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June 12, 2006

Christian television, useful and otherwise

I read this story on Christians and media from Saturday's Washington Post with a small amount of interest:

Evangelical Christians are on the front lines in the battle over indecency on cable television, calling for a pick-and-choose pricing plan that would allow viewers to keep certain channels out of their homes.

But on the opposite end of the battlefield is an opponent familiar to and even respected by evangelicals: Christian cable stations.

The fear among Christian broadcasters is that a proposal to allow consumers to reject MTV or Comedy Central would also allow them to drop the Trinity Broadcasting Network or Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. Cutting off that access could hurt religious broadcasters.

"We do not believe that 'a la carte' is the cure for the disease," said Colby May, attorney for the Faith and Family Broadcasting Coalition, which represents Trinity and CBN, in addition to other stations. "In fact, it is a cure that may very well kill the patient."

Evangelical and family groups support the concept of "a la carte" cable legislation, which would allow cable users to subscribe only to the networks of their choice.

It goes on from there. I do like the idea of "a la carte", not from the sole perspective of decency but from the perspective of paying for what we actually watch. And I don't watch the standard fare. Yes, I pay attention to the ESPNs, but I also watch Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV. The cable news networks are useless, I get far more practical news from CNBC. I hate the Discovery Channel with a passion, but (especially if it will get my daughter hyped up for astronomy) having the Science Channel around is a nifty thing. I'd rather have the International Music Feed rather than the MTVs (because, God forbid, IMF actually plays MUSIC VIDEOS), but having VH1 Classic around is a necessity for my family (because, God forbid, VH1 Classic actually plays MUSIC VIDEOS). And one day, if I could get my grungy little hands on TVU, I would go out of my HEAD.

Of course, the only practical way for me to get my grungy little hands on TVU right now is to do the SkyAngel thing, which I will never do because - again! - it would be paying for a whole lot of television that I wouldn't watch.

Because - and let's be charitable, kids - Trinity Broadcasting Network is crap. And because I think Godwin's Law is progressively becoming more true for Pat Robertson than Adolf Hitler, I'm just not going to touch what I think of CBN. Not even the 700 Club.

Still, I am a Christian, and I am interested in seeing the Word put out for people to see and hear, in the mass media, so that our influence isn't completely lost. Can I convince myself to believe that the Christian broadcasters have something of a point?

That thought process lasted until I wound up on Atlanta's local NBC affiliate just in time for a Billy Graham Evangelistic Association time-buy.

Billy's getting up there in years, sadly, so it was Franklin handling the evangelistic duties. And I'm not the biggest Franklin Graham fan in the world; I simply think the guy is too conservative, and he makes me nervous every time he speaks. When he started talking about the medical stuff and the science stuff, he had no dang clue what he was saying. But the guy has his daddy in him, and he dropped the best teaching I heard all year long in that talk:

And the Bible says, by grace are you saved, by faith. It's not a work, lest any man should boast. You see, you cannot work for your salvation. See, if you could work for it, you'd brag about it. Next time you're out on the golf course - "let me tell you what I had to do to get my salvation. Let me tell you how much it cost me." It didn't cost you nothin' - it cost the Son of God everything. He gave his life. All you had to do was believe it!

And it's not just the preaching - the "celebration" (Franklin doesn't call them "crusades", he calls them "festivals" or celebrations" when he does 'em) was filmed in New Orleans. And the television program was peppered with these mini-documentaries that took all the news from New Orleans and turned it on its head. Yes, Katrina really did do that much damage. Yes, New Orleans is still a complete mess. But here's what's going on in New Orleans to rebuild - and yeah, we could take this whole program to plug Samaritan's Purse and their good works, but there's plenty of examples we can point to within New Orleans itself. (If you watch nothing else of that, watch the clip of Pastor James Nelson Brown, for all practical purposes, taking on the needs immediately after Katrina himself - and demonstrating what "faith-based charity" should look like.)

And Billy himself turned up in the show too, so I'm not complaining about that one bit.

Overall, it was the best piece of Christian television I've seen since LightMusic went off the air. Maybe it's not something that will be everybody's cup of tea, but more stuff like this would surely get enough viewers to stay afloat.

And it's not like Billy's just been doing this for the past few years. Even before the "infomercial" was part of our vocabulary, Billy Graham has bought time on television stations to run evangelistic specials, and they weren't the type of thing you were embarassed to watch. Even Lewis Grizzard would write about watching Billy Graham on TV in the 60's. I remember Billy Graham specials throughout my childhood in the 80's. Here they are, still going on today.

And it caused me to think, when it was all done: If the likes of TBN and CBN actually had to compete for viewers, instead of having their place on the cable and satellite preserved artificially, they'd croak tomorrow. Not because of what they're saying, but because of the absolutely horrible quality of their communication. The idea that the likes of the Trinity Broadcasting Network is the only hope of getting quality evangelism on television is a rich one indeed.

Posted by Chuck at June 12, 2006 04:45 AM

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