PBS piece on UM Church and sexuality
United Methodist pastor, Reverend Walter Fenton has described the recent PBS special on The United Methodist Church's position (and ongoing debate) regarding sexual morality as "A Missed Opportunity." His very thoughtful and carefully-argued piece can be found here (with a link to the PBS video so you can get the full picture in this discussion - always a helpful thing to do for integrity's sake).
And now, a tiny little rant:
If you watch the video and then read the piece I believe it will be difficult indeed not to come to the conclusion that I long ago reached: our mass media is not simply reporting about changes in American morality in an un-biased fashion; rather media outlets are actively working to promote a new morality and are working to deliberately misrepresent, denigrate, and dismiss all those (including Bible-believing Christians) who are willing to speak out in opposition to this new vision. As one of those being misrepresented, denigrated, and marginalized, I naturally find that quite frustrating.
Far more significant than my own frustrations or feelings, however, is the real issue of misuse of power and the ignoble disservice that the Press is doing to our whole society, since (even still) so many people trust them to present "just the facts" in a clear and fair way. And this our mainstream news media has not done, raising the question of whether they deserve our attention (many have suggested that in the age of blogs and internet news we can safely unplug from traditional mass media companies in favor of independents, but I believe there real downsides to simply 'disconnecting' from them).
But Rev. Fenton is correct, this was indeed a missed opportunity; for as long as the media is presenting skewed depictions of the various sides in any debate, true breakthroughs in understanding cannot be achieved. But I fear that promoting true breakthroughs in understanding of other people and ideas, or of what is actually happening in our world is no longer especially important to the mainstream media. 'Spin' is the order of our day (both among left-leaning and right-leaning media outlets); and we all lose because of it.
And now, a tiny little rant:
If you watch the video and then read the piece I believe it will be difficult indeed not to come to the conclusion that I long ago reached: our mass media is not simply reporting about changes in American morality in an un-biased fashion; rather media outlets are actively working to promote a new morality and are working to deliberately misrepresent, denigrate, and dismiss all those (including Bible-believing Christians) who are willing to speak out in opposition to this new vision. As one of those being misrepresented, denigrated, and marginalized, I naturally find that quite frustrating.
Far more significant than my own frustrations or feelings, however, is the real issue of misuse of power and the ignoble disservice that the Press is doing to our whole society, since (even still) so many people trust them to present "just the facts" in a clear and fair way. And this our mainstream news media has not done, raising the question of whether they deserve our attention (many have suggested that in the age of blogs and internet news we can safely unplug from traditional mass media companies in favor of independents, but I believe there real downsides to simply 'disconnecting' from them).
But Rev. Fenton is correct, this was indeed a missed opportunity; for as long as the media is presenting skewed depictions of the various sides in any debate, true breakthroughs in understanding cannot be achieved. But I fear that promoting true breakthroughs in understanding of other people and ideas, or of what is actually happening in our world is no longer especially important to the mainstream media. 'Spin' is the order of our day (both among left-leaning and right-leaning media outlets); and we all lose because of it.
Labels: Christ and Culture, Cultural issues, Current events and politics
posted by Rev. Daniel McLain Hixon at 10/01/2013
1 Comments:
Another good example of how our mass-media skew's its presentation of this particular theological debate can be found here:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/getreligion/2013/12/that-oh-so-predictable-cnn-article-on-ducks-and-doctrine/
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