July 2022
Never Christian
We fired DirecTV. We lived with three channels off the antenna until Sara started working in the 90’s, and then we got the dish. It was $20/month, and it was really the only money we spent on entertainment. We had a good run, we saw a lot of good TV, but they were raising it to $150/month and starting to censor channels, so it was time to leave. I never thought DirecTV was Christian.
The first time I heard about the Rural Purge was a couple of months ago. Through the 1960’s, a lot of TV programming had a rural setting: Green Acres, The Andy Griffith Show, and the like. Hollywood axed all those shows – along with their basic morality – and replaced them with programs set in the city with questionable morality. I never thought Hollywood was Christian.
A while back, the Hallmark Channel was going to do a program with a gay couple. Their viewers protested, and Hallmark axed the show, but others protested louder, and that’s that. An LCMS Pastor in Indiana wrote an article for the Federalist. He who rhetorically asked what did we expect from them or any other network. The Hallmark Channel, he pointed out, has never been Christian.
Disney has never been Christian. Walt Disney was a confessing Christian. He died Presbyterian and received a Christian burial. But before he died, he created the Disney brand, including cartoons, theme parks, and movies; things that our family have very much enjoyed over the years. They have always followed The Culture, the culture is changing, and there goes Disney as well.
What do you do about it? Back when there were only three channels, if you saw something you didn’t like on TV, you called them up, a real person answered the phone, that person listened, and maybe even did something about it. DirecTV doesn’t care what I think about anything, and the lack of actual contact information for stations, networks, and programs tell me they don’t either.
There’s a lot of bad programming out there, and we avoid that. There’s a lot of good programming out there, and we are entertained by it. As far as things suitable for children – and probably for adults like me – IMDB has a section Parents Guide that we have used to dodge a lot of bullets. The Christians are making an effort to produce shows and books that are good and watchable.
It goes without saying that parents need to be aware of what their children are watching, and there’s nothing new there. But it’s harder these days than it was in those days, much harder. And in those days, you felt like you had more help from the culture than now, when The Culture fights against what parents are trying to teach their children. There’s a reason why it’s called “Culture Wars.”
In war, the alternative to fighting is to not fight, and in war, what happens then?
You lose.
In Christian Service,
Pastor Anderson
