OFF THE SHELF Salvation on the Small Screen?
“news,” variety shows, and Bible cartoons, she confronts some of her prejudices. Salvation on the Small Screen? is not going to rock anyone’s world; TBN By Nadia Bolz-Weber devotees will just be offended, and the Seabury Books rest of us will feel affirmed. On the other The Last TV Evangelist hand, religious media guru Phil Cooke’s The Last TV Evangelist: Why the Next Generation Couldn’t Care Less About Religious By Phil Cooke Media and Why It Matters is squarely aimed Conversant Media Group at those already producing Christian media. Cooke points out that the “milReviewed by Alissa Wilkinson lennial” generation—those born between Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran minister 1980 and 1995—is having a direct effect who, as a sort of extreme sport, invited a on the way religious media evolves in bevy of friends to join her in watching the next decade, and he urges ministries Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), and churches to wake up to this reality. bastion of televangelism, for a round- Cooke’s book confronts assumptions and the-clock marathon.The result is Salvation provides a basic blueprint for moving on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian forward, even in the rapidly changing Television, a wickedly funny meditation technological landscape. One of the blurbs in the front of the on what appeared onscreen and the book says:“We love The LastTV Evangelist, reactions/discussions of the watchers. Bolz-Weber’s disarming combination but if we published it, we would jeopof saracasm and thoughtfulness keeps the ardize our relationships with too many book from devolving into a screed. TV ministries.” It is signed “A major Scattered throughout the snark are poi- religious publisher.” That, in a nutshell, explains the hurgnant thoughts on the shortcomings of her own tradition. She knows she’s not dles Cooke had to overcome in even in TBN’s target audience, but as she writing this book. He is a major conwatches the televangelists, apocalyptic sultant with many religious media companies and ministries today and as a result takes no sides on theology. His focus in this book is purely methodological: How has religious media changed? Who is driving the change? How does this affect the way we approach Christian media in the future? Cooke is as spot-on as possible when making general assertions about the media trends of the future, particularly the movement toward what media theorist Henry Jenkins has called “convergence culture” —consumers becoming producers through digital photography and movies and other responsive technologies. However, one problem with the book is the foregone conclusion that the Christian media is essentially good, and that we must necessarily adapt today’s PRISM 2009
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technologies to “reach people.” What’s lacking is a rigorous biblical defense of why the church ought to be utilizing the media at all. I would argue that the mere existence of a cultural form (say, flash mobs or reality television) should not necessarily lead to the church adopting that form. Rather each should be considered for the effect that it will have on the goals of Christ’s kingdom: restoring a broken world, building a community, spreading the truth. This reactive attitude toward culture has been the way the church has operated over the last several decades, and it leads to the “copying” posture toward culture that Andy Crouch identifies in Culture Making.To be fair, Cooke delves into the hoped-for blurring of the lines between “Christian” and “secular” toward the end of the book, and he recognizes that organizations like Paulist Productions have been doing this successfully for some years now. Cooke may be overlooking a subtle distinction when he implies that the increasing decline of Christian media is generational rather than cultural. Certainly, most millenials would rather watch paint dry than watch Christian television; on the other hand, so would my mother.