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Is Television the New Religion?

The media is a pervasive part of our culture, but has it taken the place of God? Annette Cooper finds out.

One day last year, I was browsing in the Student Union Bookshop and found a book called Communicating Faith in a Technological Age (St Paul Publications, 1989). I bought it and left it on my shelf until spotting it at Christmas and reading a few chapters. It was interesting and full of arguments about culture and Christianity. The chapter that made me think most was about Christianity and the media. Two lecturers expressed their views about how Western society had moved from following mass religion to mass media over the past one hundred years. A very interesting suggestion was that television has taken over the role of religion in many peoples’ lives.

The argument the lecturers made for TV being the new religion was that it has become:

A form of authority that people respect.
The place where many of the symbols, rituals and myths in our lives are formed.
Somewhere we can see our social ‘reality’ reflected and reaffirmed.

One example given to support these suggestions was the way that we believe the words of TV newsreaders almost as if they were priests. I can relate to the idea of TV being a separate religion, having been teased by friends as a child for not knowing who characters were or what happened in such and such a programme. I decided that I had to learn about this ‘world’ of television and tried to watch what everyone else was watching. It was hard work, but I eventually managed to watch enough to follow the TV conversations. However, I can’t really say that it fulfilled my life. It made me feel better because I was part of ‘the gang’, but it didn’t have much else to offer.

Television as a religion is a sad affair, because its worship rarely involves people either meeting up or reacting to what they see and hear. We switch on the television and switch off our brains. Adverts are a kind of commercial evangelism, as they try to attract us and offer us something we can’t do without. Programmes like Neighbours show us the gospel according to suburban Australia where lots of friendly people help each other out. It is easy to see how TV could be supplying society with some of the things we lost by losing our religion.

According to Communicating Faith in a Technological Age , Christians could be seen as submerged in two religious cultures — one of the Church, one of the TV. I am not suggesting that anyone (Christian or non-Christian) actually thinks of television as their religion, but if some of the elements are there, then TV could have a profound ‘religious’ influence over people. As Christians caught between the two cultures, how do we react to television? The author suggested two main reactions: the urge to reject and the urge to interact. There are those who think TV is wasting our time and drawing us away from the reality of Christ, so choose not to watch it at all. There are those who think it is enjoyable and harmless in small measures, so watch it occasionally, but don’t really approve of what it is doing to our society. There is also another possible reaction a Christian could have, however; it is to see that TV is a big part of society today and interact with it, using it as one way to reach people.

Now, I’m not advocating TV evangelism or adverts for the Church. I just mean using the medium to get peoples’ attention. Students and young people in particular know more about the adverts on television than the books in the Bible. The argument is that if the mass media have taken over society’s main symbols and myths, then we as a Church need to claim them back. We won’t do this by ignoring the appeal of television. The Church could use the messages contained in adverts and TV programmes to introduce people to important issues. Youth groups or house groups could use a programme as a starting point for discussion; multimedia screens could be used more widely in worship. We could meet people where they are, then point out where we are coming from as Christians. The idea is for people see Christianity getting involved in their life and culture, rather than holding back through tradition.

There is of course an argument for not involving the media and television with Christian culture. The Church is God’s house and worship should be holy, before it is trendy. Television is something trivial that can touch on things that are important, but God should always be the focus. I agree with the author in my book, that Christ should be promoted as above culture, not of culture. This means showing that Jesus can come into a culture but remain separate from it, being Christ, the Son of God. Jesus took part in his own culture as a Jew and even ventured into other ’cultures’, such as those of tax collectors and prostitutes. Perhaps, if He had been born into our culture, He would have watched TV in the homes of the unemployed? I am sure, however, that He would have made people realise, whatever culture they are from, that they are children of God.

What really struck me about the Church and the media when I read Communicating Faith in a Technological Age was the huge divide between the two ‘cultures’, if you can call them that. It seemed that Christians and others are expected to bridge the gap between modern culture and the Church all by themselves, without a stepping-stone. To me, it seems crazy to ignore the fact that many people see worship with hymns and sermons as part of an old-fashioned world. Does worship have to be like this?

Reverence for God and the Church are important and tradition is one way to express our faith and devotion, but there are other ways. Perhaps Churches need to look closely at how people live and what forms of worship would be relevant to them? Although television has a lot wrong with it, it must have something right to attract millions of viewers everyday!

Annette Cooper

Last modified: 25th November 2005