Let the discussion begin

For the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg Blog Tour on Religion & Media, Dr. Mary Hess responds to questions posed by The Snake Charmer's Wife. Please add your voice to the conversation! Click on the word “COMMENTS” at the very bottom of this post. And see the specific question Dr. Hess would like to hear from you about at the end of this post. On Friday, she will respond to your comments. Facebook me or send me an email if you have questions: terrispeirs@yahoo.com.


Check out Mary Hess's blog, Tensegrities.

(1) How can churches protect and encourage GBLTQ youth?In Iowa, we just buried another young man who committed suicide because of bullying after he came out gay. This boy happened to be a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the denomination I share with many SCW readers (though not all). Many people in my congregation, St. John's Lutheran Church in Des Moines, are concerned for the spiritual and physical protection of GBLTQ youth. What are your recommendations for steps churches can take in keeping these kids safe and loved, especially in the face of hate messages from other Christian sources?

Mary Hess:
This is such a crucial question! Some of the best things churches can do have to do with being active in digital environments already. So, proactively being present in facebook means that church members can keep their ears open for people who seem to be crying out for affirmation and support, and church members can be wise voices that stand up and squash bullying.

We need to reach out and create safe spaces for youth, in particular, and many youth aren't ready to come anywhere near a church. So reaching out in digital environments is really crucial, as is supporting efforts by more "secular' organizations.

I also think that churches can be much more effective than in the past, at connecting people to good resources. I like the "Believe Out Loud" site, for instance (http://www.believeoutloud.com/), and I love some of the videos that were made as part of the "It gets better" project (http://www.itgetsbetter.org/).

There are also resources that are not focused so much on religious themes, but education about GLBTQ issues more generally. I think the GLSEN is awesome (http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/home/index.html), for instance.

I think it's also crucial to remember that for every person who is willing to come out, there are many more who are still too afraid. So the basic messages inside your church -- the things you say when you think there are no GLBTQ people around -- are even more important. Are you respectful of people's integrity at all times? Are you building spaces in which everyone is able to be fully themselves? Are you supporting listening spaces where people can experience what it is to listen for understanding? (I love the Public Conversations Project resources, for instance: http://www.publicconversations.org/)

Here, by the way, is one of my favorite prayers on this topic: http://www.religioused.org/tensegrities/archives/5914

(2) What do you make of theYouTube video: "Why I hate religion but love Jesus"?A young man, Jefferson Bethke, created this video arguing that "Jesus and religion are on opposite spectrums," when people don't practice what they preach. The video, titled "Why I Hate Religion But Love Jesus," had already surpassed 2 million views just two days after it was posted on Jan. 10. And the controversial topic generated an onslaught of more than 30,000 conflicting reactions in the video's comments section, according to the Huffington Post. What's the take-away for faith communities?

Mary Hess:
I thought that video -- and the phenomenon that grew around it -- was fascinating! Clearly Bethke struck a chord which resonated across the net. I don't know how many -- but clearly in the hundreds -- video responses were created and posted. I remember thinking, when I first saw it, that it was such a Protestant lament. And sure enough, several days later there was an explicitly Catholic response posted (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru_tC4fv6FE&feature=youtu.be <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru_tC4fv6FE&feature=youtu.be>). But even that response didn't really resonate with me. I would have preferred one in which a diverse community of people gathered in the midst of social justice work to talk about how they love Jesus and how religion has helped them to embody that love.

I think one big take-away has to do with recognizing resonance, and then building on it. In other words, rather than trying to"manufacture" interest in something, keep your ears and eyes and heart open, and be willing to share what you're thinking and feeling. We need to help our church members learn how to create and produce digital stories (resources here: http://www.storyingfaith.org/). That means, among other things, helping church members to learn their own stories -- not simply their own individual stories, but also the stories of our faith community, and our God stories. We need to delve into the Bible, and into our traditions, and see what lives there, and what we need to bring new life to.

One of my more favorite recent books is Elizabeth Drescher's lovely little meditation "Tweet if you [heart] Jesus" -- which talks about "practicing church in the digital reformation." We need to become much more adept at doing this!

(3) Tied up in these two questions is a conversation around why the dominant voice of Christianity seems to be such an extremest one. Is this just my perception? How can we put out there the loving/welcoming face of the church as opposed to "Do as we say or you're going to hell"? (This question comes with thanks  from Maryce Ramsey, Washington DC)

Mary Hess:
It's not just your perception, but I think it's a perception that is tied to popular news media. And that, in turn, has to do with certain kinds of 24/7 television news media. Fewer and fewer news organizations have the ability to actually investigate news, and they rely more and more on pre-produced, or spontaneously-produced (ie. talking head commentators), content. Thus the arrival of the bloviating opinionator – whose only cost is their salary, and whose “stickiness” (in terms of the length of time eyeballs remain on them) is often tied to their ability to produce “jolts” of adrenaline.

One reason why our news media are so full of disasters (or concerns about anticipated disasters) is that such stories are a routine source of adrenaline production. What is an alternative? Well, we know that individuals “shouting” can produce “stickiness,” but so can humor – and humor often provides for more complex engagement. Witness the ways in which The Daily Show with Jon Stewart covers religion.

Frankly, I think the messages of the mainline church are often more complex and ambiguous than the 15 second soundbites that typical “news” programs allow. I think we do better in the long run by cultivating relationships with the writers of television shows that have long narrative arcs. In those series – and here I think about shows like The West Wing, Battlestar Galactica, The Simpsons and so on – in these shows we have more opportunity to encounter representations of religion in all of its complex messiness in the midst of relationships, and to show the context in which mainline churches operate.

But beyond that strategy – which is long term, and requires thoughtful cultivation of relationship with writers – we ought to be putting out our own stories via digital media. This blog is a good example of how you’re connecting with a wide variety of pastoral leaders who are sharing the good news – both of Jesus Christ, and of the mainline church, in all sorts of ways.

(4) I've been thinking about the intersection of religion and media in terms of the "religious right" and the "religious left." Radio and television helped give rise to the religious right. In today's media landscape, younger people--who are wary of religious institutions and generally regarded as more liberal in their religious beliefs ("left")--are more likely to lean toward new media technologies and have those influence or reinforce what they think and believe. So is being on the religious left or right becoming increasingly influenced by how one engages various media, and therefore, is there a generational divide, and will that divide increase or decrease over time? (This question comes with thanks from Deb Bogaert, Virginia)

Mary Hess:
I don't think it's about the religious right or left so much as it is about differing practices with regard to media.

The example I find myself using most often to talk about this has to do with how Christian churches dealt with the advent of television, at least in the United States. Christian churches tended to respond in one of two ways. Either they were deeply excited about the possibilities for using television to spread the gospel widely, or they were deeply worried about the ways in which television content was damaging and potentially destructive of Christian faith.

At first glance those two positions might seem very different from each other. But if you think about it, both pretty much assume that the creator of the content controls its meaning. In the first instance Christians saw television as a way to pipe their content to many more people over a much wider area. In the second, Christians saw television as piping negative content directly into people's homes. Television was the "pipeline" through which content was poured, and the person receiving the content was considered to be a pretty passive recipient of that content. So more conservative evangelical churches helped to create the entire Christian broadcasting and publishing world, and more liberal Protestant churches focused on media literacy education, which was going to somehow "inoculate" people against negative content.

Frankly, I don't think either approach was all that successful in the long run. What we've learned, instead, is that media -- whether television, film, digital media, etc. -- are environments in which meaning is made, and the producer of a message does not control its reception. Media literacy educators learned, for instance, that far from "inoculating" people against negative content, we tended to inoculate them against religious community -- because people didn't want to 'give up' the television they loved, and were far more willing to turn their backs on religious community.

So a thoughtful approach to media today takes very seriously the "agency" of the audience. Scholars of digital media speak about "participatory culture" -- by which they mean that consumers of media are very often the producers of it as well. Spaces such as YouTube, Spotify, flickr, facebook, and so on are the focus of more and more of our attention.

I believe that Christian communities -- indeed, any religious communities -- need to venture into these spaces and reflect on how religious meaning is made there. Rather than boycotting them -- which is something many Christian communities have suggested that we do (a stance which reminds me of early media literacy educators) -- or entering into them entirely uncritically (a stance which reminds me of Christian broadcasting) -- we need to support people in learning how to produce their own messages in these media, and in doing so learn how to be critically engaged with them (which is actually the stance of current media educators). (See, for instance, NAMLE: http://namle.net/).

And a question from Mary Hess to you:
Where do you find yourself most theologically engaged these days? What are you doing or reading or singing or listening to or watching that gets you thinking about God or reflecting on your faith?

Thanks! To comment or ask more questions, just click "comments" below.