Rhetoric Race and Religion
I have spent a great deal of my time as a professor of Biblical Studies working with the media— ABC, NBC, CBS, the BBC, the Discovery and History Channels and so on. There are really two different sorts of dealings with the media that people who teach religion or theology are likely to have in this day and age— questions from the press about recent archaeological discoveries or developments in the Lands of the Bible, and secondly Christmas and Easter or even other sorts of specials commissioned by some major network as a program or series of programs. For an example of the latter, take the BBC series I did called the Story of Jesus, which aired here and in the U.S. a couple of Easter seasons ago. Usually what happens is that the print media news division gives tips to the program division about who to interview and who speaks well on camera and then you get a phone call. Print media interviews are of a more urgent nature (‘can I speak to you today…’) because of something suddenly being newsworthy, whereas TV programs gestate over a longer period of time. Now a days, much is created in a sound studio with the help of CG, but there are still series, such as the Story of Jesus, or the show I did for CBS called The Mystery of Christmas, where you go and film in Israel or elsewhere on location.
None of this might seem very important to you in the classroom, except as the occasional film clip to be used to illustrate your teaching about religion or the Bible, except that unfortunately in a post-modern, and increasingly post-Western, post-Christian era, even in large parts of the West itself, there is rampant Biblical illiteracy even among the well educated, and that includes the media. In this sort of situation, perception is reality and image is crucial. In other words, one of the reasons you find yourself having to justify the teaching of religion and theology in what I would call public schools and public universities is to a very large degree because you have an image problem, generated in part by that very ignorance of religion and theology in our culture. It is assumed that religion or theology has only to do with antiquity or out-moded non-scientific ways of thinking, and in any case is not essential to the curriculum in the U.K. in an increasingly scientific age. This prompts the need for justification of such classes and course of study, increasingly so since in the case of schools in the U.K. public tax dollars go to supporting these classes or course on religion or theology and indeed various of these educational institutions are declared charitable ventures.
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