Media Theory, Religion and Theology

Author: David F. Wells
ISBN: 9780802824554
Pages: 339
Summary: In our postmodern world, every view has a place at the table but none has the final say. How should the church confess Christ in today’s cultural context?
Above All Earthly Pow’rs, the fourth and final volume of the series that began in 1993 with No Place for Truth, portrays the West in all its complexity, brilliance, and emptiness. As David F. Wells masterfully depicts it, the postmodern ethos of the West is relativistic, individualistic, therapeutic, and yet remarkably spiritual. Wells shows how this postmodern ethos has incorporated into itself the new religious and cultural relativism, the fear and confusion, that began with the last century’s waves of immigration and have continued apace in recent decades.
Wells’s book culminates in a critique of contemporary evangelicalism aimed at both unsettling and reinvigorating readers. Churches that market themselves as relevant and palatable to consumption-oriented postmoderns are indeed swelling in size. But they are doing so, Wells contends, at the expense of the truth of the gospel. By placing a premium on marketing rather than truth, the evangelical church is in danger of trading authentic engagement with culture for worldly success.
Welding extensive cultural analysis with serious theology, Above All Earthly Pow’rs issues a prophetic call that the evangelical church cannot afford to ignore.

Author: Franky Schaeffer
ISBN: 9780891073536
Pages: 128
Summary: In this provocative book, Franky Schaeffer shows how Christians today have sacrificed the artistic prominence they enjoyed for centuries and settled instead for mediocrity. The evidence for this sad state of affairs abounds. We are flooded with "Christian" doodads, trinkets, t-shirts, bumper stickers, etc., that use God's name as an advertising slogan--"Things Go Better with Jesus"--putting the Creator of the universe on the same level as soda pop! Moreover, Schaeffer writes, "Whenever Christians, and evangelicals in particular, have attempted to 'reach the world' through the media--TV, film, publishing and so on--the thinking public gets the firm idea that, like soup in a bad restaurant, Christians' brains are best left unstirred."
But it doesn't have to be this way. Schaeffer shows how Christians who care can begin to reverse the slide toward mediocrity: by demanding excellence in the arts and media, and in all areas of life; by giving our time, talents and money to those things which are worthy of our support and are truly honoring to God; by staying away from the cheap, the shoddy, and the make-a-fast-buck mentality.
Schaeffer offers not only an unflinching critique, but specific and practical direction for becoming "unaddicted," and for recovering artistic excellence. The punch, humor and satire of the text is effectively enhanced by nineteen original drawings by Chicago artist Kurt Mitchell.

Author: Birgit Meyer
ISBN: 9780230605558
Pages: 292
Summary: The central theme of this volume is the incorporation of newly accessible mass media into practices of religious mediation in a variety of settings, including Pentecostal-charismatic churches and Islamic movements, and the use of religious forms and images in the sphere of radio and cinema. Based on a long-term cooperation, the contributors examine the role of religion and media in the emergence and sustenance of new ‘aesthetic formations’ that appeal to the body and the senses, and generate new styles of binding and moods of belonging in our time.

Author: Robert Wuthnow
ISBN: 9780691127651
Pages: 312
Summary: Much has been written about the profound impact the post-World War II baby boomers had on American religion. But the lifestyles and beliefs of the generation that has followed--and the influence these younger Americans in their twenties and thirties are having on the face of religion--are not so well understood. It is this next wave of post-boomers that Robert Wuthnow examines in this illuminating book.
What are their churchgoing habits and spiritual interests and needs? How does their faith affect their families, their communities, and their politics? Interpreting new evidence from scores of in-depth interviews and surveys, Wuthnow reveals a generation of younger adults who, unlike the baby boomers that preceded them, are taking their time establishing themselves in careers, getting married, starting families of their own, and settling down--resulting in an estimated six million fewer regular churchgoers. He shows how the recent growth in evangelicalism is tapering off, and traces how biblical literalism, while still popular, is becoming less dogmatic and more preoccupied with practical guidance. At the same time, Wuthnow explains how conflicts between religious liberals and conservatives continue--including among new immigrant groups such as Hispanics and Asians--and how in the absence of institutional support many post-boomers have taken a more individualistic, improvised approach to spirituality. Wuthnow's fascinating analysis also explores the impacts of the Internet and so-called virtual churches, and the appeal of megachurches.
"After the Baby Boomers" offers us a tantalizing look at the future of American religion for decades to come.

Author: James T. Hamilton
ISBN: 9780691123677
Pages: 352
Summary: That market forces drive the news is not news. Whether a story appears in print, on television, or on the Internet depends on who is interested, its value to advertisers, the costs of assembling the details, and competitors' products. But in "All the News That's Fit to Sell", economist James Hamilton shows just how this happens. Furthermore, many complaints about journalism--media bias, soft news, and pundits as celebrities--arise from the impact of this economic logic on news judgments.
This is the first book to develop an economic theory of news, analyze evidence across a wide range of media markets on how incentives affect news content, and offer policy conclusions. Media bias, for instance, was long a staple of the news. Hamilton's analysis of newspapers from 1870 to 1900 reveals how nonpartisan reporting became the norm. A hundred years later, some partisan elements reemerged as, for example, evening news broadcasts tried to retain young female viewers with stories aimed at their (Democratic) political interests. Examination of story selection on the network evening news programs from 1969 to 1998 shows how cable competition, deregulation, and ownership changes encouraged a shift from hard news about politics toward more soft news about entertainers.
Hamilton concludes by calling for lower costs of access to government information, a greater role for nonprofits in funding journalism, the development of norms that stress hard news reporting, and the defining of digital and Internet property rights to encourage the flow of news. Ultimately, this book shows that by more fully understanding the economics behind the news, we will be better positioned to ensure that the news serves the public good.

Author: Anna Mccarthy, Anna Mccarthy
ISBN: 9780822326922
Pages: 316
Summary: Although we tend to think of television primarily as a household fixture, TV monitors outside the home are widespread: in bars, laundromats, and stores; conveying flight arrival and departure times in airports; uniting crowds at sports events and allaying boredom in waiting rooms; and helping to pass the time in workplaces of all kinds. In "Ambient Television" Anna McCarthy explores the significance of this pervasive phenomenon, tracing the forms of conflict, commerce, and community that television generates outside the home.
Discussing the roles television has played in different institutions from 1945 to the present day, McCarthy draws on a wide array of sources. These include retail merchandising literature, TV industry trade journals, and journalistic discussions of public viewing, as well as the work of cultural geographers, architectural theorists, media scholars, and anthropologists. She also uses photography as a research tool, documenting the uses and meanings of television sets in the built environment, and focuses on such locations as the tavern and the department store to show how television is used to support very different ideas about gender, class, and consumption. Turning to contemporary examples, McCarthy discusses practices such as Turner Private Networks’ efforts to transform waiting room populations into advertising audiences and the use of point-of-sale video that influences brand visibility and consumer behavior. Finally, she inquires into the activist potential of out-of-home television through a discussion of the video practices of two contemporary artists in everyday public settings.
Scholars and students of cultural, visual, urban, American, film, and television studies will be interested in this thought-provoking, interdisciplinary book.

Author: Chris Hedges
ISBN: 9780743284431
Pages: 272
Summary: Twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists first spoke of the United States becoming a Christian nation that would build a global Christian empire, it was hard to take such hyperbolic rhetoric seriously. Today, such language no longer sounds like hyperbole but poses, instead, a very real threat to our freedom and our way of life. In "American Fascists," Chris Hedges, veteran journalist and author of the National Book Award finalist "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning," challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society.
Hedges, who grew up in rural parishes in upstate New York where his father was a Presbyterian pastor, attacks the movement as someone steeped in the Bible and Christian tradition. He points to the hundreds of senators and members of Congress who have earned between 80 and 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups as one of many signs that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government to subvert it. The movement's call to dismantle the wall between church and state and the intolerance it preaches against all who do not conform to its warped vision of a Christian America are pumped into tens of millions of American homes through Christian television and radio stations, as well as reinforced through the curriculum in Christian schools. The movement's yearning for apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening America.
"American Fascists," which includes interviews and coverage of events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion techniques, examines the movement's origins, its driving motivations and its dark ideological underpinnings. Hedges argues that the movement currently resembles the young fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. The Christian Right, like these early fascist movements, does not openly call for dictatorship, nor does it use
physical violence to suppress opposition. In short, the movement is not yet revolutionary. But the ideological architecture of a Christian fascism is being cemented in place. The movement has roused its followers to a fever pitch of despair and fury. All it will take, Hedges writes, is one more national crisis on the order of September 11 for the Christian Right to make a concerted drive to destroy American democracy. The movement awaits a crisis. At that moment they will reveal themselves for what they truly are -- the American heirs to fascism. Hedges issues a potent, impassioned warning. We face an imminent threat. His book reminds us of the dangers liberal, democratic societies face when they tolerate the intolerant.

Author: Michele Rosenthal
ISBN: 9781403965738
Pages: 192
Summary: While television today is taken for granted, Americans in the 1950s faced the challenge of negotiating the new medium's place in the home and in American culture in general. Protestant leaders--both mainstream and evangelical--began to think carefully about what television meant for their communities and its potential impact on their work. Using the American Protestant experience of the introduction of television, Rosenthal illustrates the importance of the interplay between a new medium and its users in an engaging book suitable for general readers and students alike.

Author: PHILLIPS, KEVIN
ISBN: 067003486X
Pages:
Summary:

Author: Neil Postman
ISBN: 9780143036531
Pages: 208
Summary: Originally published in 1985, Neil Postman’s groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs—it has taken on even greater significance. "Amusing Ourselves to Death" is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining controlof our media, so that they can serve our highest goals.

Author: Colson Whitehead
ISBN: 9781400031269
Pages: 224
Summary: The town of Winthrop has decided it needs a new name. The resident software millionaire wants to call it New Prospera; the mayor wants to return to the original choice of the founding black settlers; and the town’s aristocracy sees no reason to change the name at all. What they need, they realize, is a nomenclature consultant. And, it turns out, the consultant needs them. But in a culture overwhelmed by marketing, the name is everything and our hero’s efforts may result in not just a new name for the town but a new and subtler truth about it as well.

Author: Michael J. Crosbie Michael Crosbie
ISBN:
Pages:
Summary:

Author: Bernard Goldberg, Bernard Goldberg
ISBN: 9780446693646
Pages: 328
Summary: The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Bias exposes the culture of narrow-minded elitism in the media--and reveals what must be done to change it.In December of 2001, Emmy Award-winning journalist Bernard Goldberg charged the mainstream media with slanting the news and created a firestorm with his controversial bestseller Bias. Now Goldberg goes beyond identifying the media's partiality and explains how the slanting of the news is all but inevitable in the current climate--and why the media's stars continue to deny the industry's condition. In this fascinating report, Goldberg lays out his rallying cry, unafraid to name names, and prescribes the difficult remedies that must take place if genuinely balanced news is to survive.

Author: Philip Graham Ryken
ISBN: 9781596380073
Pages: 64
Summary: Five stars for this brief discussion of art from a Christian perspective. Ryken, minister at Tenth Presbyterian Philadelphia, interacts with the abilities of Bezalel and Oholiab, artisans of the tabernacle, to develop his topic. His discussion is very brief (less than 58 pages) but pointed. Both art and artist are viewed in relationship to God's greater person and glory. The author also deals with different kinds of art and the question of "Christian art". Writing from a reformed perspective, Ryken looks for the transformation of culture and speaks in light of the postmodern generation. The book is really too brief but will be especially good for those on the outside who desire a greater glimpse.

Author: Norm Goldstein
ISBN: 9780465004881
Pages: 378
Summary: More people write for the Associated Press than for any newspaper in the world, and writers have bought more copies of "The AP Stylebook" than of any other journalism reference. With this essential guide in hand, any writer can learn to communicate with the clarity and professionalism for which the Associated Press is famous. Fully revised and updated, this edition contains over 5,000 A to Z entries--including more than 50 new ones--laying out the AP's rules on grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, abbreviation, and word and numeral usage. Comprehensive and easy to use, "The AP Stylebook" provides the facts and references necessary to write accurately about the world today: correct names of countries and organizations, Internet language and search techniques, language to avoid, common trademarks, and the unique guidelines for business and sports reporting. The final word on media law, "The AP Stylebook" also includes an invaluable section dedicated to crucial advice on how writers can guard against libel and copyright infringement. The veritable "journalist's bible," this is the one reference that working writers cannot afford to be without.With more than 50 new entries plus updates of more than 100 others, "The AP Stylebook" includes such features as:An A to Z listing of guides to capitalization, abbreviation, spelling, numerals, and usage* Internet guidelines* Sports guidelines and style* Business guidelines and style* A guide to punctuation* Supreme Court decisions regarding libel law* Summary of First Amendment rules* The right of privacy* Copyright guidelines* Proofreaders' marks