Culture Shock - Religion on TV
As Hallowe’en approaches we readily embrace the dark side of witchery and magic. But what about seeing the light? Religion in the UK is regarded, at best, as a bit embarrassing. Simon Riches looks at how religion is portrayed on TV, and how, with a little more open-mindedness, the issues around God and morality could engage an apathetic electorate and revive our tired TV schedules.
Did Christian organisation Alpha intend the inevitable double take that surely accompanies viewings of their advertising campaign? ‘Does God exist?’, their poster asks, before outlining your multiple-choice answers: ‘Yes’, ‘No’, or ‘Probably’. Despite the appearance of fair choice, this could be either subtle or unwitting proselytising masquerading as trendy open-mindedness. After all, surely the final option should be ‘possibly’. Or ‘maybe’. Or ‘who knows?’ But ‘probably’? This renders your options: God exists, God doesn’t exist, or God probably exists; the implication for fence sitters being that if you’re unsure or, alternatively, if you think the question just can’t be answered – in other words, you are agnostic rather than atheist – this must somehow betray an underlying religious leaning.
This clearly isn’t the case. One can hold a genuine middle ground position. On reflection, ‘I don’t know’ seems like a fairly reasonable answer. But at least drawing attention to this flaw of craftily misconstruing the middle ground has a flip side. It introduces us to religious debate.
In the U.K. we’re exposed to the ultimately bland fashionable spirituality adopted by celebrity Kabbalah band wearers, and to conventions of traditional religious ceremonies, but religion and religious debate impinges very little on most people’s lives. If we look at contemporary politics, discussion of religion is kept to a minimum, certainly when compared to the U.S. “We don’t do God”, Alastair Campbell once famously said to Tony Blair. And yet what is interesting about U.S. culture, as opposed to our own, is the way its news and entertainment industries use the moral questions drawn from religion as a gateway to stir up genuine political interest. One only has to recall the religious debates and controversies that accompanied the last few U.S. elections. So what we can say in Alpha’s favour is that they are, at least, making us think about these questions. Perhaps if U.K television wants to jump on this bandwagon and also make us think about morality and religion we might see an increase in the general public’s interest in politics.
Post-9/11 U.S. television is a hotbed of religious debate. Often pitting their wits against right-wing Christian news anchors-cum-talk show hosts like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and fiercely opinionated pundits like Ann Coulter, the so-called ‘new atheists’ like scientist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion; Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens, scathing critic of Christian luminaries from Reverend Al Sharpton to Mother Teresa, and author of God Is Not Great; and Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, have thrust atheism upon American mainstream culture at a time of huge political change. Bumping up the bestseller lists, publications from contemporary philosophers, like Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, A. C. Grayling’s Against All Gods, and John Gray’s Black Mass have also weighed in on the God debate.
It’s interesting to note that several of these authors are actually British. And yet they don’t get the TV time here like they do in the U.S. Of course, we stage untelevised debates. For instance, Hitchens and Stephen Fry will debate whether ‘The Catholic Church is a Force for Good’ with Ann Widdecombe MP and Archbishop John Onaiyekan at Methodist Central Hall, Westminster later this month. And the occasional question might come up on Question Time, or other discussion shows. But obviously religious debate isn’t reaching a wide audience in any great volume.
There’s a U.S. tradition of fusing entertainment with religion and politics. Republican fundamentalist Christian Presidents Reagan, Bush Snr and Jr fired up a vitriolic post-Lenny Bruce generation of American stand-up comedians. George Carlin, Sam Kinnison, Bill Hicks, and Chris Rock were frequently featured on hit U.S. chat shows like David Letterman and Jay Leno, and this filtered through to the ‘angry’ American stand-ups of the present day, like Lewis Black, Doug Stanhope and David Cross. More pertinently, it instigated a trend that U.K. television clearly lacks: humorists like Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Keith Olberman, anchors who present a kind of satirical Newsnight and generate, especially with a younger audience, genuine interest in political issues.
Though this fusion may lead to accusations of triviality, U.S. television has something here that’s unlike anything in the U.K. Sure we’ve got Have I Got News For You? and its derivative satirical panel-based quiz shows, but there’s nothing resembling the way someone like Maher manages to combine comedy and satire with genuinely incisive political commentary. And yet we have the politically informed comedians who could host similar shows: Stewart Lee, Rob Newman, Mark Steel, and Mark Thomas, amongst others, come to mind. Ahead of next year’s general election, addressing this issue could genuinely go some way to combating voter apathy and, while we’re at it, improve the general state of U.K. television.
Simon Riches
