Faith and T.V.: Buyer Beware

Analysis of television, its effects on our lives and the way it drives the choices we make, is a relatively recent undertaking. Pierre Bourdieu’s 1996 lectures, printed in a book entitled On Television, is one of these early attempts at analysis. That was 11 years ago! Fifty some years after the invention of t.v. we come to Al Gore’s book, The Assault on Reason. Gore starts his analysis by an examination of the disfiguring effects of television on our democratic institutions. But what has t.v. done to religion? Even the novice channel surfer is keenly aware of the myriad of channels that purport offer faith to its watchers. I believe that television is as corrosive to the practice of faith as it is to political health. Here is a short outline of the features that faux faith brings to the tiny screen.

One way conversation Television is not anything like like real talk. It is more like being targeted. It all comes one way, at you. In fact, television religionists aim their messages in the same way politicians target particular populations. At targeting, televised religion has been devastatingly effective. But faith happens "where two or three are gathered, in the context of a community. Faith is continually tested in the context of real human relationships. There, the faith involves persons and ideas that usually conflict, grate on the nerves. Here is the test of the Spirit to the test. (this sort of thing inhabits nearly every gathering in the biblical literature.) Television is a no community. Rather, the one way messages breed a kind of conformity and passivity that is the hallmark of the consumer age. Further this sort of Christianity, or Islam for that matter, is untested where people live. It has a synthetic quality to it.

Thinking in a line T.V. Christianity is of one type of thinking only, linear thinking. It starts at one point and drives to a destination. But faith is lived in a 360 degree context. Insights into the divine life and the human dilemma come upon us as surprises, often from the periphery. This "quid pro quo" faith leads to vending machine expectations about God, expectations that are continually frustrated in the practice of living religion.

The need for spectacle Writers of the Gospels were acutely aware of the seduction of spectacle. The Gospel of Matthew introduces its protagonist in a confrontation with Satan who makes some spectacular demands. Turning stones into bread or leaping off the pinnacle of the Temple are the sorts of things that are made for television. Producers and advertisers alike are on a perpetual search for them, no matter how they harm or degrade the participants.

As seen on t.v. The medium confers legitimacy even on the most harebrained or inane of suggestions. How often does one walk away from the talking heads with a sense of unease, countered by the notion, if it's on t.v., it must be true. Simply to appear on television to gain legitimacy. (the clowns of children's television 40 years ago testify to that!) Evel Knievel’s warning, “kids, don’t try this at home,” applies doubly to the consumers of television religion.

The tyranny of time Even the novice television viewer marvels at the way a drama reaches its conclusion in the allotted 22 minutes. Early television drama, the old ½ hour shows that Baby Boomers grew up on, had to wrap things up in the allotted time. But the Spirit forms us on another schedule. The greatest lessons and life skills are learned over a life time. They come slowly, often requiring at least a season. Faith lessons, meted out within the allotted time t.v. allows, are useless fare for serious life directed belief.

For those seeking to grow in faith, not all is lost in television’s fantasy land. Occasionally, one can be inspired to action by the presentation of a way of life or of a particularly pressing problem. But let’s not be fooled. Most of the time, television makes of us couch potatoes. As watching sports does not convey physical fitness; (You need to go to the gym for that!) so, television, can only offer a poor and distorted substitute for the real thing. The best place to begin the exploration of faith is in the midst of a living, breathing, serving faith community, far from the boob tube. We dare not wait. Faith communities already strain under the demands of a deluded public marinated in the illusions of t.v. religion.

Listen to the words of poet William Butler Yeats.

We had fed the heart on fantasy,
and the heart's grown brutal on the fare.

Such brutality, the companion to t. v. religion, is the hallmark of our time.