Biblical Christianity, Televangelism, and Neil Postman

An outside observer helps us Christians to see things more clearly:

Christians throughout the ages have had to struggle with how the biblical gospel can be used or abused with new developments in communication, media, technology, and so on. In an age of entertainment, television, the internet, and social media, how does the Christian gospel fare?

Sometimes new developments become a wonderful boon to sharing Christian truth, as with the invention of the printing press. But are some forms of communication and technology better placed or worse placed when it comes to advancing the Christian gospel?

Much has been said about this. One of the most important secular social and cultural commentators of last century was Neil Postman (1931-2003). For more on him and his work, see my write-up here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2023/05/27/in-praise-of-secular-prophets/

In his very important volume Amusing Ourselves to Death, penned 51 years ago, he offered some very incisive commentary on public discourse, entertainment, and television. The book even spoke about how Christianity fares in the modern West.

I just wrote a piece looking at his thoughts on the written word and Christian revivalism: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2026/05/07/neil-postman-the-written-word-and-christian-revivalism/   

Here I want to focus on his thoughts about Christianity, evangelism, and the modern media. Chapter 8 of his book has this title: “Shuffle Off to Bethlehem”. It looks at how the gospel holds up in a culture of entertainment and celebrities. Early on he writes:

There are at present thirty-five television stations owned and operated by religious organizations, but every television station features religious programming of one sort or another. To prepare myself for writing this chapter, I watched forty-two hours of television’s version of religion, mostly the shows of Robert Schuller, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson. Forty-two hours were entirely unnecessary. Five would have provided me with all the conclusions, of which there are two, that are fairly to be drawn.

 

The first is that on television, religion, like everything else, is presented, quite simply and without apology, as an entertainment. Everything that makes religion an historic, profound and sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no tradition, no theology, and above all, no sense of spiritual transcendence. On these shows, the preacher is tops. God comes out as second banana.

 

The second conclusion is that this fact has more to do with the bias of television than with the deficiencies of these electronic preachers, as they are called. It is true enough that some of these men are uneducated, provincial and even bigoted. They certainly do not compare favorably with well-known evangelicals of an earlier period, such as Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield and Charles Finney, who were men of great learning, theological subtlety and powerful expositional skills. Nonetheless, today’s television preachers are probably not greatly different in their limitations from most earlier evangelicals or from many ministers today whose activities are confined to churches and synagogues. What makes these television preachers the enemy of religious experience is not so much their weaknesses but the weaknesses of the medium in which they work.

 

Most Americans, including preachers, have difficulty accepting the truth, if they think about it at all, that not all forms of discourse can be converted from one medium to another. It is naive to suppose that something that has been expressed in one form can be expressed in another without significantly changing its meaning, texture or value…. (pp. 116-117)

He discusses this in some detail, insisting that “not everything is televisible. Or to put it more precisely, what is televised is transformed from what it was to something else, which may or may not preserve its former essence.” (p. 118)

What he goes on to say is also worth quoting:

I think it is fair to say that attracting an audience is the main goal of these [religious television] programmes, just as it is for “The A-Team” and “Dallas.”

 

To achieve this goal, the most modern methods of marketing and promotion are abundantly used, such as offering free pamphlets, Bibles and gifts, and, in Jerry Falwell’s case, two free “Jesus First” pins. The preachers are forthright about how they control the content of their preaching to maximize their ratings. You shall wait a very long time indeed if you wish to hear an electronic preacher refer to the difficulties a rich man will have in gaining access to heaven. The executive director of the National Religious Broadcasters Association sums up what he calls the unwritten law of all television preachers: ‘You can get your share of the audience only by offering people something they want.’

 

You will note, I am sure, that this is an unusual religious credo. There is no great religious leader – from the Buddha to Moses to Jesus to Mohammed to Luther – who offered people what they want. Only what they need. But television is not well suited to offering people what they need. It is “user friendly.” It is too easy to turn off. It is at its most alluring when it speaks the language of dynamic visual imagery. It does not accommodate complex language or stringent demands. As a consequence, what is preached on television is not anything like the Sermon on the Mount. Religious programmes are filled with good cheer. They celebrate affluence. Their featured players become celebrities. Though their messages are trivial, the shows have high ratings, or rather, because their messages are trivial, the shows have high ratings.

 

I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether. (p. 121)

Hmm, not bad for a secular commentator. Those last two paragraphs alone share important truths that many Christians are not even able to see or understand. We are far too often presenting another gospel, one that is easy to digest, makes no demands of anyone, and is simply something we can choose as we might choose between different flavours of ice cream.

 But Postman goes on to say that one may well beg to differ on all this:

There are, of course, counterarguments to the claim that television degrades religion. Among them is that spectacle is hardly a stranger to religion. If one puts aside the Quakers and a few other austere sects, every religion tries to make itself appealing through art, music, icons and awe-inspiring ritual. The aesthetic dimension to religion is the source of its attraction to many people. This is especially true of Roman Catholicism and Judaism, which supply their congregants with haunting chants; magnificent robes and shawls; magical hats, wafers and wine; stained-glass windows; and the mysterious cadences of ancient languages. The difference between these accoutrements of religion and the floral displays, fountains and elaborate sets we see on television is that the former are not, in fact, accoutrements but integral parts of the history and doctrines of the religion itself; they require congregants to respond to them with suitable reverence. A Jew does not cover his head at prayer because a skull cap looks good on television. A Catholic does not light a votive candle to improve the look of the altar. Rabbis, priests and Presbyterian ministers do not, in the midst of a service, take testimony from movie stars to find out why they are religious people. The spectacle we find in true religions has as its purpose enchantment, not entertainment. The distinction is critical. By endowing things with magic, enchantment is the means through which we may gain access to sacredness. Entertainment is the means through which we distance ourselves from it.

 

The reply to this is that most of the religion available to us on television is “fundamentalist,” which explicitly disdains ritual and theology in favor of direct communication with the Bible itself, that is, with God. Without ensnaring myself in a theological argument for which I am unprepared, I think it both fair and obvious to say that on television, God is a vague and subordinate character. Though His name is invoked repeatedly, the concreteness and persistence of the image of the preacher carries the clear message that it is he, not He, who must be worshipped. I do not mean to imply that the preacher wishes it to be so; only that the power of a close-up televised face, in color, makes idolatry a continual hazard. Television is, after all, a form of graven imagery far more alluring than a golden calf. I suspect (though I have no external evidence of it) that Catholic objections to Bishop Fulton Sheen’s theatrical performances on television (of several years back) sprang from the impression that viewers were misdirecting their devotions, away from God and toward Bishop Sheen, whose piercing eyes, awesome cape and stately tones were as close a resemblance to a deity as charisma allows. (pp. 122-123)

Not all Christians will agree with all that Postman is saying here. And as mentioned, he offers his critique as a non-Christian (he was a secular Jew). And I, as an evangelical Protestant, can find some of the ‘enchantment’ found in other denominations to be problematic at times: you know, all the bells and whistles and so on.

But having said that, I find much in the evangelical world to be a ‘golden calf’ sort of issue, with celebs and rockstars turning far too many churches into rock concerts, complete with black auditoriums, strobe lights and smoke machines. Whatever happened to God and a sense of awe with Him and Him alone?

So I think Postman was fully on to something here. Far too much of what we find with the televangelists and modern megachurch leaders has been so very shallow, trite and this-worldly. God HAS been whittled down to a likeable buddy, or a part-time therapist, or almost an optional extra. A gospel of ME has replaced a gospel of HIM.

In so much of pop evangelical circles, WE have become the centre of attention while God is pushed to the outer limits. Simply telling masses of people each week that they can have ‘their best life now’ shows us how the biblical gospel has indeed been replaced with another gospel. And it is not just characters like Joel Osteen who have been doing this.

So I for one am so very grateful for Postman’s incisive analyses and understanding of these sorts of issues. Yes, I am glad that television and other new forms of media can share the gospel far and wide, but great care will always be needed as we seek to do so.

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