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Schwartz recounts a visit to the Gap to buy a pair of jeans. Although he was overwhelmed by the volume of available choices, the fact that he could purchase something with ultimate fit and comfort made anything less than perfection unacceptable. What had once been a relatively mundane errand was suddenly imbued with significance.

Perhaps this explains why so many Christians complain about media indecency but still spend upwards of $50 a month to invite it into their homes when they could hook up an antenna and watch only FCC-regulated network television for free, or get Sky Angel.

I am what Schwartz calls a "satisficer," someone who doesn't aspire to perfection in every purchase, or in every television-viewing opportunity. That's why I'm okay with Sky Angel's limitations. In addition to preaching and prophecy conferences, Sky Angel offers just about anything regular TV offers, only in limited supply and of a generally less sophisticated quality. That is its greatest advantage: Because the offerings are so meager, we spend a lot less time watching TV.

There is no profanity, gratuitous sex, or violence on Sky Angel, not even a hint of impropriety in the wonderfully tame commercials. It's a wholesome viewing experience—if, and only if, you click past the money grubbers in expensive suits promising health and wealth to those who pledge from their want.

For media critics like William D. Romanowski, author of Eyes Wide Open, tame is not necessarily a good thing. By preferring sentimentalism and melodrama to art that engages and sometimes challenges, he says we copy the world rather than separate from it. At least Romanowski leaves room for the Anabaptist tradition of cultural critique via disengagement. According to screenwriter Brian Godawa, who wrote Hollywood Worldviews, people who tend toward what he calls "cultural anorexia" "endanger their own humanity." He says, "They don't understand the way people around them think because they are not familiar with the 'language' those people are speaking or the culture they are consuming."

Last spring I visited a service at Willow Creek Community Church that was a culturally familiar montage of text, music, drama, video, and preaching. In a take-off on the Donald Trump reality show The Apprentice, a pastor introduced a sermon series on being an apprentice of Jesus. This may work for a service for seekers, but I want my home to be a respite from evil more than I crave convenient access to art or a catchy way to relate to my neighbors. And is Trump really the language I need to speak in order to retain my humanity?

I'm not saying that the programming Sky Angel carries is better. It's a schizophrenic viewing experience that alternates from inspiring to bizarre, inane, and yes, indecent (though not by the FCC definition, which defines references to sexual or excretory functions as indecent and prohibits such programming on network television between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.). By any other definition, the fundraising techniques of any number of Christian broadcasters are outrageously indecent. Sky Angel's late founder, Robert W. Johnson, pursued the lofty goal of "Christian unity" at the expense of doctrinal conviction. Programming includes theological perspectives ranging from Roman Catholic, Seventh-day Adventist, and Calvinist to pure charlatan.

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January 2005, Vol. 49, No. 1