How should Christians engage the news media? The expanding controversy over CBS News reports on President George W. Bush’s National Guard service—and the network’s acknowledgement that it used faked documents in its report—raises a host of issues about truth-telling, media credibility, and evangelical responsibility. Let me suggest ten principles for responsible evangelical engagement with the news media. Our responsibility is to consider the news—and the making of news—from a Christian worldview perspective. That makes a huge difference in how we analyze, assimilate, and judge media reports.
Principle One: In a fallen world, everyone is biased. There is no such thing as absolute objectivity. As a matter of fact, everyone comes to the news with some bias. We are all creatures of our own limited experience and information, and we all come to the issues of the day—controversial or otherwise—with a specific worldview. Even research scientists acknowledge that absolute objectivity is an impossible achievement. This is especially true when dealing with issues of worldview consequence. As Christians, we recognize that bias is not merely a matter of political interest or ideological conviction; it is evidence of sin. In a sinful world, bias creeps into every discussion, every judgment, and every news report. Evangelical Christians therefore have no excuse for being surprised when bias appears—we should expect it, and judge accordingly. At the same time, we should be aware of our own bias and submit our own assumptions to careful analysis. Every single individual confronts the issues of the day from specific worldview commitments. There is no escaping this reality.
Principle Two: News reports are heavily filtered—and the filters matter. The news we receive on televised broadcasts, in newspapers, and in virtually any other form, come to us only after passing through numerous filters. All along the process, reporters, editors, producers, executives, and others are making judgments about what stories are important, how stories should be reported, what sources should be used, and what perspectives should be included. These filters are extremely significant, and the news reports we receive are but a fraction of what could be published and presented. Someone is making those decisions, and the worldview of those decision-makers is of the utmost importance. The decision about what to cover is as important as decisions about how to cover any given issue or event. If we are unaware of these filters, we will assume that the news presented to us reflects what is ultimately most important. Actually, it may reflect only what individuals in the filtering process want us to see, read, or hear. As Marvin Olasky argues in Prodigal Press, “Many scholars suggest that journalists have their prime influence on society not so much by coverage of particular stories as by the choice of what to cover; journalists are sometimes called ‘gate-keepers’ or ‘agenda-setters.’ Readers and viewers should keep asking: Why was this story considered newsworthy?”
Principle Three: The media are driven by commercial interests. The vast majority of media outlets are commercial enterprises, driven by a bottom-line desire for profit. This has a great deal to do with how the news is presented, how the readers or audience are addressed, and how issues are framed. As Neil Postman and Steve Powers explained, much of what we see on television news is designed “to keep viewers watching so that they will be exposed to commercials.” Thus, producers and news directors are driven to cover stories that offer visual interest, regardless of news value. As the old newsroom adage goes, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Images often displace words, and a distorted picture of reality results. Furthermore, the commercial interest of broadcast news means that viewers must be held over a period of time by enticements. That is why news anchors advertise upcoming stories and, as C. John Sommerville of the University of Florida explains, “string us along.” As Sommerville argues, “The techniques of stringing us along show that the news industry is not as interested in satisfying a hunger as in creating an addiction.” The media have a commercial product to sell, and that product is television commercials.
Principle Four: The media elite is demographically and ideologically removed from the world inhabited by most Americans. As researchers S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda S. Lichter argued over two decades ago, the news business is now largely in the hands of a “media elite.” As these researchers made clear, this media elite is comprised of persons from a very thin slice of the American population. They are highly educated, socially mobile, metropolitan in focus, and overwhelmingly liberal in terms of ideological bias. They have often attended America’s most prestigious universities, they were often radicalized by the 1960s, Vietnam, and the Watergate experience, and they see the news media as an opportunity to revolutionize society. As Robert and Linda Lichter and Stanley Rothman described the media elite, “In their attitudes toward sex and sex roles, members of the media elite are virtually unanimous in opposing both governmental and traditional constraints. A large majority opposes government regulation of sexual activities, upholds a pro-choice position on abortion, and rejects the notion that homosexuality is wrong. In fact, a slight majority would not characterize adultery as wrong.” Does the coalescence of leading journalists into a media elite make a difference? Bernard Goldberg, a long-time veteran of CBS News, poses the questions this way: “Do we really think that if the media elites worked out of Nebraska instead of New York, and if they were overwhelmingly social conservatives instead of liberals, and if they overwhelmingly voted for Nixon and Reagan instead of McGovern and Mondale . . . do we really think that would make no difference? Does anyone really believe that the evening newscast would fundamentally be the same?” No sane person can believe this would make no difference, and in the case of media bias, naivete is deadly.
Principle Five: Headlines often lie and language often misleads. Readers of newspapers are often unaware that the reporter usually has nothing to say about the headline of an article or report. Headlines emerge from the copy-editing process, and are used to draw attention to a story and attract readers. Furthermore, the headlines are powerful editorial devices, casting a story in a particular context of meaning, even before the article is read. But headlines often lie—and careful readers will often discover that the claim made in the headline is completely undermined by the content of the article. Some newspapers are particularly offensive in this regard, showing clear bias in their headlines and article contexting. Similarly, language and terminology within an article or broadcast can be used to mislead the public. What words are used to describe principle figures in a story? Will the reporter describe a suicide bomber as a terrorist, or as a freedom-fighter? Will an individual be identified as a presidential aide, or a political operative? Will a spokesperson be identified as an opponent of same-sex marriage, or as a defender of traditional marriage? These decisions amount to both distinction and difference, and can often mean the difference between understanding or misunderstanding. The choice of language is of vital importance, and with the culture of political correctness now invading newsrooms across America, this usually means that those arguing for an overthrow of moral restraint are referred to in a positive light, while defenders of traditional morality are referred to as repressive and negative. Beware the power of words!
Christian engagement with the news media requires intelligence, thoughtfulness, and an awareness of how the media elite really think. As always, knowledge is power.
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We are living in an age of unprecedented media access and almost every American home has access to multiple media options. Cable news channels provide a constant stream of reports even as the Internet erases the final geographic barriers to information transfer. Newspapers, talk radio, and the older network news broadcasts must be added to the mix, providing citizens with an overload of information and images.
Most Americans never even stop to recognize how revolutionary this level of information access really is. Previous generations relied on word of mouth, handwritten communications, the Pony Express, the telegraph, or radio broadcasts. Those over 40 years of age can remember the limitations of a black-and-white television with news packaged in the form of 30-minute network broadcasts, supplemented by occasional special reports. If you missed the nightly broadcast, you were out of luck and uninformed. No longer. Now, the older networks are just trying to stay relevant in the news universe.
The really important question is this: Are we any wiser? The explosion of media access has provided some real benefits for viewers. Competition has led to improvements in both style and substance, and the expanding number of news organizations has added new checks and balances to the system. Still, much of the additional coverage is more concerned with “infotainment” than information or analysis. Furthermore, many citizens feel as if they are drowning in an ocean of competing reports and programs.
Is there a way toward media sanity? Here are five more principles for Christian engagement with the news media.
Principle Six: The likelihood of being uninformed and misinformed increases as the number of news sources decreases. Dependence on just a few media sources, whether newspapers, Internet sites, or television news programs, is dangerous. We can grow far too comfortable with familiar faces, trusted reporters, and patterns of habit. The reduction of news sources means that the filtering process poses an even greater danger, and viewers or readers are far more susceptible to influence and bias. This is also true when it comes to the form of media input. Television reports must be visually interesting, fast paced, and energetic—regardless of the story. Furthermore, television news broadcasts tend to rely on reductionism, making it more likely that bias can creep into a reporter’s summarization without notice. Christian citizens should develop the discipline of wide reading and selective viewing—checking reports against each other for accuracy and bias. Do not trust just one network, one cable news program, one newspaper, or one commentator.
Principle Seven: Beware the error of following the crowd. As a commercial business, the media industry must produce a mass audience and must compete for viewer attention. Thus, the network or program that offers the most drama, controversy, and excitement often draws the largest viewership. Similarly, the newspaper that is most salacious, most sensational, and most superficial may well draw the largest readership. In other words, the crowd is often drawn to a spectacle, just as the ancient Romans demanded bread and circuses. As the crowd grows larger and larger, the content may grow smaller and smaller, and the opportunity for thoughtful engagement with the issues of the day may virtually disappear. When this phenomenon takes place, celebrities often replace specialized authorities in matters of public debate, energy substitutes for information, and the whole enterprise produces far more heat than light. As your parents warned you long ago—beware of following the crowd. Far too many Americans rely on superficial reports and on news wrongly packaged as entertainment.
Principle Eight: Those who get their news only from broadcast media are missing much of the story, and much of its significance. Limiting news intake to television programming is a special danger. Televised news reports tend to be image-driven, more superficial, and more simplistic than the print media. Now, television news broadcasts tend to be framed as conversations, producing “talking heads” who often provide more drama than content and information. This produces an artificial understanding of reality. As Sommerville explains, “It turns out that being informed really means knowing what the people around you are talking about. Our reality is the news, not the world.” There is no substitute for reading, and a diet limited to broadcast news will impoverish the mind. As Postman and Powers argue, “anyone who is not an avid reader of newspapers, magazines, and books is by definition unprepared to watch a television news show, and always will be.” There is no substitute for careful and thoughtful reading. The visual medium is given to entertainment and visual dependence over content and careful analysis.
Principle Nine: When it comes to issues of importance, turn off the tube and think. As veteran newscasters sometimes lament, matters of grave and great significance are often strung together on the news and mixed with unimportant and inane items with the familiar formula, “and now this.” A report about genocide in Sudan can be followed by the latest development in reducing auto emissions, which can be followed by a story about a talking parrot. This leveling of significance produces a distortion of reality. Christians must learn to think about the issues covered in media reports, and resist the temptation to be narcoticized by an endless stream of disconnected reports of unequal significance. This requires discipline and focus, which in turn require silence—which means turning the television off.
Principle Ten: Use the news media as material for worldview analysis. When watching the news or reading the newspaper, Christians should learn continually to reframe the question. Thinking in explicitly Christian terms, armed with the full measure of Christian conviction, the Christian must reason from biblical truth to the issues of the day. We cannot accept the issues as framed for us by the news media, but we must continually reframe in light of Christian truth. For example, controversies about everything from the economy and abortion to the environment and animal rights must be reframed in terms of a biblical perspective. Otherwise, we will commit the error of attempting to reason to a Christian worldview from a secular premise. We must reverse the question, reframe the issue, and subject every controversy and question to careful worldview analysis. This is important for all Christians, but is especially important for parents as careful engagement with the news media affords an excellent opportunity for training children in Christian worldview thinking. They will be engaging the media for the rest of their lives, and faithful Christian parents will prepare their children for media engagement that is genuinely Christian.
As with every dimension of life, our engagement with the news media reveals our deepest convictions and our true beliefs. Christians must engage the news media as Christians, ready to think, to analyze, to make judgments, and to draw accurate conclusions. Inevitably, Christians will either lead or be led.
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Thom Rainer thinks that most Christians have no clue about how unchurched people really think. Given Christianity’s mandate for evangelism, this represents a big problem.
Rainer is founding dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Over the past decade, he has emerged as the nation’s leading expert in church growth and evangelistic strategies. In a very real sense, Rainer operates in two different worlds, with one foot in academic research and the other firmly planted in the local church.
In The Unchurched Next Door, Rainer and his research team consider the real issues involved in reaching unchurched Americans. His findings will surprise many Christians—including many pastors—and offer vital insights as the church looks forward into the twenty-first century.
The Unchurched Next Door represents a massive research project based in a national survey. From the onset, Rainer was determined to force Christians to look at the unchurched all around them. “Most of the unchurched are your neighbors, your coworkers whom you know well, and even your family members,” he explains. “That is why we call them ‘the unchurched next door.’ They have much in common with us. Many of them have your moral values. Most are not antichurch or antireligion. They are very much like you—except that they are lost without Christ.”
After interviewing thousands of unchurched Americans, the Rainer research team looked for patterns in the profiles. Based on the results, Rainer suggested five different levels of responsiveness to the gospel. “U1” identifies unchurched Americans who are highly receptive to hearing and believing the good news. They know something about Christianity, and have a positive attitude toward the church. “U2” individuals are receptive to the gospel and willing to hear a message from the church. Those categorized as “U3” are identified as neutral, “with no clear signs of being interested, yet perhaps open to discussion.” The “U4” group demonstrates resistance to the gospel but no antagonism. The most unresponsive group in the population is identified as “U5” The most secular Americans are “highly antagonistic and even hostile to the gospel.”
Given the contours of post-Christian America, many believers would assume that the U5 category would include a large number of our fellow citizens. That assumption is not sustained by the facts. Rainer’s research indicates that the U5 category fits only about 5% of the American population. Most unchurched Americans are grouped in the central three categories. Those already friendly to the church, the U1s, comprise 11% of the population, serving as something of a bookend to the U5s.
The majority of the unchurched fit the middle categories, with 27% listed as U2, 36% as U3, and 21% as U4. As Rainer summarizes, “Most of the unchurched are not antichurch or anti-Christian.” By and large, they have had little contact with Christianity, and are not highly motivated when it comes to issues of faith and belief.
In reviewing the research, Rainer and his team came to some surprising conclusions. First of all, most Americans have never been invited to church—never. Yet, 82% indicated that they would be at least “somewhat likely” to attend church if invited. As Rainer comments, “Only 21% of active church goers invite anyone to church in the course of a year. But only 2% of church members invite an unchurched person to church.” He concludes: “Perhaps the evangelistic apathy so evident in so many of our churches can be explained by a simple laziness on the part of church members in inviting others to church.”
One of the most devastating insights drawn from the research is the fact that most unchurched Americans feel themselves safe from the evangelistic reach of believing Christians. They do not sense that Christians are seeking actively to share the gospel with them, and many nonbelievers are actually wondering what makes Christians so reticent to talk about their faith. Furthermore, most of the unchurched indicate that their Christian friends have little actual influence on their lives.
The withdrawal of men from participation in many churches has led a good many researchers to believe that men are most highly resistant to the gospel. This is also born out by a great deal of experience in local churches. Nevertheless, Rainer’s research indicates that most men are grouped in the middle categories, and show relatively low levels of interest in the gospel—either positive or negative. Indeed, this research indicates that unchurched Americans classified in U5—the most antagonistic category—are more likely to be women. As a matter of fact, women tended to predominate in both U1 and U5, perhaps indicating that women are more likely to place a high value on the issue of faith, and thus tend to be more passionately Christian or secular.
Unsurprisingly, Rainer also discovered that the U5s tend to be more highly educated, more wealthy, and more condescending toward the Bible than other Americans. This group is marked by an anti-supernatural bias combined with a secular lifestyle. One woman interviewed for the project said simply, “I have no need for the Bible. The Bible was written for very simple people. It was written to give moral and ethical guidance to uneducated people”.
The Unchurched Next Door is a serious look at a serious problem. The undeniable fact is that America’s churches are falling behind in the challenge of evangelism. The best data available indicate that the percentage of the population active in Christian churches has failed to grow in even a single metropolitan area in the United States over the last twenty years. More to the point, churches have failed to grow even at a pace that would equal the growth of the population in general. America is being transformed into a secular society at a pace that would shock most Christians—if they ever cared to look.
Thom Rainer is a specialist in church growth, and he clearly wants to help churches to grow—both numerically and spiritually. At the same time, however, he wants to make certain that it is the church that grows, not merely a crowd or voluntary associciation. He is a powerful advocate for expository preaching and clear Gospel proclamation.
For that reason, he gives serious attention to theological issues at stake. Specifically, Rainer identifies a creeping inclusivism in the pews, combined with a growing disbelief in Hell among the public, as sources of evangelistic malaise.
Inclusivism, the belief that personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is not fundamentally necessary for salvation, has been growing among some Christians for decades. Driven first by liberal theologians who intentionally sought to redefine the faith, inclusivism now fits the cultural mood, and allows Christians to claim simultaneously to be believers in Christ and to deny the gospel.
As Rainer claims, “belief in inclusivism goes completely against the teaching of Christ and Scripture. The Bible teaches exclusivism, the belief that explicit faith in Christ is the only way of salvation.” The impact of creeping inclusivism is obvious. “Why should one go to the trouble of sharing Christ when that person can be saved without placing explicit faith in Christ? Why waste your time?”
The denial of Hell is another issue that diminishes concern for evangelism. The denial or redefinition of Hell is now found among many who claim to be Christians, and Hell has disappeared almost entirely from the public consciousness of the nation. Today’s Christians should note that Jesus himself was bold to warn sinners that they should fear Hell and understand its very real and pressing threat. Far too many Christians see Hell as an embarrassment rather than as a motivation for sharing the gospel.
Most helpfully, Rainer points to an array of evangelistic touch points that Christians should seize for the cause of the gospel. After all, most of these unchurched Americans are living all around us. Their children play with our children on the playground; Christians and non-Christians work together in the business world; and we all live in neighborhoods filled with persons who desperately need to hear the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
A simple conversation with our neighbors will help to reveal their own disposition toward the church and the Gospel. Nevertheless, we should not assume that one who fits the U5 category is further from the reach of the gospel than those who seem to fit U1. The fact is that every single unbeliever is united in an absolute and unconditional need for the gospel. Furthermore, there is a basic antagonism between belief and unbelief.
We cannot predict who will respond to the Gospel. Often, those who appear most likely to respond never do so. At the same time, many of those who are most antagonistic to the church and to the gospel, do come to Christ. This is an important reminder to us that every single conversion is a miracle of God.
The Unchurched Next Door will prompt much thought and should move every thoughtful Christian toward greater faithfulness in evangelism. This book will also help us to understand our unchurched neighbors. Who are they? “They are the unchurched next door. They are your friends, your neighbors, your classmates, your coworkers, your merchants, your acquaintances, and your family members. They need Christ. And they are waiting to hear from you.” What are we waiting for?
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Writing in 1927, French observer Andre Siegfried described Protestantism as America’s “only national religion.” To miss this, Siegfried advised, is “to view the country from a false angle.” Now, less than a century later, a major research report provides proof that Protestantism no longer represents a clear majority of Americans.
Researchers Tom W. Smith and Seokho Kim of the National Opinion Research Center [NORC] at the University of Chicago have released “The Vanishing Protestant Majority,” a report documenting the declining membership of Protestant churches in the nation.
The decline of American Protestantism will come as a shock to many observers, whose understanding of American religion was well summarized by sociologist Will Herberg in his classic 1955 study, Protestant-Catholic-Jew. Herberg characterized America at the midpoint of the twentieth century as a population settled into a tripartite religious identification made up of three great “denominations”—Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism. Celebrating this renegotiation of the American religious establishment, Herberg observed: “In net effect, Protestantism today no longer regards itself either as a religious movement sweeping the continent or as a national church representing the religious life of the people; Protestantism understands itself today primarily as one of the three religious communities in which twentieth century America has come to be divided. The ‘denominational’ system—the word ‘denomination’ here referring both to the religious community and to the denomination in its more restricted sense—has become part of the basic assumptions of Protestants about America, as it has become part of the basic assumptions of all Americans.”
According to the NORC study, Americans identifying themselves as “Protestant” fell from 63% to 52% between 1993 and 2002—a massive decline in less than one decade. According to the University of Chicago press release, the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Protestant “has been falling and will likely fall below 50% by mid-decade and may be there already.”
The NORC study is based on a sizeable research sample, tested to be representative of the U.S. population. The study is not without methodological difficulties. For one thing, the definition of Protestantism used in the report includes “all post-Reformation Christian faiths.” Defining the issue sociologically rather than theologically, the analysts included members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints [Mormons] and other non-Christian groups in the Protestant sample. Some New Age devotees were also included under the Protestant classification.
Nevertheless, methodological issues aside, the group’s extensive research is sufficient to prove the validity of its central thesis—that Protestantism is declining relative to the total U.S. population.
The rapid decline of the nation’s Protestant majority is an issue of significant sociological interest—along with the percentage of Americans claiming no religious preference and the rise of non-traditional religions in American culture. The report offers interesting points of analysis, including the fundamental failure of most Protestant denominations to evangelize and assimilate their own youth and young adults, and the fact that the nation’s immigrant groups have not followed the older pattern of eventual identification with the nation’s Protestant majority. Denominations concerned about membership losses and evangelistic opportunity will note both developments with grave concern. Nevertheless, churches needing this report to awaken themselves to trends as obvious as these are probably beyond help already.
The loss of young adults is the trend with the most devastating long-term consequences. Researcher Tom W. Smith told The Chicago Sun-Times: “There is some evidence that a large portion of this problem is that a fair number of marginal Protestants are not really engaged in their faith and therefore didn’t pass it on to their kids. The mom and dad would say, for example, ‘Yeah, we’re Methodists,’ but they never went to church. They’d baptize their kids, and that’s about it.”
That statement goes a long way towards explaining the entire pattern of Protestant decline. Though these researchers were primarily concerned about the sociological factors that produced Protestant losses, the larger and more important issues are essentially theological. Among mainline Protestant denominations, theological liberalism has eroded the entire system of Christian doctrine, leading to the evaporation of faith and the secularization of those churches. Once the churches have been thoroughly secularized, what value remains in church membership and denominational identification?
Theological liberalism became evident in the mainline Protestant denominations by the early 1920s. Historian William R. Hutchison of the Harvard Divinity School has traced the erosion of mainline Protestant denominations throughout the twentieth century. Hutchison notes that the denominations affiliated with the liberal National Council of Churches have all experienced steady decline. Accommodating themselves to the spirit of the age, these churches embrace theological and moral relativism in an effort to remain “relevant” to a pluralistic culture.
Several years ago, sociologists Dean R. Hoge, Benton Johnson, and Donald A. Luidens described the result of this process as “lay liberalism” that constitutes the belief system held by Protestant baby boomers. This “lay liberalism” rejects orthodox Christian doctrines such as belief that faith in Christ is necessary for salvation, and renegotiates Christian moral principles in line with permissive sexuality.
In Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers, Hoge, Johnson, and Luidens explain that lay liberalism erases clear boundaries separating believers from unbelievers. Without a clear “faith boundary,” identification with Protestantism—and Christianity itself—becomes socially meaningless.
The Vanishing Boundaries study, along with the NORC report, acknowledges the continued growth of conservative Protestant groups, commonly designated as evangelical. These evangelical denominations and churches continue to grow, even as they maintain clear boundaries between belief and unbelief. The existence of these boundaries explains the strong sense of membership and the high rate of participation commonly found in evangelical congregations. As Hoge, Johnson, and Luidens observed: “Our findings show that belief is the single best predictor of church participation, but it is orthodox Christian belief, and not the tenets of lay liberalism, that impels people to be involved in church.”
This is just common sense, of course. But it is precisely the kind of common sense that is commonly ignored or discarded by those who would rather believe otherwise. The churches that are most insistent on being relevant are those most willing to sacrifice biblical truth and the structure of Christian doctrine in order to prove their commitment to cultural expectations. Eventually, these churches become so identified with the culture that all distinctiveness disappears.
The sacrifice of truth for a constantly changing concept of relevance leads necessarily to the relativizing of the Gospel itself, and the undermining of biblical authority. Once these are sacrificed, authentic Christianity is abandoned and all motivation for membership disappears. If beliefs do not matter, the churches themselves do not matter.
The NORC study is wake-up call for Christianity in America. The trend-line is clear: Without a firm grasp of the Gospel, a bold commitment to biblical authority, and a clear vision for evangelism, churches and denominations are destined for decline and eventual dissipation. It shouldn’t take a team of sociologists to teach us something we should already know.
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