Blindspot!
From Issue: 702 [Read full issue]
Religious Shows
On Television, religion, like everything else is presented as an entertainment. Everything that makes religion an historic, profound and sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no tradition, no theology, and above all, no sense of spiritual transcendence. On these shows, the preacher is tops. God comes out as second banana.
This fact has more to do with the bias of television than with the deficiencies of these electronic preachers, as they are called. It is true enough that some of these men are uneducated, provincial and even bigoted. What makes these television preachers the enemy of religious experience is not so much their weaknesses but the weaknesses of the medium in which they work.
Not everything is televisable. Or to put it precisely, what is televised is transformed from what it was to something else, which may or may not preserve its former essence. For the most part, television preachers have not seriously addressed this matter. If the delivery is not the same, then the message, quite likely, is not the same.
There is no religious leader - from the Buddha to Moses to Jesus to Mohammed to Luther - who offered people what they want. Only what they need. But Television is not well suited to offering people what they need. It is 'user friendly.' It is too easy to turn off. As a consequence, what is preached on television is not anything like the Sermon on the Mount. Religious programs are filled with good cheer. They celebrate affluence. There featured players become celebrities. Though their messages are trivial, the shows have high ratings, or rather, because their messages are trivial, the shows have high ratings.
There is no doubt that religion can be made entertaining. The question is, By doing so, do we destroy it as an "authentic object of culture"? The danger is not that religion has become the content of television shows but that television shows may become the content of religion.
Compiled From:
"Amusing Ourselves to Death" - Neil Postman, pp. 114-124