to start by changing Christian viewers. Right now, we have a sort of dichotomy among Christian viewers, with some watching almost nothing but Christian films and others viewing mainstream culture completely indiscriminately. While there are problems with both practices, one thing that can be said for the latter group is that, at some level, they understand that art and entertainment are supposed to be enjoyed, not used. This is what both fans and creators of Christian films need to learn.

As Reuters/Hollywood Reporter reported in May 2008, Christian films are seeing shrinking audiences and diminishing box-office receipts: “In the years since [the release of The Passion of the Christ], studios that have waged extensive faith-based campaigns have garnered mixed results, leading some in Hollywood to lose faith in the practice.” As it happens, two of the few faith-based films in recent years that performed well are the two Narnia movies, based on the works of C. S. Lewis himself — which, yet again, helps prove just how much we have to learn from one of our greatest writers, educators, and critics. In this case, the lesson is that, just as with non-faith-based films, the foundation of a good Christian film is a good, well-told story.

If the work of Christian filmmakers is ever going to reach a level where it can compete in the mainstream, their viewers are going to have to hold them accountable for making, not propaganda, but art.

________

Gina R. Dalfonzo is editor of The Point blog.

For Further Reading and Information:

Alex Wainer, “Used Art: The Problem of Worldview Analysis,” BreakPoint Online, 25 October 2005.

Alex Wainer, “Beyond the Ratings,” BreakPoint WorldView, July/August 2004.

BreakPoint Commentary No. 060622, “Seeing with New Eyes: Movies and Worldview.”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 071106, “What a Good Movie Can Do: Bella.”

________

Articles on the BreakPoint website are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Chuck Colson or PFM. Links to outside articles or websites are for informational purposes only and do not necessarily imply endorsement of their content.

Sewage Cubes

Philippians 4:8

"Whatever is true, … noble, … right, … pure, … lovely, … admirable — think about such things." – Philippians 4:8

Whenever Tammy Campbell thinks about it, she gets physically ill . . . For almost 3 months her family, along with 60 other households, unknowingly drank and bathed in sewage water!

It all began when city workers in Pineville, Louisiana, mistakenly connected a sewer line to an underground water pipe. Tammy started finding stringy white stuff in the filters for her refrigerator ice-cube maker, dishwasher, and washing machine.

She later learned the white substance was TP. (Yuck.) Other unfortunate residents found that their water heaters were filled up with other “unpleasant surprises.” (And again I say, yuck!)

City officials have offered the comforting(?) claim that though their citizens had a close encounter of the sewage kind, the chlorine in the water line should have killed most of the bacteria. (Makes you want to switch to bottled water, doesn’t it?)

Think about it. Those poor folks were taking baths in the dirty liquid. They were dropping sewage cubes into glasses that were then filled with not-so-nice iced tea. Yes, there were some evidences of something being rotten in Denmark (or, Pineville), but for 90 days Tammy and the gang were oblivious to the fact that they were using bad water.

With that in mind, what would happen if we tested the stuff you and I have watched (TV/videos/movies), what we’ve read (magazines/books/Internet), and what we’ve listened to (radio/CDs) this past week?

Like ingesting bacteria, when we fill our minds with filth we’re going to get sick … spiritually. In Philippians 4, Paul implored us to dwell on only “pure” and “noble” things (v.8).

You can compromise and say, “Well, most of the music on this CD is okay!” or, “I know that movie has a few nasty parts, but the rest is good!” But the bottom line is: you’re allowing “sewage” to seep into your head and heart.

Instead, take this in: “To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever” (Philippians 4:20). Bring Him glory by the way you use media.

Don’t allow the nasty stuff to make you spiritually ill. –TF

REFLECTION

• How much media “sewage” do I expose myself to each day?

• What three things can I do to cut out the negative or sinful influences in my life, and focus on more edifying stuff?

If it’s doubtful, it’s dirty.

________

Original source may have been "SEWAGE: Residents drink contaminated water," KitsapSun | Nation & World, Associated Press, May 18, 2000; .

Diversion From Reality: Teens and Entertainment

The University of Minnesota School of Health recently published a study documenting how teenagers who have a television in their bedroom are more likely to have unhealthy lifestyles: from poor eating habits, to bad grades, to less time spent with the family.

The results of the study are by no means surprising.

Increasingly we live in an entertainment-saturated culture, and teens like any first-adopters of new trends, live in the forefront of societal shifts. Thanks to television, movies, text-messaging, virtual gaming, chat rooms, and websites like Facebook, entertainment and diversion are always just a click away for teens these days. And while teens do need some “down time” to escape the pressures of school or even work, something is wrong when “down time” becomes “all the time.”

While entertainment is not necessarily a bad thing, it is by its very nature something that draws our attention from one thing to another. Unfortunately, most of the entertainment teens are exposed to today does not divert them from the frivolous to the noble, but the other way around.

Take for instance, a controversial Internet video game that has soared in popularity in Britain since its release earlier this year. The “Miss Bimbo” game is marketed to teenage girls. In this virtual world, players are given a virtual character to care for. They then purchase diet pills, breast enhancements, plastic surgery, and other treatments to make their doll look good. In the game’s own description, the object is to have the “hottest, coolest, most famous bimbo in the whole world.”

While other games may not be quite as in your face as that, they are doing their own damage. Some studies say as many as 10 to 14 percent of families have someone who has become so obsessed with video games, Facebook, and other computer-based pastimes that their virtual lives are damaging their real lives.

And here is what should really concern Christian parents, as author Dick Staub of The Culturally Savvy Christian points out: “When diversion becomes a way of life, we avoid the very issues to which we should be most attentive. We are diverted from the grim, unpleasant truth that our lives lack meaning without God . . .”

And have no doubt: Teens are looking for meaning. Probe a little while, and you will see. The culture is telling them that entertainment and self-gratification are ends in and of themselves. That is why it is so important for parents, grandparents, Sunday-school teachers, and adult friends to help teens wrestle with the important questions in life — and point them to where they can find the right answers.

Even more importantly, perhaps, Christian adults need to model a lifestyle that is countercultural. Do our entertainment habits sink to the lowest common denominator of mindless entertainment, or are they tempered, molded, and informed by our Christian worldview? Do we live to serve others, or do we live to serve ourselves and our own appetites? Remember: Our teens are watching us.

And remember, also, that character is not taught; it is learned when we see good role models to follow.

________

Bored To Death?: How We Consume Media

By most estimates, South Korea is the most-wired society in the world. South Koreans “enjoy” virtually universal internet access at speeds and prices that Americans can only dream about.

But that access comes at a high price: By official government estimates, nearly two million South Koreans can be described as “internet addicts.”

Now, the words “addict” and “addiction” get thrown around a lot in contemporary culture, but what would you call the following: a Korean couple repeatedly leaves their apartment and goes to an internet café where they spend all night playing an internet game. One night they return to find their three-month-old daughter dead from malnutrition and dehydration.

This actually happened in Seoul. While it’s the most extreme case, the difference is one of degree, not kind. An episode of PBS’ “Frontline” showed South Korean kids at government-sponsored rehab centers trying, mostly in vain, to wean themselves from their dependence on the internet.

There are several lessons we can learn from the South Korean experience, but I will settle for just one: We would be wrong to believe that media is inherently value-neutral and that any harm stems from the way it is used.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, we shape our media and afterwards our media shapes us. It does this not only by what it depicts and tell us, but in the habits and dispositions it inculcates in those who consume it.

I’m not saying anything new: in 1989, Ken Myers, in “All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes,” wrote that “Christian concern about popular culture should be as much about the sensibilities it encourages as about its content.”

Popular culture, with its emphasis on the new and immediate, reliance on instant accessibility and the casual, time-killing way it is usually consumed, is changing us — and not for the better: We are becoming less reflective, more impatient and easily-bored, to name but a few ways. The result is what Myers called a “loss of cultural memory, [and] a loss of commitment to the future and the past.”

Twenty-three years later, Myers seems, if anything, overly optimistic. Christians are adept at sniffing out objectionable content, but we are largely oblivious to the impact of media and popular culture on our sensibilities.

Take the easily-bored part: Do you compulsively glance at your smartphone screen while waiting in line? Of course you do.

Those of us with kids have no doubt noticed that “multitasking” doesn’t do justice to the way they consume media. The average American kid crams nearly 11 hours of media into 7.5 hours in front of screens: Consuming multiple media streams at the same time is becoming the rule rather than the exception.

It’s not that they are better at processing information — studies actually show just the opposite — it’s that they, like their South Korean counterparts, have come to somehow need the stimulation. Their threshold for “boredom” has been recalibrated by the media they — and we — consume.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Those of us over, say, forty, can remember a time when we weren’t staring at our phones in the checkout line. I don’t recall being particularly bored.

This isn’t nostalgia — it’s understanding that sensibilities that have been distorted can be straightened out.

________

The Unusual Faith of A Media Celebrity

Acts 9:3

Kirsten Powers is an American political pundit, analyst, USA Today columnist and a Fox News contributor who usually takes a liberal position. She began her career as a Democratic Party staff assistant with the Clinton-Gore presidential transition team in 1992 and was then appointed to a position in the Clinton administration. In 2005 journalist Ben Smith wrote that Powers was “emerging as one of the Democratic Party’s national voices.”

Powers was raised as an Episcopalian but spent much of her early adult life as an atheist. In her mid-30s she became an evangelical Christian. The process of conversion began when she dated a religious Christian man, who introduced her to the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and the teachings of its pastor, Tim Keller, and culminated in an experience in 2006 when, during a trip to Taiwan, she believes that she was visited by Jesus.

Kirsten knows that her religious commitment surprises many people. She herself has called her conversion “a bit of a mind bender” due to her political beliefs and former atheism. She to describe herself as an “orthodox Christian” rather than “evangelical” due to the cultural baggage around the word “evangelical.”

She has said that the biggest impact her new-found faith had on her political beliefs was that she came to “view everyone as God’s child and that means everyone deserves grace and respect.” Kirsten is pro-life and opposes elective late-term abortions.

________

Adapted from Wikipedia.org, "Kirsten Powers."

Why Do Christians Revere Jerusalem? The Times Misses A Step

It’s perhaps not sporting to mock the New York Times when it tries to address Christianity. Pointing out the mistakes seems like piling on. But every once in a while it’s good to note how little the Paper of Record seems to know about Christianity and Christian history, if only to remind oneself of the unfortunate path to ignorance our culture seems to be taking. Besides, sometimes it’s too much fun to resist.

For example, a couple weeks ago, art critic Holland Cotter reviewed a new exhibition on Jerusalem, “Jerusalem 1000-1400: Every People under Heaven,” at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Cotter has a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, so you’d think he’d know a thing or two — basic facts about world religions, history, that sort of thing. It’s surprising, therefore, to read this passage in his review:

Three major faiths have laid claim to that city. For Jews, it’s the place where, at the End of Days, the Messiah will appear; rebuild the Holy Temple, twice-destroyed; and sort out the righteous from the rest. For Muslims, the city is sacred as the point from which the Prophet Muhammad, after a miraculous night flight from Mecca, began a tour of heaven. To Christians, Jerusalem is a giant walk-through reliquary of Jesus’ life and death, with every street, every stone, soaked in his aura.

Jesus’s “life and death”? Actually, according to the Gospel accounts, Jesus didn’t spend a lot of time in the city, except for one or two important episodes. Most of his life he spent in Galilee. And “death”? It’s true that Jesus died in the city. But wasn’t there something else important that happened to him in Jerusalem, according to Christian belief? Think about it, I bet you know. Right — the Resurrection, the central event of the Christian faith.

The Resurrection, not Jesus’s “life and death,” explains why Christians revere Jerusalem. It explains why they built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the most important Christian pilgrimage site in the world, in Jerusalem, right above the place where they believe Jesus rose from the dead. It’s why Christians down the centuries have sacrificed so much to travel to Jerusalem and why all the major Christian communions have striven, often against long odds, to maintain a foothold there. The Resurrection is not a minor doctrine. To omit it is to miss the basic teaching of Christianity, one that has had a huge impact on Western history, thought, and culture — including, of course, Western art.

It’s odd, therefore, that a Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic would miss the point, and that the Times’s culture editors wouldn’t notice the omission. It can’t be because the Times was trying to avoid offending non-Christians by referring to a miracle only Christians accept as true. The Night Journey and the expected return of the Messiah are also sectarian miracles that only believers accept (or expect). Indeed, Cotter presents them as such, and the Times lists them without hesitation. If one were trying to be objective, one could simply write the factual statement, “Christians believe that Christ’s Resurrection took place in Jerusalem,” and leave it at that. No one could be offended.

No, I don’t think the omission reflects a wish to be neutral among religions, or between religious and non-religious readers. Nor do I think it reflects a conscious hostility toward Christianity, though of course it may. Most likely, the Christian belief about the Resurrection simply didn’t come to mind. Apparently, the Times’s staff is so unfamiliar with basic Christian teachings that the Resurrection slips right by them. In this, they are not alone among our mainstream media. I once heard a BBC news announcer refer to Easter as the holiday on which Christians commemorate the death of Jesus.

Then there is Cotter’s discussion of the Crusades, which is similarly innocent of basic facts. Cotter contrasts the wealth and cosmopolitanism Jerusalem enjoyed before the arrival of the Crusaders to the violence and horror that came after. Before the Crusades, he writes, Jerusalem was a magnificent bazaar, a multicultural emporium of luxury goods where different religions competed peacefully to offer the best merchandise. All this came to an end when Christians — Catholics, specifically — showed up:

By the end of the 11th century, portability and discretion were pluses when it came to religious art. Being Muslim or Jewish had become a liability. In Europe in 1095, Pope Urban II put out the call for Christians to liberate Jerusalem from people “absolutely alien to God.” Accordingly, in 1099, Crusader armies showed up at the gates and began an ethnic and religious cleansing. They slaughtered Muslims, burned Jews alive in synagogues and cut down Christians who happened to cross their path.

This description of events leaves out something rather important. I assume Cotter uses the word “liberate” ironically, but, in fact, whatever they eventually became, the Crusades began as a defensive measure, an attempt to reclaim Jerusalem from Muslim leaders who were oppressing Christians. These included the famous Caliph Al-Hakim, who completely destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, razing it to the ground, along with other Christian sites, in the year 1009. (Al-Hakim persecuted Jews, and burned synagogues, as well). The church that pilgrims visit in Jerusalem today is, in large part, a Crusader structure.

This isn’t to say the Crusaders didn’t commit atrocities — of course they did. But it’s not like everything was placid before they arrived. The Crusades were a complicated event, with mixed motives on all sides; there was plenty of violence and intolerance to go around. If one presumes to recount the history, one shouldn’t present a cartoon version or leave out essential facts — even if that means forgoing another opportunity to remind everyone how bad the Catholic Church has always been, how much less peaceful and enlightened than its interlocutors.

As I say, poking fun at the Times’s lack of knowledge is amusing. But there’s a serious point as well. Notwithstanding the fragmentation of the media, the Times is still the most important newspaper in America, perhaps the world. More than any other journal, it has the power to set our country’s political agenda. That’s why omissions like Cotter’s are worth noting. They reflect a basic ignorance of Christianity — of its teachings and its history — that one has to assume affects other sections of the paper as well. That the Times presents a distorted picture of Christianity shouldn’t bother only Christians. It should unsettle anyone who looks to the paper for an informed and objective account of the role of religion in the world today.

________

Mark L. Movsesian co-directs the Tradition Project at the St. John’s Center for Law and Religion.

Believe It Or Not: The New York Times Has Quietly Returned To Its 'Jesus Is Dead' Theme

Perhaps you remember a 2014 piece at The Federalist by one M.Z. Hemingway that ran with the headline, “Will Someone Explain Christianity To The New York Times?”

It focused on a travel piece that, once corrected, included the following material about tourism in the tense city of Jerusalem. The crucial passage stated:

On a recent afternoon in the Old City of Jerusalem, while fighting raged in Gaza, Bilal Abu Khalaf hosted a group of Israeli tourists at his textile store in the Christian Quarter – one of Jerusalem’s tourist gems.

Dressed in a striped galabiyya and tasseled red tarbouche, Mr. Abu Khalaf showed his visitors exotic hand-loomed silks and golden-threaded garments from Syria, Morocco and Kashmir that adorn Israel’s most luxurious hotels and ambassadors’ homes. ...

Nearby, the vast Church of the Holy Sepulcher marking the site where many Christians believe that Jesus was buried, usually packed with pilgrims, was echoing and empty.

Yes, that was what the Times piece said after it was corrected. What did it say before that? Believe it or not, it said, “Nearby, the vast Church of the Holy Sepulcher marking the site where many Christians believe that Jesus is buried, usually packed with pilgrims, was echoing and empty.”

In this case, it’s easy to discern what the meaning of the word “is” is.

Hold that thought.

Did the world’s most powerful newsroom (that title would belong either to the Gray Lady or the BBC) actually publish that telltale sentence? Luckily, someone had a screenshot. [original article shows screenshot of the paragraph]

Let me pause to note that the journalism question here is slightly complex. No one is asking the editors in the college of cardinals at the Times to accept the Resurrection as a fact of secular history. In this case, the journalism question is whether “many Christians” believe that Jesus is, in fact, buried you know where.

Do many Christians believe that? I mean, there are liberal Christians (Hello Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong) who deny the Resurrection or attempt to redefine it. But would the folks in that unorthodox tribe actually say Jesus is buried at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher? They would not.

Back to Hemingway’s 2014 piece, before we move into the present.

M.Z. noted, logically enough, that (a) the tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is empty, (b) this historic and very complex sanctuary is also known as the Church of the Resurrection and, to wrap things up, (c) small-o orthodox Christians do not believe Jesus is dead and buried. This is not obscure stuff we are talking about.

This brings us to a recent Times arts piece that ran under this title: “Jerusalem as a Place of Desire and Death, at the Metropolitan Museum.”

This review was the subject of a First Things essay by Mark Movsesian, of the St. John’s Center for Law and Religion, with this title: “Why Do Christians Revere Jerusalem? The Times Misses a Step.” Here is the Times passage that will interest readers:

Three major faiths have laid claim to that city. For Jews, it’s the place where, at the End of Days, the Messiah will appear; rebuild the Holy Temple, twice-destroyed; and sort out the righteous from the rest. For Muslims, the city is sacred as the point from which the Prophet Muhammad, after a miraculous night flight from Mecca, began a tour of heaven. To Christians, Jerusalem is a giant walk-through reliquary of Jesus’ life and death, with every street, every stone, soaked in his aura.

Movsesian notes that we are dealing with work by a journalist who, in the past, has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for criticism. One can assume that he chose his words with care and that his editors respected his choices.

This, Movsesian raises a question:

Jesus’s “life and death”? Actually, according to the Gospel accounts, Jesus didn’t spend a lot of time in the city, except for one or two important episodes. Most of his life he spent in Galilee. And “death”? It’s true that Jesus died in the city. But wasn’t there something else important that happened to him in Jerusalem, according to Christian belief? Think about it, I bet you know. Right – the Resurrection, the central event of the Christian faith.

The Resurrection, not Jesus’s “life and death,” explains why Christians revere Jerusalem. It explains why they built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the most important Christian pilgrimage site in the world, in Jerusalem, right above the place where they believe Jesus rose from the dead. It’s why Christians down the centuries have sacrificed so much to travel to Jerusalem and why all the major Christian communions have striven, often against long odds, to maintain a foothold there. The Resurrection is not a minor doctrine. To omit it is to miss the basic teaching of Christianity, one that has had a huge impact on Western history, thought, and culture – including, of course, Western art.

Ah, but should Christians expect the Times to print material about the Resurrection? After all, that is, you know, a miracle. Maybe the Gray Lady doesn’t want to write journalism about miracle stories?

Oh, wait.

It’s odd, therefore, that a Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic would miss the point, and that the Times’s culture editors wouldn’t notice the omission. It can’t be because the Times was trying to avoid offending non-Christians by referring to a miracle only Christians accept as true. The Night Journey and the expected return of the Messiah are also sectarian miracles that only believers accept (or expect). ... The Times lists them without hesitation. If one were trying to be objective, one could simply write the factual statement, “Christians believe that Christ’s Resurrection took place in Jerusalem,” and leave it at that. No one could be offended.

So what is going on here? That’s a journalism question.

It would be hard to answer that question with certainty. (Movsesian's full article is at #65811).

Sex and The I-World: Recovering Healthy Relationships

Acts 15:20

A few years ago a pastor named Dale Kuehne took some college students to work in a farming village in Costa Rica — a poor village that lacked electricity and running water. The locals did have a generator, however; once a week, they fired it up to watch a raunchy American television program — Beverly Hills 90210.

Kuehne was shocked to see village teenagers mimicking the behavior of the characters in the show. And he was floored when village men asked him what was wrong with the women who’d come on the trip. “Why don’t they want to have sex?” they asked. “We thought all American women want to have sex.”

Kuehne relates the story in his new book, Sex and the iWorld: Rethinking Relationships beyond an Age of Individualism. What happened in Costa Rica, he writes, shows how far iWorld messages have spread — and how little the Church has done to engage the iWorld culture.

Kuehne says that we are witnessing in the West the collapse of the Judeo-Christian worldview. Replacing it is a worldview that some call “postmodern individualism,” but Kuehne calls it “iWorld.”

iWorlders are dissolving long-established boundaries because they believe that people are happiest making their own moral and relational choices — outside of the family, community, and faith traditions into which they were born. And the iWorld promotes a desire for immediate gratification — as illustrated in the huge levels of consumer debt and the tendency to become sexually involved at the very outset of a romantic relationship.

Sadly, iWorlders often unwittingly sacrifice what they want, in the long run — contentment and fulfillment — by succumbing to their immediate desires, especially when it comes to sexual relationships.

Perhaps even more sadly, the Church has done precious little to present to iWorlders a vision of true fulfillment. That’s partly because the Church itself has turned a “blind eye” to sexual immorality within the body of Christ. Even worse, writes Kuehne, “is the degree to which the historic orthodox understanding of sexual morality and marriage is being ignored or revised by clergy and laypeople alike.”

This has enormous consequences for the Church’s ability to be salt and light in a culture suffering from the after-effects and social ills of the sexual revolution. The Church needs to be reminded — and needs to make the case — that “the biblical teaching that limits sexual relations to a marriage relationship between a man and a woman is actually beneficial to all.”

And that’s exactly what Kuehne does in his book, in a direct, challenging, but ultimately compassionate way. Every human, he says, is on a “never-ending quest for acceptance, love, and fulfillment.” But these things can never be found in the iWorld — by asking, “What’s in it for me?”

So instead of being subsumed by the iWorld culture, the Church has the “rWorld” to offer. The rWorld understands that God created people for relationships — and that we find our deepest fulfillment in relationship with Him, and in living a life rich in self-giving, not self-satisfying relationships.