outthinking the media: lessons from a tennis master

OUTTHINKING THE MEDIA:LESSONS FROM A TENNIS MASTER

Karen Scialabba

Abstract

This article challenges contemporary religious educators to takenotice of some of the competitive aspects of media, not to scape-goat the technological changes of twenty-first-century life, but toaddress the concerns of a people who feel overwhelmed by media’sgame plan yet long to work for a more invigorated future of Ameri-can religious education. Just like winning tennis superstars, religiouseducators can master the media environment by recognizing, ana-lyzing, and capitalizing on various options of resistance and consentin every media moment.

MEDIA, RELIGIOUS EDUCATION,AND THE MENTAL GAME OF TENNIS

Winning Ugly is a compelling book about tennis that details pro-fessional tactics for recreational players who want to play tennis andwin. At the time of its publication, the author, Brad Gilbert, had thereputation of being the best in the world at the mental game of ten-nis. His unique ability to throw off the confident games of super-stars like McEnroe, Sampras, and Agassi was astonishing—especiallywhen one considered his lack of physical prowess and the “ugliness”of his strokes. What led him to victory, he claims, was his ability toidentify all of the options for play by analyzing the dynamics of theinteraction between the players within each match. The back-covercommentary boasts: “Brad Gilbert’s strokes may not be pretty, butlooks aren’t everything.” And the evidence is there. His record showsthat he beat “all of the Tour’s biggest names—all by playing his ‘ugly’game.”

Gilbert’s success came from mental preparation. By thinking aboutthe match well before it began, Gilbert took the time to size up hisopponent and plan a specific course of action. What did he need tomake happen? What did he need to prevent from happening? Helooked for moments where openings would appear in the game. He

Religious Education Copyright C© The Religious Education AssociationVol. 101 No. 2 Spring 2006 ISSN: 0034–4087 print

DOI: 10.1080/00344080600640293

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calculated big opportunities by observing and analyzing his opponent’soverall game plan. He evaluated small opportunities by consideringthe loose ends that players tend to neglect because of temperament orignorance. Knowing that most tennis players pursue the game with afocus on the right-brain intuitive process, Gilbert employed a logical,analytical strategy for play (Jamison 1994). By consistently exploitingthe advantages he gained from knowing exactly what he needed tomake happen during the course of each match, Gilbert was able towin over and over again. The back cover of his book sums up his mostsuccessful tactics: “The key to success . . . is to become a better thinkingplayer—to recognize, analyze, and capitalize . . .” on ways that will gainyou an advantage. “. . . [O]utthinking opponents before, during, andafter a match” forces them to play your game.”

Have the media successfully put Gilbert’s winning formula tothe test? “Absolutely,” says professor, scholar, and religious educa-tor Michael Warren. His book, Seeing through the Media: a Reli-gious View of Communications and Cultural Analysis, explains hisargument in full detail. Most people presume that the role of me-dia is to present symbolic reflections of our reality, he says. That isnot its role. Most of media is a business, deliberately organized toseek out our undivided attention. The carefully crafted constructionswe see or hear from various forms of media, reflect many decisionsand result from many determining factors that have more to do withquestions of ownership, control, and “bottom line” financial factorsthan with “accurate” forms of symbolic representation of our exter-nal realities. As a result, information is organized more in ways thatrecognize, analyze, and capitalize on the arrangement of commercialpriorities than on ways that prioritize rational, coherent, logical think-ing (1997, 11–13). In this sense, all media are forms of advertisingwith a unique “language” used to capture our attention. Even thoughit is true that we “negotiate” constructions of meaning according toour own individual factors—historical, personal, social, political, andreligious—we have come to build a part of our picture of truth ac-cording to media’s proclaimed values and ways of life because of thepervasiveness of media in our lives and world today (Van Evra 1990,169).

New technology has greatly impacted the way that we search,refine, and share our meanings within culture (Lessig 2004, 23). So-cial norms that used to be supplied directly by family, church, peers,and institutions are now often filtered, altered, or reshaped by me-dia. Media presents us with reconceptualized understanding of who

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we should be as persons and how we should understand our environ-ment. Moreover, because of the wide array of outlets—movies, radio,television, computers, and so on—the influence of media is all per-vasive (Meyrowitz 1998, 98). Using the example of television, massmedia critic Neil Postman sets this idea in context:

Twenty years ago, the question, “Does television shape culture or merelyreflect it?” held considerable interest for many scholars and social critics.The question has largely disappeared as television has gradually become ourculture. This means, among other things, that we rarely talk about television,only about what is on television—that is about its content. Its ecology, whichincludes not only its physical characteristics and symbolic code but the con-ditions in which we normally attend to it, is taken for granted, accepted asnatural. (1986, 79)

In other words, television not only directs our knowledge of theworld—it directs our “ways of knowing as well” (Postman 1986, 79).Postman tells us that media have become implicated in our epistemol-ogy:

Because of the way [the media] directs us to organize our minds and integrateour experience of the world, it imposes itself on our consciousness andsocial institutions in myriad forms. It sometimes has the power to becomeimplicated in our concepts of piety, or goodness, or beauty. And it is alwaysimplicated in the ways we define and regulate our ideas of truth. (1986, 18)

Warren contends that our culture has adjusted to the epistemologyof media by making its message and its environment our first level ofdiscourse. By way of example, he challenges us to take a look at thebroadest view of present-day culture across the board and then re-gard the public’s response to this culture. The reality that immediatelybecomes clear, he claims, is that the public discourse—the nationalconversation—is taking place on media’s “playing field” (1997, 11).The American public has not implemented a national game plan fordealing with how to access, interpret, and evaluate media’s representa-tions of “symbolic truth.” Instead, our definitions of what are real andtrue have a tendency to be derived from the character of the mediaenvironment through which the information is conveyed (1997, 136).Again using television as an example, Neil Postman tells us that if wewant to share in the largest arena of public discourse, then we mustfirst “speak” the language of television. He says,

To enter the great television conversation, one American institution afteranother is learning to speak its terms. Television, in other words, is trans-forming our culture into one vast arena for show business. (1986, 80)


According to Warren, the central role of media in American liveshave taken on an important educational function in this new informa-tion age and we have been caught off guard as to the extent that it isaffecting our human perception, understanding, feeling, and value. Ifwe do not learn how to “talk back to the meanings and signs presentedfor our consumption” (1997, 3) and demand something better, thereis danger that the media culture will become our overriding educa-tional force (1997, 13). Stuart Ewen, noted social critic, agrees: “Wehave allowed the media—the professional manipulators of symbols—to outthink us by allowing them to define our public discourse,” he says(Dery 1996, 1). Perhaps best phrased in tennis terms, the problem isthis: we have allowed the media to dominate our game.

The idea that most people get their outlooks and understandingsabout the world around them from the mainstream media without everbeing aware of some key underlying issues, points to the need for anunderstanding of its political structures and practices. The followingsections are intended to unveil the scaffolding behind the scenes ofmedia in order to support religious educators who choose to engagein a constructive criticism of its order.

MEDIA’S GAME PLAN

How did this happen? How did media come to influence so manyof the forces of our everyday lives? Many studies confirm that we tendto submit passively to the culture. Once we turn the television on in theevening, we are inclined to keep it on for the rest of the night (Warren1997, 17). Yet by simply choosing not to turn off the television set, weallow a constant bombardment of messages into the inner spheres ofour everyday lives. Heard often enough, we get used to these mes-sages. We “forget” that media’s messages are not necessarily linkedto improving the quality of our lives and our world. They “feel” likenormal communication. We may be given distressing news that makesus feel disconnected and hopeless about the future of our planet inone moment and in the next we may find ourselves captivated by thetimeless beauty of a documentary narrative. As our modern-day story-teller, media works skillfully using a multiple intelligence perspective(Gardner 1999, 106–107) in order to capture our interests on our own“playing field” of understanding and draw us into other visions, otherworlds that expand our range of awareness. Technically speaking, thismeans that the medium’s “aesthetic” aspects (known as production

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variables) interact with its content elements, in order to create a senseof relevancy for the viewer or listener (Meyrowitz 1998, 99). In “dis-solving to the beach” or “cutting to a close-up” the “language” of mediaskillfully shapes our perceptions and influences our response to the im-plicit meanings about life that we are being offered (Meyrowitz 1998,101).

Joshua Meyrowitz, professor of communications and expert onmedium theory explains the unique effect that powerful productionvariables can have on audiences, especially when production variablesare combined with powerful content. “The more effective media con-tents are the more audiences are likely to be aware of, and think about,the content,” he says. But the more effective the production variablesare the less the average audience viewer or listener will even notice thecontent (1998, 102). The game plan of media is specifically designed touse these effects to feed the commercial culture of its business while“subtly reflecting and influencing the public’s perception of people,places, and events” (1998, 101). In fact, Meyrowitz explains, the spe-cific role of the producer is to encourage audiences to internalize theworldview that works overtly best for the media organization. As anexample, Meyrowitz shares the following:

A television or movie producer would prefer that audience members con-sciously feel empathy for a character, rather than be aware of their responseto the use of prolonged close-ups. Similarly, the editors of a prestigious news-paper do not want readers to consider how much of the paper’s credibilitymight be lost if the same stories were in a different typeface and format.(1998, 102)

According to Warren, an example like this is one of the key reasons why“the imagination of human existence communicated via media needsscrutiny and judgment” (1997, 11). When we react passively, to media,by subordinating our own common sense, our consent, and our moral-ity to the needs of the media, we are seriously underestimating theimpact of its social, political, economic, and institutional constructionon our lives. Does the content serve as explicit or implicit advertis-ing? Who is served when production variables enhance the content?Who is served when production variables diminish the content? Doesan engagement with media obscure the information arrived at fromeducational institutions or does it reinforce the traditional authorityof teachers? (Meyrowitz 1998, 99, 106–107). Warren contends thatby developing a habit of questioning the “pervasive media culture,”religious educators can support the surrounding community by using


constructive criticism to demystify its messages (1997, 136). He insiststhat the best approach is to engage with the media by “seeing throughthe media.”

Generally speaking, why are we not in the habit of questioning themedia? Using television viewing as an example, Warren claims thatwe often tend to abdicate our responsibility for good judgment fortwo reasons. First, “relaxation is the main benefit of viewing the televi-sion” (1997, 17). “Viewing begets more viewing because one must keepwatching in order to remain relaxed” (Kubey 1990, 47). Secondly, thisrelaxed state supports our passivity. Because we are not immediatelyaware or concerned about the fact that television is offering a “differentkind of accessibility to multiple versions of reality,” we do not immedi-ately feel an explicit need to ask questions that refer to the historical,social, and political construction of the messages (Warren 1997, 18).Admittedly, many of the “multiple versions of reality” offered by mediahave provided us with wonderful opportunities to expand our horizons,gain new insights, and discover new concepts beyond what we couldever have imagined. Nonetheless, Warren insists that an informed,knowledgeable, and critical sense of media understanding remains anon-negotiable option. We need to be consciously aware of which as-pects of the meaning system we will accept and which ones we willresist, he insists (1997, 16). Otherwise we will not be fully present andengaged in the culture in which we live. Warren defines full culturalagency as follows:

Full cultural agency . . . is an active way of looking and making decisionsabout the meanings and values created for us in society, but it is also anactive way of examining and judging the channels by which these meaningsare communicated to us.” (1997, 18)

In summary, Warren believes that our lack of cultural agency is thetroubling opening in our game. When we passively allow the mediato “outthink” us on every level, we harness our capacity for publicdialogue and inadvertently allow the “language” of media to gain theimportant symbolic educational advantage (Warren 1997, 13). Whenmedia tells us where we have been, where we are, and where we arelikely to be headed and we passively listen, we make a losing decision.By not taking the time to consider various options of resistance orconsent, we become just like the losing tennis superstars. We becomethe ultimate underachievers.

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ANALYZING OPTIONS: THE ADVANTAGES OF FULLCULTURAL AGENCY

But media is not holding us hostage, reminds Warren. We arewhere we are right now because in not fully understanding media andits techniques, we may not fully realize its implications on our lives(Warren 1997, 137). George Gerbner, professor of communicationsand founder of the Cultural Environment Movement, uses the exam-ple of television and the “mean world syndrome” as an illustration ofmedia impacting the environment:

. . . if you are growing up in a home where there is more than say three hoursof television per day, for all practical purposes you live in a meaner world—and act accordingly—than your next-door neighbor who lives in the sameworld but watches less television. The programming reinforces the worstfears and apprehensions and paranoia of people. (1994, 1)

The “mean world syndrome” that Gerbner discovers in his researchsuggests that media-conjured versions of reality cultivate public un-derstandings of actual reality by enticing and encouraging heavy televi-sion viewers to make assumptions about violence, people, places, andevents that do not hold true in real-life events. The primary objectivesof media are to advertise its products within a limited sphere, Gerbnerinsists. It should not drive the entire culture. He created the CulturalEnvironment Movement in order to encourage the public to separatethe marketing strategies of media from decisions that construct thecultural environment (1994, 1).

Copyright issues and the use of the Internet, including peer-to-peer file sharing and music downloading, are also having an effect onthe cultivation of culture. New digital technologies allow people toshare their new expression of an original idea without permission—and then distribute the “new expression” globally within moments of itscreation. Traditionally, copyright laws have protected only the expres-sion of a work—not its underlying ideas. But recently there has beena greater concern with “piracy” issues than with protecting the rightto share and express new ideas. There appears to be a need to strike abalance between private intellectual property and a public intellectualcommons. If the balance leans too far in favor of copyright holders,the public will risk losing its right to the public domain. According tonoted Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, there is po-tential danger in the fact that the majority of the population does notknow that there have been many new laws passed regarding copyrights


or even that these laws exist (Stanford University Law School 2004).Are the copyright laws of yesterday still suitable today? Are we givingaway our rights to free access to materials that were previously in thepublic domain? We may need to issue warnings. The knowledge ofthe community—in this case the technical community—is essential ineducating politicians and the general population about the terms ofthe use of technologies and the impact of proposed bills and legislationon our freedoms. If this information is not shared, we risk “a potentialimpact on our freedom and privacy as citizens of the United Statesof America.” It is important to watch for and build a public discoursearound changes in the “architecture” (the mix of technologies layeredinto the network) of the Internet and discuss whether or not thesechanges “will alter the Internet’s environment for innovation and cre-ativity,” says Lessig (Stanford University Law School 2004). Overall,while media is having greater and greater influence in our lives, newcopyright laws and other legislation are making it more and more dif-ficult for us to affect the media and shape or control the way media isused in our culture.

With full cultural agency, we can apply “basic skills of culturalanalysis” (Warren 1997, back cover), to set such contexts in their ap-propriate light and reframe issues in question. In fact, once we identifywhat the core issues actually are, we hold the power to invert the powerdynamic (Lasn 1999, 153). Therefore, we can still enjoy media withour creative right brain, so long as we employ a shared focus with theleft side of our brain in order to check the data, establish our priorities(Gilbert and Jamison 1994, 208), and consider the political and socialscaffolding that exists behind the messages we see and hear. Only afterwe have done this can we can take the next step of applying ourselvesto the basic task of recognizing, analyzing, and capitalizing on thosemedia moments that may be crowding out our full presence as humanbeings; namely, our history, identity, and context. With full culturalagency, we can see if media is willing to play our game, which, by theway, is not based on a draining flood of disconnected information, butbuilt instead on a context of thought and examination.

THE CULTURE OF COMMODIFICATION: HIDDEN ADPOINTS AS A WAY TO WIN

When media bombards the atmosphere, the mood, and the tempoof our lives with market needs, it is working as a commercial business

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and arranging its priorities in terms of market considerations. But interms of its overwhelming pervasiveness, Warren claims, media im-pacts culture by effectively overriding the way that faith creates mean-ing (1997, 136). In using the word “culture” to refer to the meaningand order by which we live our lives, Warren views the signifying sys-tem of culture (the way meaning is made in society) as an uneasy allywith “faith:”

. . . the broader, secular culture constantly creates meaning and order for itsconstituents; the Christian church as a whole must, if it is to survive andflourish, learn to be constructively critical of that order and to substitute,where necessary, its faith-oriented culture, (Maguire 1999, 1)

Even though Warren is fully aware that “encounters with God alwaystake place within the structures of human social and political existence”(Miller 2004, 164), he argues that the media environment often createsand reinforces cultural meaning in ways that reduce the complexitiesof life to “an artificial and ultimately distorting simplicity” (Warren1997, 11). For this reason, he insists that cultural agency is theologi-cally significant. Although it is true that media offers us many positivepossibilities, he explains, there are many pitfalls of which we mustbe aware. A consumer culture can form people in consumerist habits(such as a lack of deep, reflective thought) that negatively impact thefullness of religious beliefs and practices (Miller 2004, 179). Thereare times, insists Warren, when it is necessary to recognize the needto substitute a faith-oriented culture for a media-dominated culture.Author Marilyn McEntyre agrees. As an example, she shares a storyabout how video cameras used in Sunday worship impact the fullnessof religious meaning:

I tend to think the most dangerous forms of evil are those that are subtleenough to escape general notice until they have taken firm root. Considertechnology in the sanctuary. In some churches, the presence of a videocamera has become standard, not only at weddings, but often in Sundayworship. One argument in favor of this practice, of course, is that it does makethe service available to the homebound. But the camera always alters whatit records. What a camera ‘captures’ inevitably becomes performance. . . weare not really with people who are playing to a camera or an audience.Suddenly [people] are not completely there for us. . . . What is lost at leastneeds to be acknowledged, and perhaps mourned. (McEntyre 2001, 1)

Author Michael Paul Gallagher takes a more optimistic view. Thesurrounding secular (consumer) culture can nurture our faith without


stifling it, he claims. He points to the work of Vatican II and the WorldCouncil of Churches as an example of “a remarkable convergenceof viewpoints on issues related to culture” (Maguire 1999, 1). ForGallagher, an encounter with religion in a consumer culture is a chal-lenge that can be embraced with enthusiasm because Christianity cantransform “even the most alien dogmas of culture with discerning love”(Kavanaugh 1999, 1). Diverse expressions of spirituality expressed invarious forms of corporate cultural production suggest openness tocontemplation, tolerance, understanding, he says (Kavanaugh 1999,1). Editor Juli Cragg Hilliard, Religion Update feature editor of Pub-lisher’s Weekly, agrees. In a recent article she reflects on how religiouspublishing realities (a current leaning toward the commercial busi-ness model) coupled with world events have significantly impactedthe public’s desire to learn more about religion:

Religion is front and center now everywhere in the public consciousness,Whether the topic is U.S. politics, same-sex marriage, embryonic stem-cellresearch, international strife, Dan Brown’s fictional The DaVinci Code orpersonal spirituality . . . King Winn [for example], professor of ecclesiasticalhistory has moved toward a general readership over several years as shefound people ‘utterly fascinated’ with her work on the ancient texts found inthe late 1800s in Egypt. . . . [I] in the classroom, the professor sets the agenda,but in the wider world, it’s essential [for academics] to listen. . . . ‘Readersof books on religion are bright and curious and scholars do not need to talkdown to them.’ (2004, S2)

Martin Marty at the University of Chicago is passionate about “pub-lic religion endeavors” from within a consumer culture because heunderstands that the public has grown weary with reflecting on theirreligion from the point of view of their “Sunday School” days. As a re-sult, he has established a charter to work with dissertation writers “atthe formative stage” to encourage them to share what they know withgeneral readers (Hilliard 2004, S7). Philip Jenkins, Distinguished pro-fessor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University,also notes one very specific positive effect of religious commodifica-tion. “Religion scholars who choose to address the wider world canhave a huge effect, sometimes even on public policy, as more peoplerealize they have to understand religion—especially Christianity—tocomprehend American politics” (Hilliard 2004, S4).

In many ways, Vincent J. Miller, author of Consuming Reli-gion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture, agreeswith Warren’s assessment of some of the negative consequences of

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consumer culture. Media environments have reinforced a consumerculture that renders religious critique “less potent” than theologians,believers, and intellectuals would hope, he says. The reason for this isthat the consumer culture reinforced by media is not simply a particu-lar set of ideologies that people believe are good and worth pursuing.It is “. . . a way of relating to beliefs—a set of habits of interpretationand use—that renders the ‘content’ of beliefs and values less impor-tant” (Miller 2004, 1). Ultimately, however, Miller is optimistic. Eventhough consumer culture has impacted our lives by associating ad-vertising with meaning-making, consumers are not “mindless, passivedupes” (2004, 147). The understandings that are created in a consumerculture are “just as valid as learned theology and magisterial teaching”says Miller, and often serve as an excellent and insightful source oftheological reflection (2004, 166). By way of example, Miller explainsthe humanizing impact of commodification on religion. When “doc-trines, symbols, values, and practices are torn from their traditionalcommunal contexts,” the viewer or listener can more readily “locatethemselves within the tales, and consider their heroes, conflicts, andideologies” (2004, 6). Miller suggests that the best way for religious ed-ucators to move forward through consumer culture is to recognize thisreality and work toward encouraging and deepening religious agency.In this way, religious educators will provide their faith communitieswith “the formation and responsibility necessary to engage their tra-ditions creatively as mature practitioners” (2004, 10–11).

Because religious educators work from within the realities of con-sumer culture, understanding the inner dynamics of commodificationis useful. Products are typically understood from within three levelsof understanding: (1) the framework of the message taken by itself,(2) the composition of the production (the marketing and advertisingaspects), and (3) the frame of judgment from an outside perspec-tive (Warren 1997, 100–101). These levels effectively serve to narrate,highlight, and allow room for the consumer to make a judgment aboutthe product (Warren 1997, 106). The Classics of Western Spiritualityseries by Paulist Press serves as an example of how these levels of un-derstanding work together in ways that appeal to the general public.The narration is the framework of the message that is encompassedfrom within a series of books that offer “scholarly translations of seri-ous sources accompanied by sophisticated and lengthy introductionswritten by experts in the field” (Miller 2004, 8). The books themselvesoffer a pluralistic message because the series encompasses a wide rangeof Christian spiritual traditions, including other Abrahamic faiths and


Native American traditions. The highlighting factors are words like“classic” and “spirituality” that serve to advertise the “very clear plural-ism of the series” that offers “something for everyone.” The judgmentis assessed as favorable by consumers because most of these editionswere the largest print runs of these texts ever offered. Ultimately, be-cause there are more literate, educated believers than ever in history,Paulist Press can assert that they effectively responded to the “needs”of the marketplace (Miller 2004, 8). In this case, the consumer econ-omy produced an accessibility to religious understanding that neverbefore existed (Miller 2004, 9).

In tennis, ad points present opportunity. In fact, “most playerswake up for an ad point because the game is on the line” (Gilbertand Jamison 1994, 113). Has the momentum in consumer culturereplaced the institution of church? Has the public found new ways ofunderstanding their faith outside the institution of church? In eitherscenario opportunity exists. In optimistically striving to view mediamessages as “rich cultural texts” that serve to provide various formsof insight into the ongoing construction of individual and constructivereligious identity, the religious significance of the impact of media onculture will neither be overlooked nor be considered cause for alarm(Hoover and Lundby 1997, 13, 33).

CAPITALIZING ON STRENGTHS:THINKING RELIGIOUSLY

More than any other institution, our religious institutions remindus of the hope (and the shortcomings) that shape life in the UnitedStates of America. Our churches in the United States are like a second-order social system, which stands within another wider social network,steadfastly refusing to be defined by market intentions. But, religiousmeaning is not self-maintaining. Its durability over time is an achieve-ment of human intentionality and continued care. How a church re-ligiously educates its community seems to be a critical referent formeasuring the degree to which the American church provides its faith-ful with the knowledge and skills necessary to shape the morality ofAmerican life (Whalen 2004). As religious educators, it is always ofutmost importance to “do church” in ways that have cultural relevanceand meaning in light of these 21st-century problems. This is how webring contemporary life into the ongoing conversation of the Christiantradition (Whalen 2004). Like the church of the 1st century, our mostpowerful resource is our own creativity and imagination.

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Religious educators who seem best at helping people to learn andfeel an ownership of their faith tend to avoid the use of black-and-white, linear thinking alone. Instead they have learned to incorporateit as one of a selection of choices that will build and develop a va-riety of foundations upon which to understand the “bigger picture”(Whalen 2004). A true ownership of faith allows people to learn andfeel an understanding of the world in an artistic conversation withGod’s superior intelligence. Artistic thinking, enhanced by such formsas Gregorian chant, children’s choirs, majestic pipe organs, contempla-tive prayer, icons, and sung mass, elevate us toward “higher” forms ofthinking (Whalen 2004). This kind of thinking reaches us at our core—our emotional center—and embraces expressions of our passion in life(Brueggemann 2001, 117–118). In this new cultural climate, where thecommercial message attempts to deaden us to the possibility of anyother thought, the stirring of passion brings to public expression feel-ings of God that can only be described metaphorically (Brueggemann2001, 45). The beauty of the liturgy is that its forms exist not only toeducate in a didactic manner, but also to educate from within the en-hanced experiences of the aesthetic (Whalen 2004). In his book, WhyCatholics Can’t Sing musician Thomas Day points out that “what is notsaid” is often the foundation of our shared religious language (1990,113). Theologian Reverend Kevin W. Irwin describes the importanceof the aesthetic in the church experience:

The issue in [liturgy] and in most church experiences is less verbal un-derstanding and mental comprehension by the mind and more a shapingof attitudes and allowing one’s imagination to be engaged in symbolic actswhich by their nature are not oriented to comprehension alone. (Day 1990,113)

In fact, learning how to think “religiously” serves as a peaceful re-sistance over and against the commercial culture provided by me-dia (Whalen 2004). Educational psychologists and leaders in theinternational critical thinking movement, Dr. Linda Elder and Dr.Richard Paul, describe how fair-minded critical thinking predisposedtoward traditional religious responses such as empathy, humility,perseverance, integrity, and responsibility, can greatly impact andchange society for the better:

The quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our thinking. Thequality of our thinking, in turn, is determined by the quality of our questions,for our questions are the engine, the driving force behind thinking. (Elderand Paul 2002)


It is not necessary for us to understand the psychology behindmedia influences. We know how to speak the truth about ourselves.One way of envisioning the task of the religious educators is to view himor her as one who supports the community by making religious sense ofconcrete life situations in light of faith. By helping people to interpretlife within the scope of critical thinking skills, perhaps the advanceof a more deliberate approach toward bringing the secular world intoharmony with God’s purpose will become apparent. The social effect ofburying our “self” within a culture’s social structure tends to generatethe kinds of decisions that grow out of weakness rather than strength.Therefore, in order to move into harmony with God’s purpose, thelaity must engage in resistance to all oppressive structures in order to“restore” God’s vision of a good and compassionate society (Lakeland2003, 246).

One way we can begin to restore God’s vision for us is to break thepattern of the passive, uncritical view as the only acceptable point ofview. What we need to re-establish is our sense of reasoned judgmentabout what Christians should either value or condemn. Our spiritualcrisis comes from the problems that we have in recognizing what isworthy (Warren 1997, 26). Have our hearts and minds conformed to aculture that diminishes or distorts our experience of God? We do notknow the full answer to that question, but we do know that withoutmedia education, we leave ourselves wide open for the possibility ofexploitation. If we are not mentally prepared to identify and defendwhat is worthy, how can we recognize our options when dealing withmedia?

KNOW YOURSELF

Identifying what is worthy of our attention is an effort that, ineffect, creates a mental compass. By identifying what is worthy, weindicate to ourselves how it is that we want to live and how we actuallywill live (as we acknowledge what we see, feel, and recognize as truthin this new age of media and electronic communications) (Warren1997, 3). Our route toward living authentically is laid out accordingto our judgments. Judgment helps us to visualize what should be.“Judgment evaluates quality or its lack, humanizing vision or its lack,”Warren tells us. Judgment and action based on judgment means thatone could lay out “an evaluation of signification: either positive ornegative and make it public.” If the judgment is negative, then one can“encourage, organize, protest, or boycott. This is judgment in action.”

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If we continue to do things like this, then we might extend theseactions toward more “consumer protection rules” the likes of whichnow “apply to manufactured products like children’s toys” (Warren1997, 5–6).

Because the media prepares in advance for the range of our re-sponses to their suggestions by applying logical and analytical mentalpreparation techniques (advertising, packaging, polling, public rela-tions, etc.) to set up a “win” for their side, we can optimize our advan-tage by judging what it is they are saying. We need simply to observewhat’s going on, analyze the information, and “talk back” to meaningsthat hold no value for us (Warren 1997, 3). The judgment factor keepsus focused on our own game plan. For instance, if we value our way oflife and want to nurture the hope of the next generation, we certainlydo not want dysfunction being “programmed” into it.

Still, how do we know that we are making the correct judgments?An all-pervasive media is still new to us. We are still adjusting to itseffects, and we are not exactly sure how to protect ourselves frommanipulation (Lasn 1999, 12). How do we cope? When the worldis chaotic and trust is shattered; the first thing people do is look toreligion for clarity about judgments, says Walter Brueggemann, authorof The Prophetic Imagination. The Biblical prophets addressed a worldin transition by publicly asking questions that probed the significantdifferences that existed between the way of life of the prevailing paganculture and the ethical way of life of those who worshipped Yahweh. Itwas the public questioning that enabled them to seek new paradigms—paradigms that would be liberating and that would help them to explorenew possibilities. Just like the prophets, says Brueggemann, we holda responsibility in this new century to read the culture, identify truth,and speak out boldly for a way of life that cherishes the humanity ofeach and every member (2001, 40).

Kalle Lasn is a modern day “prophet” who passionately speaks outboldly for a way of life that cherishes the humanity of each member.As a media activist furious at the way marketing has taken over theworld, he created Culture Jammers, a grass-roots organization devel-oped in order to change the way we interact with the mass media andthe way in which meaning is produced in our society. One of the cam-paigns of Culture Jammers was “Buy Nothing Day.” “Celebrated” inover 50 countries around the world, it reached circulation of over a100,000 people (Lasn 1999, back cover). Lasn describes “acting boldly”as a powerful way of changing the way that information flows. Hesays,


Opportunities to act boldly (which often means not the way you wouldnormally, reflexively act) present themselves every day and maybe evenevery hour. Authentic acts tend to get noticed amid the fakery and correct-ness on which postmodern culture thrives. ‘In a small room where peopleunanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence,’ said Nobel laureate CzeslawMilosz, ‘one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.’ (Lasn 1999, 99)

Michael Warren agrees. To move into harmony with God’s pur-pose, it is not only our burden to meet the culture prepared for me-dia’s “hustle,” it is our responsibility to develop fully all of our culturaladvantages—and look forward to the competition (1997, 5). Do wecare enough about our future to go beyond the bare minimum of ex-pectation? Are we prepared to make the point of view of the Christianchurch part of the public discourse equation? Or, do we choose toscapegoat the ills of 21st-century society on a “force” over which wehave no control? Warren tells us that it is time for Christians to cometogether to act as a collective force. Instead of resisting this kind offundamental change, we should embrace it by developing our ownstrategy of how media should fit into our lives (1997, 5–6). When weknow exactly what it is we value, we will meet the culture at our levelof peak performance.

CREATING A PLAN

Most media experts agree that there is nothing wrong with media’splan of advertising, packaging, and public relations in and of itself.Media is deliberately organized to be compelling. It is deliberatelyorganized to seek out our undivided attention. As educators, how dowe seek to exert our influence? Do we have any idea why we maybe losing influence over the wider culture? Have we given it muchthought? Michael Warren describes the need for teachers to be awareof life outside of the educational institution:

Early on as a high school teacher, I realized that the school, for all theimportant goals it set out for itself was not the major influence it wished tobe and had perhaps overstated its role. . . . School is not a whole way of life.What caught their [the students’] attention more fully were matters beyondthe school: music, the heroes being proposed to them, fashion, films and TV,patterns of work, of leisure, of using money. If I as a teacher wanted to havetheir attention . . . I needed to know more about these other matters: whatthey were, what their significance was, and how that significance emerged.(Warren 1997, 7–8)

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If a religious educator wants to be a “zone of influence” aboutpeacemaking, for example, then it serves the educator best to examinecarefully how film and television praises or condemn acts of war-waging(Warren 1997, 8). Television and film smoothly and vividly orchestratewhat certain identities might look like. Are educators capable of pre-senting equally compelling views? Successful educators serve theirstudents best when they come up with captivating and creative waysto win over their audiences. A big budget is not necessary. An examplefollows.

In April of 1968, Jane Elliot, a teacher in Riceville, Iowa, wantedto come up with a way to teach her elementary school students thetrue impact of discrimination. In a famous experiment, she dividedher class into two groups by eye color: the blue-eyed students and thebrown-eyed students. She told the brown-eyed children that brown-eyed people are better than blue-eyed people. She told the blue-eyedchildren that brown-eyed people were the best. By that afternoon’slunchtime, the brown-eyed children were happy, alert, and content.The blue-eyed children were quiet and sad. The children learned alesson they would never forget. One mother told Ms. Elliot this story:

I want you to know that you’ve made a tremendous difference in our livessince your Discrimination Day exercise. My mother-in-law stays with us alot, and she frequently uses the word “nigger.” The very first time she did itafter your lesson, my daughter went up to her and said, “Grandma, we don’tuse that word in our house, and if you’re going to say it, I’m going to leaveuntil you go home.” We were delighted. I’ve been wanting to say that to herfor a long, long time. And it worked, too. She’s stopped saying it. (Etzioni1993, 106)

Do people yearn to learn from the perspective of the highest com-mon denominator? Religiously, many would agree that the answer isyes (Brueggemann 2000, xii). Our religious education tells us that weare part of an ongoing plan, characterized by justice, love, and peaceand leading toward the reign of God. Many in Jane Elliot’s class becamea part of this plan. A class reunion revealed that most of her studentsreported that their career choices were influenced by the discrimina-tion experiment; in fact, several even joined the Peace Corps. But all ofthe students reported that they were forever changed by that one ed-ucational encounter (Etzioni 1993, 106). An educational environmentcan be a transformational change-agent when it creates an eruption ofawakenings that serve to change perspectives, open up a person’s mind,and shake up the status quo. Learning requires a creative layering of


the multiple intelligences (Gardner 1999, 106–107). Generic thinkingwill not do the trick. Planning the right educational experience holdsthe potential to have a greater and farther-reaching effect than anylecture or doctrine could ever hope to encompass.

PLAYING SMART

In tennis, the best athletes are the ones who know what they cando—but more importantly they are the ones who know what they can-not do (Gilbert and Jamison 1994, 76). Likewise, media critics adviseeducators to be especially mindful of knowing what does not work.Media critic Stuart Ewen explains this rationale: Most of the mediaeducators in this country are people who want to “inoculate kids againstimages.” Because they hate and/or fear images, they develop “combatmanuals” to serve as educational tools. These “combat manuals” teachstudents how to distrust media and require them to assume that “ev-erything in a sound bite is evil.” The result is the equivalent of “teachingpeople how to read so they can figure out where all of the lies in thebooks exist” (Stay Free! 1998, 2).

Elizabeth Thoman, a pioneering leader in the U.S. media literacyfield and founder of the Center for Media Literacy in Los Angeles,explains that teaching media from within a condescending set of as-sumptions offers us nothing to fuel our questioning. Educators whoteach media literacy should passionately believe that media has some-thing important to offer us. She suggests that educators avoid thesecommon pitfalls:

� Focusing on the negative impact of media. The way we inter-act with mass media can change existing meanings for the better.Applied creatively, today’s media and technology serve as an ex-cellent way to connect people with information that will improvetheir lives. Just as interactive video programs in public health facili-ties help people to make better-informed decisions, there are manyother situations that can be served well by technology’s ability toprovide quick access to information (Thoman 1986).

� Identifying media issues only as isolated problems or as a sin-gle issue with simple solutions. Instead, view media as a systemwith distinct economic, political, cultural, and social ramifications.Broadening our horizons in this way and looking at different per-spectives helps us to use media creatively (Thoman 1986).

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As educators, getting at the truth of media’s stories without creatingalienation is ideally viewed as a unique opportunity to reestablish ourpresence and reaffirm our commitment to reformatting experiences inthe name of moral education. In education, as in tennis, “playing smart”means that we must identify “learning moments” as those moments inwhich we “recognize the dynamic importance of crucial junctures. . . ”(Gilbert and Jamison 1994, 113). A closing thought from Secretary ofEducation Rod Paige suggests the appropriate attitude: “Dream howtechnology can not only improve education but also transform whatwe think of as education” (Thoman 2003).

UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS

It is important to see media as a “system”—with economic, polit-ical, cultural, and social ramifications. Situated in the background ofevery media “event” is a worldview that serves the interests of thosein power: the entertainment companies, the corporations, news or-ganizations, and the politicians. Whose curriculum is worthy? Whosecurriculum shall be examined? Whose voices are being heard? Whosevoices are not heard? What is worth knowing? What is being shutdown? Our religious conviction makes it necessary that we take thetime and the energy to find all of these answers (Warren 1997, 13).

In his book, Seeing Through the Media, Michael discusses a memoreceived by Gary MacEoin, author, editor, human rights activist, andjournalist for the National Catholic Reporter. Warren notes that thememo shows us the dynamics behind the media point of view:

Ten business and financial corporations control the three major radio andTV networks, 34 subsidiary TV stations, 200 cable TV systems, 62 radio sta-tions, 20 record companies, 59 magazines (including Time and Newsweek),58 newspapers (including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall StreetJournal, andLos Angeles Times), 41 book publishers, and several film pro-ducers and distributors. . . . Ten corporations now earn more than half of allnewspaper revenue in the U.S. (Warren 1997, 25)

Since the time that MacEoin received that memo, media have be-come even more streamlined. The past decade’s succession of mediamergers has produced an intricate web of business relationships thatnow defines America’s media and popular culture. In 2004, five hugecorporations—Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation,Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS)—gained con-trol of most of the media industry in the United States (Bagdikian


2004, 4–5). Mergers are difficult to keep track of. It seems almost asif the situation changes daily. Media critic Ben Bagdikian explains therepercussions of having large corporate groups control the dynamicsof the social landscape:

The threat does not lie in the commercial operation of the mass media. Itis the best method there is and, with all its faults, it is not inherently bad.But narrow control, whether by government or corporations, is inherentlybad. In the end, no small group, certainly no group with as much uniformityof outlook and as concentrated in power as the current media corporations,can be sufficiently open and flexible to reflect the full richness and varietyof society’s values and needs. . . . The answer is not elimination of privateenterprise in the media, but the opposite. It is the restoration of genuinecompetition and diversity. (Bagdikian 2000, 223–224)

In order to remind viewers that it is the public who owns the airwaves,not the broadcasters, the National Council of Churches enacted apolicy in November 1995 to reinforce the priority of genuine competi-tion and diversity. In a policy statement entitled “The Churches’ Rolein Media Education and Communication Advocacy,” The NationalCouncil of Churches declared the following:

The Council of Churches have agreed to commit to the promoting of under-standing of how media works, how media affects our lives, and how to usemedia wisely by differentiating among the values, messages, and meaningof life as espoused by faith groups and as interpreted by media. (NationalCouncil of Churches 1995)

Pope John Paul II also expressed his concern in a homily directedat young people in Quebec City. He asked believers to examine andanalyze all of media’s claims:

Do not accept a divorce between faith and culture. You are being calledat the present time to a new missionary effort. . . . In other words, you willdevelop your culture with wisdom and prudence, retaining the freedomto criticize what may be called the ‘cultural industry,’ remaining all thewhile deeply concerned with truth. . . . Faith will ask culture what values itpromotes, what destiny it offers to life, what place it makes for the poor andthe disinherited with whom the Son of Man is identified, how it conceivesof sharing, forgiveness, and love. (John Paul II 1984, 325)

As Pope John Paul said to his young audience, we need to evaluatecritically what we see because there is such a wide range of interveningfactors helping us to form our opinions. In fact, media environments

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and television techniques are influencing us to such a broad extent thatthey are causing a crisis of the human spirit (Warren 1997, 54). They areforever changing the ways in which people express themselves, com-municate with each other, and pass on their stories to the next gener-ation. Ben Bagdikian puts it this way: “Nothing in human experiencehas prepared men, women, and children for the modern televisiontechniques of fixing human attention and creating the uncritical moodrequired to sell goods, many of which are marginal at best to humanneeds” (1989, 819). Increasingly, as we live in this media-dominatedworld, we are finding that the world of newspapers, magazines, cellphone, movies, video, computers, and all their technological offspring(including the advertising of all of these products), are creating theirown culture and changing our life structure. The culture we chooseto listen to (whether it is a religious culture or a secular culture) holdsthe power to shape our sensibilities and our structure of feelings. Itall depends on what we pay attention to and what we ignore (Warren1997, 28–29). Ben Bagdikian describes how this power weakens ourability to guide the next generation:

This concentrated power . . . is so concentrated, ubiquitous, and artful, thatto a degree unmatched in former mixtures of entertainment, it dilutes influ-ences from family, schooling, and other sources that are grounded in real-lifeexperience, weakening their ability to guide growing generations (Bagdikian2000).

If we choose to pay attention to religious meaning, then our perspec-tives will be explicitly pointed towards radical change and growth to-ward “the reign of God.” Because culture is our “signifying system”(because it is the way the politics, the history, the economy, and the so-cial order are communicated, reproduced, experienced, and explored),the signifying system we choose to adhere to becomes our view of theworld and our sense of the truth (Gallagher 1998, 6–7). If we do nothave a full understanding of the media environment in which we live,then we will not have the tools that we need to employ full culturalagency by making appropriate choices.

PRESSURE TACTICS, MIND GAMES, AND PSYCHING

Media gives us information about our culture. Yet media are partof the power in the economic system that it is supposed to report on.Somewhere in between the reporting of the message and the receiving


of the message are signals that represent an apparent conflict of inter-est. This is because political and cultural interests are always involvedin the process of the development, introduction, and distribution ofmass media in a society. As a result, what we understand about ourworld are really only the fragments and the pieces that we are told(Lasn 1999, 60–61). But there is yet another problem. Although themedia works hard to maintain at all costs their image as the “watchdogof the public interest” (Warren 1997, 25) they still continue to only giveus pieces of the truth because of the various dynamics and interestsof media mergers and ownership. Consequently, how we think aboutourselves as citizens and how we come to understand our politics isbound to the intricate systems and mergers of media. This compli-cated state of affairs is so confusing to media consumers that it createsa lack of focus. Without media literacy, we have “the opposite of cultureagency—cultural oppression.” Cultural oppression is “the impositionof a world of meaning on others in such a way that they cannot thinkabout it or question it” (Warren 1997, 13).

Could it be that media communications corporations intentionallyform an environment that disrupts our concentration in order to in-fluence our decision making and dominate our lives? Neil Postman,prolific and influential social critic and educator—best known for hiswarning that the “era of mass communications is stunting the mindsof children and adults” (NY Times 2003)—answers this question byoffering his own distinct definition of media.

Media is an environment that is a complex message system that imposeson human beings certain ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. . . . Unlikea classroom, courtroom, or business office, where the specifications of theenvironment are explicit and formal, media environments are more oftenimplicit and informal, half concealed by our assumption that what we aredealing with is not an environment, but merely a machine. (Media EcologyAssociation 2004)

Postman developed the notion of “Media Ecology” as a response tothis problem and institutionalized it as a graduate program at NewYork University. The study of Media Ecology identifies the variousroles media force us to play as consumers, views how media structuresform what we are seeing, and attempts to determine the different rea-sons why media impacts our feelings and our actions (Media EcologyAssociation 2004).

In tennis terms, media’s plan might be referred to as the “dic-tate game.” This is when a player continues to use specific tactics to

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maintain dominance over the other player after winning the first set(Gilbert and Jamison 1994, 118). Often, religious educators lose theirpresence to the dominant secular culture for two reasons: First, notbeing educated about how media tactics can control the energy, theatmosphere, and the attitudes of culture, takes the “cool” away fromthe religious educator. Social activist and critic Kalle Lasn defines themeaning of “cool”:

Legitimately cool people instinctively understand that the psychology ofsubservience—getting corporately seduced—is a chicken-ass way to live.Today, such people are an endangered species. (Lasn 1999, 114)

Not being “cool” is equivalent to losing an important tennis game tothe player who knows exactly how to exploit all of your weaknesses.It shakes up one’s emotional equilibrium, suggests a personal sense offailure, and sometimes even holds the power to predict future results.In just the same way, not being “cool” lessens the impact and resolve ofthe religious educator because his or her lack of preparation allows themedia to dictate the rules, call the score, and exploit the home-courtadvantage. The second problem occurs when the religious educatorchooses to remain theologically simple, using the explanation that Godprotects all of us from the complexities of life and insulates us from allof the pain of the world. When we disengage our intellectual thinkingand replace it with childlike explanations; when we do not continu-ally discuss, question, re-evaluate, and restate new ways of living ourfaith—we are pulled out of the game in another way. We eliminate anauthentic life of wisdom that others can use as a model for courageand confidence and replace it with unbreakable rules, regulations, anddoctrinal methods (Brueggemann 2001, 42-46).

KEYS TO VICTORY

A confident religious educator is interested in a broad range ofresearch. A confident religious educator draws on a wide diversity ofeducational fields in order to understand media, new media (digitaltechnology), and its impact on society. Our appraisals, judgments, andimaginative efforts become even richer in a religious context because itdeliberately interrupts the monotonous stream of consumer messagesthat surrounds every single space of our American existence. When-ever and wherever we make religious sense out of our lives, we employ


our own cultural agency to address the aggregates that are essentialfor successful evangelization in the future. We do this by helping ourstudents understand their own context as part of the unfolding socialbiography of the Christian community. As Warren sees it, full culturalagency has two aspects: (1) “It is an active way of looking at and mak-ing decisions about the meanings and values created for us in society”and (2) it is “an active way of judging the channels by which thesemeanings and values are communicated to us” (1997, 18). In this man-ner of inquiry, some of our best work will come from investigatingand analyzing all of the current trends of “plugging in.” The kind ofquestions we ask as religious educators will be a direct extension ofwhat we represent and what we prioritize as valuable in our society.Furthermore, our search for answers will address the phrase: “there’snothing we can do.” In seeking answers, we hold the potential to be-come courageous initiators of change (Etzioni 1993, 15). What is theemotional and educational impact of boundless access to informationwithout leaving home? What are the effects of extremely high levels ofstimulation from a variety of media on attention span? What have wegained or lost by our ever-increasing ability to multitask? How does thenew digital culture interact with a teen’s developing identity? (Mont-gomery et al. 2001, intro., 2). As religious educators, we can leverageour “intellectual capital” into a unique force to be reckoned with.

Religious educators can also respond to media with cultural agencyused in the form of books, videos, programs, research, lectures, andother forms of resource material that support good judgments. Pre-senting a media ecology curriculum and media ecology website canmake media education accessible and relationally specific to religiouseducators. In this format, religious educators can use the media ecologyquestions as a model for their own curriculum: (1) What role does thewider culture ask us to play? (2) How does the wider culture structureour religious images, symbols, and meanings? (3) What is happeningwhen the wider culture makes us feel as if it is necessary to act andfeel differently in the secular world than in the religious community?(Media Ecology Association 2004).

Finally, religious educators can maintain the cultural agency ofintentional dialogue in the form of classroom discussion, Web logs,online community, and public activism. In order to play on a levelplaying field with the Internet’s infrastructure of openness and freecommunication, religious educators should be warned not to avoidthe layers of meaning that exist within these religious contexts with“all or nothing” thinking. In order to truly begin to develop a religious

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language in media literacy, a creative approach would be to highlighttwo questions and place them at the top of all religious educationcurriculums: (1) What is the role and importance of our theologicalresponse to issues of media saturation? and (2) What is a constructivetheological response to our concerns? (Thoman 1986).

IDENTIFY PROBLEMS

Media, businesses, news organizations, and entertainment indus-tries have done their job. They have researched, critically analyzed, andstudied the emotional and practical motivations of people with the fullintention of doing what they are supposed to do—make money in acapitalist society (Warren 1997, 17). But have we been co-producersof religious culture? Clearly we have not made enough of an impact.“For the first time in human history, children are hearing most of thestories, most of the time—not from their parents or school or churchesor neighbors—but from a handful of global conglomerates that havesomething to sell” (Gerbner 1994, 40). Media have radically affectedthe way our children have grown up.

While most people think of television and media as programsand movies, it is really more than that. “Television is mythology—mythology that is highly and organically connected—repeated day af-ter day so that the themes that run through all programming and newshave the effect of cultivating conceptions of reality” (Gerbner 1994,40). George Gerbner sets the scene:

We hear much about the environmental crises in the natural world. Butjust as dangerous is this invisible crisis: the one that we face with new andmore intricately connected arrangements of the corporate media environ-ment. Why have we not yet developed the economic, political and culturalstructures to absorb and process the potential that media and technologyoffer? (Toms 1998)

It is not that we are not safe from the influence of the media age. Andit’s not that media and technology are “invading” our lives, either. “Theway we use media—or the way media uses us—is less an indicator oftechnological progress and more a measure of our culture, our politicsand our vigilance” (Schudson 1986). We must deal with our own reality.

Our view of what it means to be Christian has been wideningdramatically over the years, encompassing more and more people fromdifferent cultures, different lifestyles, and different perspectives. We


are invigorated by new dialogue, new understandings, and new waysto relate to religion, and we hold the desire to optimize some of thebenefits that have come from the sharing of stories. But the ways inwhich we will do this have come to a fork in the road. The contextof the previous generation—our parents’ generation—does not existanymore. The neighborhoods and sense of community of yesterdaynow exist in the form of media or impersonal mega-malls. And in manyways, life has become so complicated that we are not clear on how orwhere it is best to communicate our societal and religious values. Ourreligious symbols and convictions keep getting lost in society’s vast seaof contradictory media messages. We hold the power to build a vibrantand brilliant future for the next generation, but the rules have changedso much that many of us are not sure exactly where to begin (Etzioni1993, 13–14).

New media (digital media) has made the lives of youth even moredramatically different than our parent’s lives and our own lives. Wecan see this clearly—although we do not have the access to measure-ments of exactly how different our children’s lives are from our own(Montgomery 2001, intro., 4). As religious educators, we can teachyoung students about the sense of isolation that comes from a lifebuilt on superficiality and empty rationalizations, but many of us donot feel equipped to help them deal with its negative influence ontheir own “playing fields.” Researcher Kathryn C. Montgomery notesthat competitive workplace environments, are more than ready withtheir own agendas. They are spending millions of dollars on seminarsand training. They are staying on top of new studies about psychologyand the powers of persuasion and manipulation and strategies to stayflexible in an edgy economy. Educators are sorely behind the timeseducationally when it comes to an academic response to new media.A report from the Center for Media Education reveals the following:

Except for a handful of scholars, the academic community has failed to re-spond in a timely or effective fashion to the dynamic changes in the mediaenvironment of young people. . . . These studies are of broad public interestand should be widely disseminated. This will require finding new ways ofmaking research on new media widely available, not only from within thecommunity of scholars, but to a larger audience of parents, health profes-sionals, educators, and policymakers. (Montgomery 2001, conclusion, 3)

If religious educators want to get in touch with young people,then new media needs to be understood within its own context, but ina deeper, more insightful, more personal way. We must move quickly

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to develop appropriate answers. This new environment is commercialin nature—it proposes the commodification of just about everything. Itis intentionally positioning our youth as “consumers” and not as fullydimensional human beings. The report from the Center for MediaEducation continues,

The nature and the extent of marketing in the online world is unprece-dented, with the digital media intensifying many of the existing trends inthe commercialization of children’s lives. At every turn, from home to schoolto shopping mall, teens encounter various efforts to involve them in com-mercial transactions. By exploiting the interactive capacity of online mediato involve youth themselves (wittingly or not) in the marketing of variousproducts, marketers have taken a qualitative leap in their use of sales tacticsto shape and influence teen behavior. (Montgomery 2001, conclusion, 6)

Sadly, much of what we know about the online culture of Internet con-tent, communication, and commercial services has been confined tothe domain of market researchers. Educators tend not to gain accessdue to the rules of the corporation and/or due to the exorbitant pricesof gaining the right to use this information. In parallel, researchers inacademia do not have the resources for deeper and more targeted re-search. Putting scholars and educators at a distinct disadvantage, focusgroups, target studies, and traditional methods of study in academiaare usually tied to lower funds, slower development, limited distribu-tion of research, and higher costs for review than their counterpartsin corporate America. Often, by the time the academic material is re-leased, it is no longer relevant (Montgomery 2001, conclusion, 3). Thatis the sign of the times in the 21st century. That is how fast the newmedia is changing the world. But it is not all bad news. Identifying theproblem is the first step toward creating solutions—the second stepcomes from building on our strengths.

TOURNAMENT TOUGH: APPROACHES FORRELIGIOUS EDUCATORS

The media may feed us an unprecedented amount ofinformation—but our religious heritage nourishes us with an endlessamount of wisdom. Our Christian identity includes and facilitates theideal characteristics of the human endeavor: social concern, the build-ing of caring communities, ethical behavior, embracing the pain of theafflicted, liberation from poverty, and care for the widowed, orphaned,and oppressed. Developing the appropriate lifestyle and identity that


represent and symbolize the values, standards, and goals of the “reignof God” is our resistance over and against an oppressive, individu-alistic, consumer mentality. There are many examples of persons inour religious history who refused to be identified by the social con-struction imposed on them by the broader culture. Brazilian educatorPaulo Freire initiated a revolution of change by proposing a processfor teaching literacy in a way that gave socially marginalized peoplea way of naming their own oppressed situation. In using his process,people came to understand how to question their position in life andto consider how it could be reversed (McLaren and Leonard 1993, 8).Liberation, for Freire, included dialogue and action. His work in ed-ucational literacy is well known as “reading the word, but also readingthe world.” This “reading the world” was the key to education. Freirenot only taught people how to read, he taught them how to find hopeby questioning the nature of their historical and social situation—notas oppressed people, but as creative subjects involved in the creationof a democratic society (Warren 1997, 14–19).

“Beyond Blame,” a curriculum from The Center for Media Liter-acy’s online organization, is an example of how Freire’s principles ofreflection/action work in the classroom. As is evident, this curriculumviews media education as another form of a quest for meaning andfollows a four-step model for active learning:

Step 1: Awareness. Students express their own ideas and experiencesabout violence in the media.

Step 2: Analysis. Students examine the political, economic, social, andcultural factors that influence media portrayals and representations.

Step 3: Reflection. Students consider how media can be improved.Students discuss how they might change personal media choicesand habits.

Step 4: Action. Students prepare action plans to change their ownmedia choices and to work for changes in the media. (Thoman 2004)

The online database “Center for Media Literacy” also offers an ar-ticle entitled “Blue-Print for Response-Ability.” This article helpfullyorganizes dialogue about media in a way that suggests ongoing growthtoward positive futures. In this curriculum, we also find Freire’s fourprinciples suggested for use as a strategy for thinking positively andcreatively in the face of what may at first seem like the overwhelmingforce of media. The four principles of awareness, analysis, reflection,and action in this context provide a method of interpretation. They

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ask: Why are things the way they are? Do they have to be this way? Byexplaining social analysis in a way that differs from academic social in-vestigation, Freire’s influence becomes evident as a focus on personalaction for change. Personal change takes precedence over the goal ofsimply understanding the scope of a problem. As media “students”in this framework, our homework involves (1) assessing and examin-ing the causes and connections of social problems, (2) identifying theproblem at hand, and (3) articulating what is demanded of us as mem-bers of society or people of faith (Thoman 1986). Looking at issuesthrough this form of social analysis broadens our vision and widensthe lens of our worldview. Each time we organize for action, we willfind that the experience leads us directly to new and higher levels ofawareness.

In tennis, a “tournament tough” player is filled with purposefulintention. Likewise, as religious educators, naming and claiming ourkey commitments keeps us “tournament tough” as well. Can we acceptthat challenge? Do we have the courage to peer into our own unique21st century religious, pagan, pious, hypocritical, post-modern, mod-ern, and traditional culture and ask, “What is it that God is requiringand enabling us to do in the here and now, in our everyday lives in theworld?”

� We can be co-producers of our religious culture. As individu-als, do we have the courage to act through our deeper beliefs? Letus make certain that our voices are heard as we respectfully guideour religious institutions outside of their own comfort zones andtowards 21st-century changes.

� We can hold a 21st-century view of how to be religious. Wecan be proactive in recognizing, interpreting, and responding to thesacred in every area of our lives. We can become an integral part ofthe public discourse and dialogue. We can develop media-literatealternative news sources and educational sites.

� We can consciously live and communicate our own values.We can make intentional choices about the way we choose to liveour lives, the way we choose to treat our “neighbors,” and the waywe choose to spend our money. Our religious conviction insists thatwe do so.

� We can recognize that our lived commitments are powerfulforces. Our lived commitments are as powerful as media symbols—and in community they can speak just as passionately. “We don’t


need a million activists to jump-start a revolution. We just needonly an influential minority. . . ” (Lasn 1999, 212).

Karen Scialabba is a doctoral candidate at Fordham University. She wasformerly an editor with Paulist Press.

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outthinking the media: lessons from a tennis master

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