Neil Postman's view on either religion, politics, or education in Essay

Neil Postman's view on either religion, politics, or education in Amusing Ourselves to Death - Essay Example This is certainly true, as many local cable shows make religion to be some kind of spectacle and not much else. However, even off the television religion is not all that great and in fact many of the things Postman talks about have been carried out long before television existed. According to Postman, when religion is put on television, "Everything that makes religion an historic, profound and sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no tradition, no theology, and above all, no sense of spiritual transcendence" (Postman). He says that what happens instead is that the preacher becomes more important than God himself, and that essentially the religious experience becomes some kind of cult of personality where the audience is enthralled with the preacher who owns the television show. Postman cites a number of television shows which proves his point. His three main examples are Jim Swaggart, Pat Robertson, and Reverend Terry. Reverend Terry "offers a "prosper ity Campaign Kit," which appears to have a dual purpose: As it brings one nearer to Jesus, it also provides advice on how to increase one's bank account" (Postman). Pat Robertson is not quite so bold about it but his 700 club still charges people "fifteen dollars per month" to belong to it and to keep running (Postman). Jim Swaggart is in the old style but his preaching is still television-ized, his sermons are "theatrical, emotional, and in a curious way comforting" (Postman). Indeed, there are plenty of television shows like the ones Postman mentions. Local cable stations abound in just the sort of preaching that he is talking about. In fact, things have gotten worse since Postman's writing. Figures like Glenn Beck, who has a television show as well as a radio show, actually just spread hatred and spectacle on their show purely for ratings. Glenn Beck is a reat example of the preacher being more important than God, like Postman says. Postman, though, says television "is not congen ial to messages of naked hate" (Postman). Figures like Beck show this is not the case, and suggest that religion has become even more degraded by television now. Postman believes that television automatically changes the message of anything, and that this is why religion becomes cheapened on television. Unlike the thrill of being there in person, where the preacher can speak more directly to you, television makes this impossible because you do not know who is watching and have to take care of the ratings. Basically he says that "on television, religion, like everything else, is presented, quite simply and without apology, as an entertainment." Postman compares several pre-television evangelists to the three TV preachers he brought up. He says that men "such as Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield and Charles Finney, ... were men of great learning, theological subtlety and powerful expositional skills" (Postman). He says that what makes the real difference though, is that the medium o f television is not as effective as the medium of being there in person. The problem with moderrn evangelists is that they do not "the truth, if they think about it at all, that not all forms of discourse can be converted from one medium to another" (Postman). He says this is like translating poetry, where the message remains but the meaning is lost. While Postman does make a good point about ratings, it is not necessarily true that all pre-television evangelists were better at their job. For instance there must have been many who were just in it to make money by entertaining people, and in a time when television was not available there was not any other sort of entertainment. For this reason