Media as God’s messenger

Media as God's messenger

By Joyce Smith, Press Review: The National News Media Review, Fourth Quarter, 1996  “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion – to give them a garland instead of ashes; the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.” (Isaiah 61:1-3)  Are mainstream churches missing the media boat? “For the last half of the century, they haven’t gotten as far as the dock,” said Michael Valpy, a columnist at The Globe and Mail.

Valpy was one of three speakers responding to the question posed in a series of recent lectures at Toronto’s Anglican Church of the Redeemer. The idea of a gulf between churches and the modern mass media is neither new nor surprising. But it may not be the media’s fault for failing to report on mainstream Christianity. The blame falls more at the church community’s door suggested Valpy and two other speakers, Rita Deverell of Vision TV and Rev. Tim Foley.

“The church’s agenda is out of focus, too compromised, too muted,” said Valpy. The desire to reach consensus has resulted in a fuzzy public image with church goers seeming to think that spiritual matters are private matters. Instead, Valpy noted that the social values of community, concern for the environment and social entitlements are much the same as those which many religions profess.

As the Globe’s correspondent in South Africa from 1984 to 1987, Valpy met Anglican leaders who made no separation between private and public practice of Christianity. He remembers the former bishop of Johannesburg as a gruff “Old Testament prophet type” who once hid him in a Soweto basement, safe from security forces.

Then there is the telegenic Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “The only man I know, said Valpy, “who talks to God in public, as if God was his neighbour."

A priestly friend confessed to Valpy he was worried about joining in the Day of Action protest march on the Ontario Legislature last Oct. 25, whereas the columnist didn’t have to struggle to imagine Tutu leading the parade up Toronto’s University Ave. to Queen’s Park. The archbishop would be applauded, but Valpy admitted a Canadian cleric might be mocked.

Canadian churches have not always been so reticent to lead social charges, Valpy said. The social gospel movement of the 1930s which laid the groundwork for the CCF, the league for social reconstruction and the social safety net is such an example. The church should be “more visible as a moral watchdog,” despite the risk of being “besieged” by every moral cause, he said.

Tim Foley agrees with this call for the church to step forward and take its place in the media world. Now an Anglican priest, Foley worked for the CBC and The Toronto Star, as well as being a director of communications for the Anglican Church before taking on a full-time commitment to a parish in Kingsway, Ont. Instead of trying to “manage” the media’s coverage, he suggested that the church trust the power of the “language of love” offered by Christ in the gospels to assure fair and balanced reporting.

Foley gave a number of examples of situations where Canadian churches could have seized the opportunity to preach the gospel in contemporary life.

During the trial of murderer Paul Bernardo, when the public and media focus seemed fixated on punishment for Bernardo and his wife Karla Homolka, what would have happened if the church had spoken of the need for forgiveness as well as justice? This message would have been so different from that of the majority, Foley was sure it would have been picked up by the media. The backlash against former lieutenant governor of Quebec, Jean-Louis Roux, for his flirtation with fascism was another lost opportunity. Foley saw this story as one in which the man in question had made his life as a playwright and actor an act of penance for the mistakes of his past. Instead of focusing on the original “sin,” he pondered what would have happened if the spotlight had been shifted to Roux’s attempt to be contrite and change things for the better.

In a more recent, ongoing situation, Foley called the story of Craig Kielburger, the young critic of child labor, as yet another media story where the church could and should be vocal. Foley worried that recent published allegations made against Kielburger and his family by a reporter (which he is fighting in a libel suit) could displace Kielburger’s “prophetic message.” Here again, the church could step forward and make sure that the “real” issue – the public, systemic evil of child labor – remained visible, rather than have media adopt the simple story of an alleged individual sin.

Stories of social problems are the most interesting to Rita Deverell of Vision TV. The specialty television channel deals in two basic types of programming: Those produced and supported by specific religious groups and those (like Deverell’s Skylight) which deal more generally with issues of ethics and spirituality.

Deverell described the televangelists’ approach of asking a simple question dealing with an individual, personal shortcoming, addressing it in familiar format, before concluding with a neatly scripted, satisfying answer as the same formula used in secular sitcoms. But the growing popularity of current affairs programs such as Vision TV’s It’s About Time, which deal with “messy” questions like homelessness and don’t always have answers, are a “victory in the significance business,” said Deverell.

The media is “the messenger who asks the questions we all have,” according to Deverell. Hers is a prophetic definition along the lines of Isaiah, as quoted above. “The spiritual and personal is political. (The media) do not get into partisan politics. But we might advocate that there is a political solution to a particular problem.”

Finally, the relationship of the media to the church is not simply one of the church trying to use mass communication to get the gospel across; the media can offer the church something as well. Since Vatican II, there has been a call out to most Christians to carefully note “the signs of the times” for the workings of God in so-called secular history. As Foley noted: “We spend too much time discerning between zeitgeist – spirit of the times – and the Holy Spirit. However imperfectly, media helps us find God.”

Dr. Joyce Smith is a 1998-99 Rockefeller Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto.

Return to top