TV

It is arguably 100 years since the invention of TV and The Church Society is inviting theological reflection sparked by this.

https://www.churchsociety.org/resource/the-global-anglican-essay-prize-2026/

I don't think I have an essay in me, but perhaps I have a few jottings.

German comedian Henning Wehn speaks of the Parochialism of Facts. Every German child is taught that Friedrich Braun was the inventor of television.

The Traitors and its extraordinary popularity perhaps calls for some Faithful theological reflection. It was interesting to see this spill over into political discourse as Health Secretary Wes Streeting repeated his line that he is and always has been a Faithful.

Way back in the mists of time we read Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (Methuen, London, 1985) at theological college. It might be worth asking how that looks after all this time.

Paul Kingsnorth mentions TV in his Wendell Berry lecture along with some sources that would be worth following up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTlM-6nZNdE. He is interesting on the Latin origin of the word "focus", as the hearth or fire place (with its associated gods). Which of course feeds in to discussion of TV and focus. Once family viewing was a thing with one TV as the new hearth-light around which the family would gather of an evening. Then there may be a TV in every room. Now there is a devise in every hand too.

The transition from limited linear TV to online is of course also worthy of reflection.

American journalist Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember (2010) would be a book to consult. .

Peter Hitchens also has some comments about TV in The Abolition of Britain, if I remember correctly.

TV could also be situated in a broader biblical theology of creation and of making. TV and TV shows are works of sub-creation. The cultural mandate has resulted in this culture! TV is an aspect of technology and of humanity's dominion work , but it can easily have dominion over us. We have created the machine which can become a beast, even a serpent.


The Bible also has things to say of relevance to news, leisure, words and images.


We are to give our consideration to whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy. Like other media, TV is a mixed bag.


We might compare moral panic around TV to that over the printing press, the novel, the telephone or the internet.