Christianity and the Mass Media in America (Book Review)
Quentin J. Schultze. Christianity and the Mass Media in America: Toward a Democratic Accommodation. East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University Press, 2003. viii+430 pp. (hardbound) $84.95, ISBN 0-87013-696-8.
In one corner, evangelicals hope to harness the immense power of the media to reach the world with the message of the Gospel. In the other corner, secular journalists fail to understand American religious thought and have excluded it from the public square. Everywhere in between, we have Quentin Schultz’ new scholarly analysis, Christianity and the Mass Media in America.
He not only explains how such diverse viewpoints came to be, he examines the symbiotic relationship between them considering in particular the impact of American Protestantism on the various media and the impact of those media on the church and culture. This seems like a lot to do in 440 pages, almost 90 of which are notes. However, while as a review of the literature many of his ideas and insights have been explored elsewhere, one could not find them collected and organized in such a comprehensive and compelling fashion.
Essentially a series of case studies, Schultze provides an historical and cultural critique of the unique ways in which American media and faith interact. For example, he looks at the mythos of the electronic church (and compares it to science fiction), the response of Christian periodicals to the emergence of television, and the commercialization and subsequent ghettoization of Christian radio and music,. His review of four major Christian media critics—Edward Carnell, William Fore, John Nelson and Andrew Greeley—is worth the hefty price of admission. He not only offers them as examples of provocative metanarrative-based criticism, but he shows how their important and engaging critique rises above the moralistic condemnation that passes for much Christian cultural and media analysis today.
As useful as these case studies might be in isolation, as assigned reading in university and seminary classes, for example, Schultz offers them in a coherent fashion, introducing and framing them in terms of rhetorics of conversion, discernment, communion, exile and praise. Following James Carey and others in the Chicago School of Social Thought, he describes the quasi-religious aspects of American attitudes and aspirations about the media and the sources of frustration and failure that have ultimately marginalized “tribal” religious viewpoints.
The case studies build on each other, culminating in an analysis of “civil sin” and a critique of professional journalists. In a chapter which most reflects his own Reformed background, he argues “the mainstream media gravitate away from the unpleasant tribal concepts of sin toward the more acceptable notion of evil.” Nevertheless, the media borrow from the structure if not the meaning of tribal religion while recontextualizing evil as a human problem with human solutions. Illustrating this with examples such as Coleman Luck’s savage critique of Touched by an Angel, Schultze notes “sin requires a savior, whereas evil requires only heroes.” This notion of civil sin is rooted in an immanent causality that sees sinners as victims, although the sacrifices which purge our collective guilt are not innocent, as in Christian and Hebrew traditions, but are in fact the evil doers themselves.
The priests of this civil religion are the professional journalists, who practice an “informational fundamentalism” that grew out of the Scottish Enlightenment and emphasizes fact, event and conflict over context or meaning. As “unimaginative social liturgy,” contemporary journalism fails to account for the rich, textured nuances of American religious practice and runs the risk of being “ever more mocked and dismissed by the citizens whom news media supposedly serve. ”
But Schultz aspires to, and achieves, more than historical analysis and cultural critique. He offers a hopeful path of mutual obligation in which the various rhetorics at play (or at war) enhance the quality of our democratic experience. He concludes religious discourse can and should transcend tribal interest, serving the wider public and the common good with moral vision that fosters civility and responsibility. Unfortunately, our uncritical acceptance of media technology has served its purposes, and our own, not “the purposes of a good and just republic.”
According to Schultz, it doesn’t have to be that way. One comes away from this book with quotes to ponder, books to read, and things to think about. It is a good place to begin important conversations with each other, and with media scholars and practitioners who care about the way things are, or about the way they ought to be.
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