Seeing Through the Media: Religious View of Communications and Cultural Analysis

Michael Warren seeks in this book to develop strategies to counteract the Christian church’s loss of cultural influence in an age of electronic media. While Christianity should offer a vision of things shaped by its own patterns of communal living, it is often stymied in the process of religious formation by the powerful influence of the messages the electronic media convey. Part of the religious leaders task, therefore, is to break the uncritical view of film and television and to introduce reasoned judgment about what Christians should either value or condemn in them. Seeing Through the Media attempts to put basic skills of cultural analysis into the hands of ordinary persons, particularly those who gather with others guided by a religious tradition to worship God. These skills include: a rethinking of the word culture itself; finding the usually anonymous names and faces behind any electronic communication; understanding how culture is produced; skill in decoding the iconic images we see and the metaphoric images by which we see; the ability to evaluate what we see and hear; and new forms of personal and communal agency. A profound and engaging study in which weighty issues are handled with commendable clarity and concision. Chris Arthur, University of Wales Michael Warren is Professor for Religious Education and Catechetical Ministry in the Department of Theology, St. John s University, New York, and the author of Faith, Culture, and the Worshiping Community and Youth, Gospel, Liberation.