Readers who have followed GetReligion for quite a few years may remember that, in 1991, I left full-time work at The Rocky Mountain News (RIP) to teach as “Communicator on Culture” at Denver Seminary. Basically, I was teaching classes about religious content and trends in mainstream news coverage and popular culture, providing material for apologetics.
In the summer of 1993, when I moved to Milligan College in East Tennessee, I spoke at a national conference for Episcopal church leaders and laypeople, delivering a lecture entitled: “And Now, a Word from Your Culture — Mass Media, Ministry and Tuning in New Signals.” The respondent to my paper, by the way, was Father N.T. Wright, a big-league British intellectual who was beginning to gain some fame in North America. Here is the opening of that lecture:
True or false: It is impossible to talk — in terms of practical details and statistics — about how modern Americans live their lives without addressing the role played by television and other forms of news and entertainment media.
True or false: Most churches have little or nothing practical to say about the role that television and other forms of news and entertainment media play in the daily lives of most modern Americans.
True or false: Most churches have little or nothing practical to say about the daily lives of most modern Americans.
True or false: This applies to my church.
Now, this era of my life surfaced in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), because of two recent posts here at GetReligion. They were, “Old Pete Townshend asks some big questions about rock and what happens after he dies” and “Washington Post offers look at five country music myths and misses a familiar ghost.”
The big idea in the podcast: Every now and then popular culture sends out “signals” addressing subjects on topics that religious leaders simply cannot ignore. This is especially true when these signals originate with generation-shaping artists like Pete Townshend of The Who. Consider these words about rock music, spirituality and death, drawn from a major interview with The New York Times Sunday Magazine:
What we were hoping to do was to create a system by which we gathered in order to hear music that in some way served the spiritual needs of the audience. It didn’t work out that way. We abandoned our parents’ church, and we haven’t replaced it with anything solid and substantial. …
Then, on the themes of abuse, loss and mortality in the classic rock-opera “Tommy”:
I wish I were in Tommy’s shoes, in a joyful moment of waking up one day and disappearing into dust. I’m not quite there, and I don’t know whether I will get there. I’ve been waiting, and I’m pushing 75. …
A hopeful transformation is what I wish for at the end of my life. I would be comfortable with wherever it was. Whether it would be turning to dust or falling into the hands of astral angels or finding myself at the gates of heaven and being turned away.
In this case, we are dealing with a topic linked to one of the major transition points in life — big subjects that should interest tuned-in mainstream news reporters just as much as they do clergy.
Do millions and millions of Americans, in this screens-dominated age, turn to mass media for information, insights and stories that affect their beliefs on this “big ideas” in life and even the afterlife?
I would say the answer has to be “yes.”
Thus, I have always appreciated the name that Barbara Nicolosi Harrington — a former Catholic nun turned screenwriter and professor — has long used for her online writings and podcasts about cinema: “The Church of the Masses.”
Let me end with a long excerpt from a chapter I wrote for a book celebrating the work of one of my mentors, the late Denver Seminary president and Gordon Conwell Seminary senior professor Haddon Robinson: “The Big Idea of Biblical Preaching: Connecting the Bible to People.”
Here is my big idea, again, for religion-beat journalists as well as clergy: Popular culture is a warped mirror of our lives, but it is a mirror nonetheless.
This will explain why the classic clip from the ending of “Thelma and Louise” is featured at the top of this post:
The Baptist preacher had a mysterious look on his face as he gestured to me across a crowed hall at Denver Seminary. He was using that discreet come here" index-finger waggle folks use when they're trying to get a specific person's attention without getting anyone else's attention. He spoke in a low voice, like an embarrassed teen in a drug store asking the person behind the counter to sell him a copy of Playboy.
Look, Mr. Mattingly," he asked. What did YOU think of Thelma & Louise?"
That led to this:
By the time the third Baptist cornered me, I was ready to ask the questions that needed to be answered: What did HE think of Thelma & Louise? Why had HE chosen to go see it?
Well, yes, he saw the Time cover. And, yes, he had heard about the movie from his wife, who heard some of her friends talking about it. And then he overheard a conversation in the church office. He knew that some women in the church had seen the movie and were still talking about it. His instincts told him this was something worth pursuing.
So far, so good, I said. What nerve did he think the movie struck?
Now he was on uncertain ground. Clearly, he said, it had something to do with female anger.
OK, I asked, what were Thelma and Louise angry about?
Well, he said, husbands and lovers had abused them, or abandoned them, or both. Other men tricked them, or attacked them, or failed to make or honor commitments. Even good men who were sympathetic managed, in subtle ways, to keep a safe distance. Thelma and Louise felt stranded. Then they got mad. Then they tried to get even.
This is very interesting, I said. Why did he think this message appealed to more than a few women in his conservative Christian flock? Why were they forming packs, or slipping off solo, to sit in the dark and watch this movie? And, come to think of it, did he have any angry women in his church?
Now he was very uncomfortable. Sure, he said, some women in his church were angry for some of the same reasons. His congregation contained its share of divorces and some had been messy. There was emotional abuse and one or two cases of physical abuse. A few husbands had vanished and there were times when he wished some other men would take a hike, too. Behind the scenes, many wives complained that their husbands were workaholics and emotionally distant. Some of them felt like single moms.
Yes, he said, there were angry and grieving women in his church.
Are some of them, I asked, the women who were going to see Thelma & Louise?
He nodded — yes.
Well, to me this sounded like this might be worth a sermon.
Yes it did, the pastor said. But he knew that there was no way he could preach it. For one thing, he wasn't sure he could afford to preach about such an emotional, volatile topic. He also knew that many in his congregation would be upset if he quoted an R-rated movie, let alone suggested that it raised questions relevant to the church. Even some who had seen Thelma & Louise, and identified with it, might be upset if their pastor said that the film asked valid questions, but offered dangerous answers.
It would just be too risky. He could go and see the movie, but he couldn't admit that he had done so. The insights and feelings inspired by the movie couldn't be applied, at least directly, to the lives of his people. He was caught in a painful dilemma, a wrenching separation of church and life. Trouble was, this signal was coming from a sector of life that his church had declared out of bounds.
I asked one final question. So, his people went to the mall and the movie multiplex to find sermons on these kinds of life-wrenching issues?
Once again he nodded — yes.