Religion in the Media

I'm in the middle of reading this report right now. When i'm done, I'll have a little more in-depth commentary on it. But for right now:

Does it really surprise anyone that there has been an increase in religion-related broadcasting, especially in the news? With all the reporting about the Catholic priest scandals, Mel Gibson's movie, and the Left Behind books, of course religion has gotten a lot of press! The problem is, they are asking the questions to the wrong people. John Dominic Crossan is the most visible "Bible scholar" around, if you believe what you see on TV. If ABC, Discovery, History Channel, and the rest are any indication, there are no conservative scholars in the world at all -- at least no scholars who hold to an orthodox position on Christianity. And the average American isn't willing to do their homework -- if they were, these specials would never get the ratings that they do, because people would know better! There was very little on the ABC special that I'd never heard before. Even less on some of the other attempts to cash in on Easter.

Maybe that's just because I'm one of those goofy people who prefers books to TV, but I refuse to believe that the average American is illiterate. NONliterate, maybe. We can read, we just don't want to be bothered. We'd rather listen to the talking heads on TV tell us what Christianity is really all about, so we can laugh at the goofy religious guy at work on Monday. And Christians are as bad, if not worse, than everyone else.

More about this tomorrow, I promise. It's time to dye Easter eggs.