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Book: Christianity and the Mass Media in America by Quentin J. Schultze
By chris | March 31, 2008
Recently I read the book “Christianity and the Mass Media in America” by Professor of Communication Arts and Sciencs at Calvin College, Quentin J. Schultze. You can read the first chapter “Conversing about Faith and Media in America” here. It’s 51 page PDF. A really a thoughtful read, go ahead and check it out! He unpacks some themes that are worth thinking about in the sample chapter.
- The Rhetoric of Conversion
- The Rhetoric of Discernment
- The Rhetoric of Communion
- The Rhetoric of Exile
- The Rhetoric of Praise
I am glad I read this book because I think Dr Schultze has given a great critique about the typical evangelical’s unquestioned trust in technology. He asks, what is all this trust in technology doing to our faith?
That is something I ask myself frequently as I watch churches chase after secular marketing gurus using marketing “technology” to turn their churches into glorified coffee shops and adding enough entertainment production values to their worship service “experiences” that they could make Cirque du Soleil jealous!
We need to use media to communicate in our age, but how is our media strategy changing us?
Schultze says, “Technology enables, but it also disables; in the process of making some worthwhile things happen, it prohibits other good things from taking place–even things that are primary matters of the spirit or habits of the heart. Moreover, the unexpected consequences of new media are sometimes more powerful than the carefully planned ones.”
He also develops an interesting thesis showing that the First Amendment’s constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech, the press, and the right to assemble is really centered on the freedom of religion, not the press as is often assumed, thus showing that in America religion and media have long been linked.
He has a chapter, “Discerning Professional Journalism” that analyzes the press and critiques their “fundamentalist” self-assumption that they are unbiased. The most practical parts of this book relate to journalism.
Of particular interest to me is how he shows historically how modern advertising borrows from Christian evangelical evangelism. In my opinion modern Christian marketing is not merely taking concepts from advertising, as much as it is reclaiming them back from secular sources that have borrowed them. I doubt the author would see ministry marketing exactly the way I do. But I don’t need to understand or agree with everything he says to improve my perspective by reading his book.
The book is an important read for any Christian communicator. But whatever your perspective about Christian media is, don’t expect the author to draw any conclusions that result in practical outcomes for Christian media producers in this book. This is more of an academic hang-wringing tome. In a couple places I felt he held up the “Anabaptists” (which I read as “Amish“) as examples that didn’t really connect with me.
Here’s another review you might want to read.
Topics: Deliver the Message, News and "Bloggy" Stuff |
April 7th, 2008 at 8:52 am
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