CHRISTIAN COMMUNICATION AND SECULAR MAN

CHRISTIAN COMMUNICATION AND SECULAR MAN*

bY

EVERETT C. PARKER

The revolution in communication which began with the advent of mass circulation newspapers and has reached its zenith with television has brought about swift and profound changes in the habits and the thinking of people the world over. The communications revolution has paralleled the scientific and technological revolution in agricul- ture and industry which has so greatly lessened the work load and increased the leisure time of the average individual in Western society. Psychologists are warning that Western man is poorly prepared, emotionally and psychologically, to live through the free time that modern civilization offers him. Yet there is no doubt that the average person willingly devotes a large portion of his new leisure to consuming whatever mass communication chooses to place before him. He watches, or listens, or reads not because he is so bored he will do anything to pass the time, but because he enjoys what he is experiencing from the mass media.

Mass communication has become a potent arbiter in our culture. It expounds its own values and courses of action. It influences the values and actions of other institutions - including the church. It universalizes its own standards of taste. And, of course, it dominates the use of leisure time.

Assemblies in theatres, lecture halls and churches have declined in importance, to be replaced by individuals or small groups attending to mass communication programs in the home. The almost universal experiencing of ideas, methods, tastes, and standards from a single communications source has had a levelling effect. It tends to blur local and regional differences and to override folk thought, art, and customs. The obliteration of the distinctions between the rural and urban mind,

* Address given to the Conference on Communication, World Council of Churches, Ecumenical Institute, Bossey, Switzerland.

332 THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW

rural and urban tastes, and rural and urban ways of living has been particularly marked, with urban standards becoming dominant. Even the practice of politics and the functioning of government have been altered to accord with mass communication methodology.

The mass circulation press, radio, television, and motion pictures cannot be ignored by any institution that is concerned with how the minds and wills of people are being shaped. These media will, inevitably, be a factor in determining how Christianity will be understood in our time and what influence it will have.

Christianity is involved in a life-and-death clash of faiths that is world-wide. It is a struggle in which we need to ask no quarter, for none will be given. Its outcome will influence the human intellect and the conduct of human relations for generations to come. It is the decisive struggle for the souls of modern men.

This struggle requires that the Christian ministry and the Evangel take on new dimensions. The church, just to survive, needs to make the power of the Christian faith felt outside the sectarian fellowship of the individual churches. No longer can the church be gathered only within the four walls of one building. No longer can the clergyman fulfill the role of pastor just to those persons listed on his membership rolls. No longer is his preaching a dominant source of ideas and information to his hearers. By the time he is ready to speak to them on a particular subject, they will have been informed about it through mass communication and will already have made up their minds. We need somehow to convince the church that it must do its preaching where everybody else does - through mass communication. Mass communication can become a great ecumenical force. It can afford the means for the church to abandon exclusiveness and to penetrate the life of the secular culture.

Nevertheless, at best, the situation in which we are trying to communicate is far from ideal. We live most of the time in the theological atmosphere of the Tower of Babel, longing for one simple, universal intelligibility, but condemned to separateness and disunity by our inability to relate to each other in dialogue. Instant communication dominates every moment of our waking lives. Yet the breakdown of communication is one of the fundamental facts of our time. Chris- tians see this breakdown occurring between the church and the world. In fact, it is much more widespread. Great communication gulfs exist in and between the levels of secular society. Communication has hard sledding where there is no community. Our society, for all its delicate

CHRISTIAN COMMUNICATION AND SECULAR MAN 333

balance and organization, lacks the common aims, attitudes, under- standings, and values that make for community. It is both disintegrated and overspecialized. We are especially handicapped by our inability to harness impersonal scienti6c and technological development to social and ethical policird that will benefit rather than harm society. In our pursuit of excellence and exactness, especially in scientific endeavor, we have subdivided knowledge and vocation to the point where one man knows so much about so little that he does not have the capacity to know the whole. Nor can he easily establish I-Thou relationships outside his segregated vocational group. Others have no acquaintance with his speciality and its vocabulary, nor he with theirs. Even a common language does not bridge the gap between distinct vocations with their distinct attitudes toward life. Inevitably, there are few spontaneous reactions to the totality of life. With no common universe of discourse possible, it is difficult to create a common policy that all may comprehend and support, and to communicate such a policy to the public at large.

A fundamental problem of the ecumenical approach to the world of here and now and its needs is that of overcoming the absence of a common universe of discourse. This problem is one that the Christian communicator must face up to, especially if his purpose is to foster community on an ecumenical Christian basis.

Roger Mehl has written that communication is “the fundamental human fact.” Certainly, communication is the precursor of every form of community, since it is the medium for comprehending meaning.

The first thing to remember about communication is that it is two- sided, It is distinct from learning, which is an individual act. Communi- cation is an interchange. It functions in relation to meaning in situations where there is transmission and reception of facts and ideas. In any given situation you may decide that a certain meaning is operative. But you can test the validity of your conclusion only by ranging it against interpretations of the situation made by others. Communication thus gives the lie to the belief that an individual’s private response is a sufficient end. This negation is especially pertinent to the creative role in communication. The artist who paints and exhibits an abstraction for his subjective satisfaction, the minister who couches his sermon in abstruse theological terminology, or the writer who reports ecumenical affairs in terms only the insider can understand all violate the basics of communication and reject being in community with their publics.


Communication is fundamental to being a human being. Nevertheless, communication is never a simple thing. Think only of the agonizing role- playing to develop a personality that each of us goes through from child- hood to youth. It is primarily a communication process. We test behav- ior, ideas, attitudes, appearance in the fire of communication, making painful adjustments on the basis of our interplay with those around us.

On the other hand, there is the advantage that communication is always concrete. There is encounter. It begins with the recognition of an other as other. It goes on between selves that are centered on themselves, but capable of responding to each other. It necessarily respects the distance that separates self from self.

The encounter is always, in some measure, a hand-to-hand combat. The participants face each other and probe each other’s minds. The combat may be negative to the extreme. Each person may aim to destroy the other, or at least to defeat him and annex him as a vassal. Or - as in the case of mass communication which we will discuss later - the purpose may be to manipulate and exploit.

Under these circumstances negative community results. The participants use communication to deny themselves the possibility of communion. There is glorification of the isolation of the self, and glorification of the gratification of the self. Mass communication, as we shall see, is particularly guilty of fostering this divisiveness. But this personal atomism does not really begin with the mass media. It came into history, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer tells us, with Adam - with sin. This is the Fall, and we have done it to ourselves - broken off communion with each other, broken off from communion with God. Man as created by God is related to his fellow men on a basis of giving of himself. It is in our fallen state that we relate to each other by pure demanding. After the Fall we live in a deliberately willed isolation. We no longer live in common life with God. “Each now has his own conscience,” Bonhoeffer points out, and this conscience “is often the last bastion of self-justification.”

There is, however, another form of the communication combat, another objective of the mind-to-mind probing. Roger Mehl proposes the biblical story of Jacob wrestling with the angel as the proper symbol of communication for the Christian.

If communication is pointed toward the development of community, the duel will not go on forever. Nor will it end in the destruction of either party. The end will be some kind of accord.


Mehl calls this form of communication “amorous combat.” It proceeds on an I-Thou relationship. What appears and is supposed to appear in this form of communication is the emergency of another before me. I recognize his transcendence - acknowledge his presence. There is a grappling between us, but it goes on against the background of men living together. As a consequence of communication, I am led to believe in the other and in his capability to receive my communication, and to answer it. Communication means, then, letting the other offer himself to me.

This mutuality in encounter is the essence of Christian communication. There need not be friendship, nor even trust at the beginning. But there must be a mutual desire for contact, followed by an exchange from mind to mind and from heart to heart. There must also be something offered that is worth communicating ; therefore worth listening to and, more importantly, worth reacting to. Additionally, there must be something received as well as something offered. In this kind of communication, listening is as important as speaking, and we need to develop the competence to be listeners as well as speakers.

Soren Kierkegaard, because of his knowledge of aesthetics, was well aware of how necessary it is to have deep mutuality between the parties if there is to be effective communication. He pointed out that the objective of Christian communication is not to tell the other person something he needs to know, but to confront him with himself and God, so he must discover the truth. The evangelist is not dealing with an uninformed person in need of information, nor with one who thirsts after knowledge, but with an anxious person running away from truth. So the communicator finds himself, really, in the role of a midwife. He can help another person to give birth to an idea or an insight, but he cannot impose the idea or the insight on the other. “No human being,” Kierke- gaard wrote, “was ever truly an authority for another, or ever helped anyone by posing as such.”

Authority is what one perceives in the communication process. Our concern is that people shall perceive the truth, that they shall not be led astray, purposely or accidentally. But the mere telling of the truth is not enough ! When Pilate asked Jesus : “What is truth ?” Jesus could not answer. The answer, of course, was: “The truth is before you. Christ is the truth.” But, as Kierkegaard points out, this cannot simply be told. If Pilate cannot recognize truth, no telling will help him. So people must be prepared to perceive the truth when it is presented

336 THE ECUMEMCAL REVIEW

to them. And this preparation is a major function of the communication process.

The Objectives of Mass Communication

The give-and-take of the communication I have been describing, and the mutuality it seeks to engender are meant to give all parties concerned the opportunity to make up their own minds. All Christian bodies do not condone this openness in communication. Nor do the organizations and individuals who control much of the powerful appa- ratus of mass communication. The Christian who champions openness is probably in the minority. If he is to succeed at all in gaining his communication objectives, he must soberly ponder the question of the extent to which the individual today, living under the impact of mass communication, has freedom to make up his own mind. The answer to this question has critical importance for democratic society and for the Christian church.

The mass circulation newspapers, magazines, paperback books and comic books, the movies, radio, and television, coupled with radical industrial advances and re-adjustments, such as mechanization and automation, impose severe tensions on individuals and upon whole cuItures. When it comes to assessing their impact on persons - particularly upon freedom of thought - the obstacles are well-nigh insur- mountable. This much we do know, however: virtually every one of us is being subjected to a new congeries of institutional pressures which are designed to reduce our individuality and to bring us into conformity with the institutional objectives. Our individual resilience that springs from our native common sense is one unmeasurable factor that may possibly offset the institutional forces. This individual buoyancy has certainly been demonstrated in the United States within the past few months in the last Presidential election, more recently in the election of John Lindsay as Mayor of New York, and presently in the lively debates over Vietnam policy. I suspect it was demonstrated in France in its recent national elections. On the other hand, the experience of Germany under the Nazis and the complacency of the people of Russia after nearly half a century of modern education and scientific and industrial development indicate that this resilience may be overcome if institutional pressures are strong enough.

Some researchers think that most people are not influenced by mass communication directly, but react to what they see and hear on the


basis of what the opinion leaders in their peer groups (the shop steward or assistant principal) think about what is expressed through the mass media. Of course, this is not independent making up of the mind either. The thought that these research findings may be accurate, that there may be a stratum of opinion formers between the mass media and the rank and file audience makes the small power group that controls mass communication shudder. For the ugly, fundamental fact is that mass communication is consciously striving to make all of us susceptible to decision-making from the top, without benefit of honest, wide- ranging dialogue.

Our society is losing-if it has not already lost -its quality and character of being a public and is becoming a mass society, swayed by mass communication. I am speaking in terms of the distinction made by C. Wright Mills in The Power Elite. In a genuine “public” there is parity between the proposer of an opinion and the persons whose views he wishes to influence. There is a speaking, a hearing, and a responding. In a mass society, dominated by mass communication, there is no such one-to-one encounter and dialogue. Opinion comes from a single source to a multiplicity of receivers. The proposer of an opinion has been replaced by opinion makers or shapers - those who control mass communication and their mouth-pieces. (Example of Huntley-Brinkley conversation over nominating speech by Dirksen at Republican National Convention.) The recipients of such communication are opinion followers. One apparent mark of mass society in our midst is the willingness - the actual expectancy - of individuals to be part of a collectivity who turn to the mass media to receive the ideas that have been shaped for them by the chiefs of government, business, the military, science, education, the entertainment business, and religion.

We are nudging ourselves further along the road to mass society by our willingness to be dominated by commodity-centered values keyed to the need of mass production industries for mass consumption markets. I will not here discuss the issue of how foreign policy is influenced in all industrial nations, and wars such as that in Vietnam are fought, to provide an outlet for manufactured products. But let us examine what is happening to individual tastes and standards of beha- vior and to the public’s conception of the church as whole populations are being subjected to continuous, high-powered sales exploitation by means of mass communication.


The cardinal sin of mass communication is not that television, radio, movies, magazines, and newspapers are devoted primarily to providing escape entertainment and the means for dumb relaxation. The unfor- givable sin is that the most powerful force in modern life is directed to the sale of commodities and to the fostering of a philosophy of atheistic hedonism, based upon the acquiring of commodities. Louis Cassells of United Press International points out that the mass media are almost totally devoted to spreading “the hedonistic gospel that there is no claim on human beings higher than the gratification of the senses, and that ‘happiness’ is the only thing that matters.”

Over and over mass communication dins into our ears and unrolls before our eyes the four myths of hedonistic, mass-structured society :

1. History is progress. (We are getting better and better.) 2. Happiness is the chief end of life. 3. Man is basically good. 4. UItimately, material things are everything.

Through mass communication we are conditioned to look upon ourselves primarily as consumers and everything else is made to appear as a commodity that can be bartered and consumed: not only real commodities such as soup and soap, but sex, politics, art, vocation, social position and even life itself.

It is remarkable the extent to which the image of the citizen as consumer has come to dominate the imaginations of people throughout the world, to the great detriment of spiritual values and ideological objectives. Many of the emergent nations have suffered because desire for consumer goods, rather than a more profound politico-social program, has dominated their formative years. It is interesting to observe how the revo- lutionary thrust of Soviet Russia has lost force in the face of demands of her citizens for consumer products ; and to speculate about how long the rulers of China can resist consumer demands. In the United States consumption is king. Not only do we not protest the outrageous built-in obsolesence in our industrial products ! When we wish to exalt the American way of life, we cite figures demonstrating our prowess as consumers.

The Psalmist asks : What is man? Mass communication has the answer: Man is a consumer. But the consumer is a prime example of the isolated self, glorying in self-gratification. Religion denies that this pursuit of self-gratification can account adequately for the sources


of human action and human satisfaction. Yet religion, too, is looked upon as a commodity, something that can be packaged attractively and labelled and sold for the service it can render in helping you to attain success, happiness, social adjustment, and similar transitory desires. How many times do we hear even good church members insist that the church, like everybody else, has something to sell? Its product is “religion .”

The secularist sees the church as being uniquely organized and staffed for selling. It has its management structure - the hierarchies, boards and secretariats. It has its sales outlets - the local churches, strate- gically located close to the market. It may be conceded that the product of the church has purity equivalent to that of the product of Proctor and Gamble. It may even be conceded that widespread use of the church’s product will be efficacious for both individuals and the community. But the motives of the church are thought to be the same as the motives of everybody else. The church really is pushing its own brand - fighting for its share of the market for that product called “religion.”

With everything else treated as a commodity, it is difficult to explain - even to those inside the church - that the mission of Christianity is not to found and operate more and bigger churches (sales outlets), nor to raise millions of dollars for denominational support (profits), nor even to fulfill human needs and desires (public service) ; but that this mission is to share the ultimate Good News. It is equally difficult to make people understand that the functioning of the church is not determined by the condition of man or by his loyalties in his particular society, but is given in the gospel.

Christian Use of Mass Communication

Here is sufficient reason for the church to watch its step in employing mass communication. Of course, the church should use the best techniques of the communications arts, but it should not allow itself to be enticed into embracing the philosophy of commodity marketing. Even though the manipulative powers of mass communication stagger the imagination, they have limitations. If we accept the premise that the communications program of the Christian church should be directed toward changing individual lives and producing social change that will lead to a stable, peaceful society in which each individual can find ful- fillment, we must concede that there is no place in it for manipulative techniques. While man everywhere accept mass communication as

340 THE ECUMENICAL. REVIEW

their primary source of information and the fountainhead for setting taste, they are also aware that there is a fierce struggle being waged to gain control over their minds and their allegiance. They are also cognizant of the power which the media of mass communication exert in their own right, irrespective of the content of the messages being dis- seminated. And they are on their guard ! This is a function of hat native resilience I mentioned before.

People do not always take mass communication seriously. It may be easy to persuade large numbers of people to switch to Winston ciga- rettes, or even to switch from Ford to Chevrolet. It is not so simple a matter to get these same people to switch beliefs or emotional allegian- ces. People are naturally suspicious of a medium which so artfully bounces them back and forth between products as alike as the proverbial peas when it turns to the purveying of ideas that may affect their social and economic status and alter their whole future. That is why I am pessimistic about the effectiveness of really clever religious advertising that capsulizes the meanings we are trying to convey. I am thinking of such highly professional productions as the Stan Frieberg radio announcements that pose to American youth the question of what to do when you find yourself “out on a limb without Him,” and some of the newspaper advertisements my own United Church of Christ is running with catchy heads such as “Clip this coupon for the ideal husband.” These ads operate on the same complacent assumption as do the cigarette commercials, that enough persons will catch them in passing and switch to make the campaign worthwhile. It is probably a mistake to employ superficial techniques for the purpose of influencing people deeply through mass communication. Even when such an action program is well-conceived and carefully presented, even when it is conducted for the benefit of the people at whom it is aimed, it can pro- duce quite the reverse of the consequences which are desired. Almost certainly, such a program will not be taken seriously if it does not demand the serious involvement of the recipients.

If the church is really serious about becoming the servant and the conscience of Bonhoeffer’s “world-come-of-age,” it needs to develop an action program in communication - a program of protest that will both create the preconditions for change and provide leadership to bring about change. Those of us who work in mass communication have the opportunity, if we will move fast to grasp it, to initiate a real dialogue between the church and the world on the basis of openness, expectancy,


and serious concern, a dialogue that may lead to reconciliation, construc- tive change, and reformation on both sides. Christian communicators should not leave it to others, but should answer for themselves such questions as : What should be the form and function of the church ? What social change will conform to the will of God? How can such change be initiated? What ethics should be applied in a time of rapid social change ?

Given a program and the means to carry it out, the church can expect to be faced with monumental indifference and even hostility toward its objectives. The most likely path to success would be to deal with situations about which there is widespread dissatisfaction , and to offer solutions that will be readily acceptable to large numbers of persons ; either because they are already in people’s conciousness or because the people are unconsciously prepared to have such solutions introduced to them. The success of the civil rights movement in the United States illustrates this point. The right of every citizen to equality is inherent in the American system and is generally conceded. When the denial of civil and voting rights to Negroes was forcefully called to the attention of the white majority, the resulting embarrassment and guilt over the hypocrisy being practiced caused the nation as a whole to support civil rights and voter rights legislation for Negroes. Exhorta- tion, calls to action, and the meaning of the ramparts were the order of the day, and they succeeded.

It remains to be seen whether or not the much more difficult problems of school integration, equality in housing, education, and job opportun- ities, and the improvement of the economic lot of the Negro poor at the expense - through taxes - of the affluent middle and upper class whites can also be solved. There is much less feeling of guilt and dis- crimination on the part of whites over these conditions than about civil rights ; and emotion is much more likely to determine the decision- making than is reason. A vigorous action campaign of the kind used to wrest civil rights legislation from Congress may arouse violent counter- movements designed to protect and continue the status quo.

It is especially dangerous when a society is divided and uncertain to attempt to push it in a particular direction. Exhortation, rather than overcoming opposition, is much more likely to stiffen it ; and the counter- movement may turn out to be much larger and more powerful than the attempt at reform. I illustrate a fact which the reformer in his zeal seldom recognizes. He is usually emotionally aroused and therefore

22

342 THE ECUMENICAL. REVIEW

convinced that everybody else is in a similar frame of mind. The exact reverse is more likely. People prefer the status quo, which they have learned to cope with. They do not eagerly look forward to a revolu- tionary new social situation which may not turn out to be what has been promised at all. In using mass communication to effect change it is therefore necessary to be highly sophisticated in assessing the values, needs and readiness of the public in relation to the program being advocated.

I sound this warning because Christian communication needs to be dealing with the issues on which society is divided and uncertain, the obviously big issues that confront mankind :

- The rejection of dependence on God. - War and Peace. - Urbanization in all of its aspects. Not just the distressing needs

of the poor of the inner city, but also the impact of urban culture on tested values, the dilemma of suburban life, the breakdown of organization and morale in the urban complex, the problems of government.

- Education and its objectives. - Science and technology, especially the ethical implications of the

- Industry - its aims, its influence, its employment of mechanzai-

- The need for racial justice throughout the world. - What to do about food for the world population.

“impersonal” impact of science on society.

tion and automation.

The problems are clear. The means to their solution are obscure in most minds, therefore the probability is low that the public will quickly volunteer to grapple with them. The very preparation for change will require a long-term educational process. Inevitably, the first objective of Christian communication will have to be to persuade people to engage in intense, first-hand encounter with problems that are not easy to solve. And we will not have the advantage of being able to suggest tested, logical progression toward their solution.

It will be necessary to lead reasonably decent and compassionate people to a realization (I) that their own comfort, convenience, and security are not the ultimate objectives of society, and (2) that not


happiness - which is an impossible goal to attain - but dealing forth- rightly with the realities of the world is the true source of personal satisfaction. There is an important place for protest in the communication program of the churches, but the protesting must be prepared for by education if change is to be expected. Nor can this education be wholly a telling of what is needed, what should be done. There must be respect for existing views and provision for dialog, with no hint of authoritarian domination.

The resources which the church has for its communication work are not negligible. The church has at hand a vast cross-section audience within its own membership. From this membership it can create, the nucleus to carry on a widespread program of ethical analysis and ins- truction. It must, however, develop competence to gather information and evaluate it, and on this basis to make value judgements that will become known beyond the boundaries of the local congregation. Effort should be made to communicate with an ever-expanding public.

Three actions are needed before this kind of communication from the church to the world can begin to be effective.

1. It must be realized that the development of forums and assemblies within the church and the establishment of a nucleus of people who will engage in the communication process is dependent upon the minister. Ministers need to be trained in the use of modern methods of communication. This training could most easily be done through theological seminaries, but it seems apparent they are not ready to revise their curriculum for this purpose. Therefore, a crash program should be developed for in-service training of ministers in communication techniques , coupled with education about socio-political issues.

2. Churches need to develop a direct and active relationship with the larger community at the places where decisions are being made.

3. Church people should strive for responsible positions in the public sector of society. Their role will not be merely that of “witnessing” to the fact of being Christians. They will seek to engage in decision making, not to distinguish between Christian and non-Christian beha- vior, attitudes, or ethics, but simply to be engaged in the process of shaping society. They will welcome the opportunity to take partisan positions which may be maintained on the foundation of Christian ethics. This is a communication role that will require the elimination of traditional rationalizations and timidities that have kept the church,

34.4 THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW

and laymen when they were identified as church members, from taking partisan stands in the secular world.

If the churches will seriously take responsibility for active citizen- ship in the secular world, it is reasonable to expect that the world will listen when the church tries to explain God’s mission in the world. The world-wide church of Jesus Christ is a potent body with a huge untapped reservoir of human resources. Without in any way becoming narrowly partisan politically, the church can become influential enough to move the world materially in the direction of responsible concern for the welfare of all mankind, and spiritually into the knowledge of how to praise God in the secular world. If it should try to do that, the church itself might experience the reformation and renewal that we all pray for.

Documents

CHRISTIAN COMMUNICATION AND SECULAR MAN