In October, 1889, Thomas A. Edison completed work on his kinetoscope, a peep-show device that brought a series of still pictures to jerky life. Soon Sunday-after-noon crowds at the Kinetoscope Parlor in New York City were watching animated snatches of vaudeville acts and boxing matches. Few would have believed that in less than half a century this queer little box from West Orange, New Jersey, would spawn a modern industry of immense power and controversy. By 1896 Edison had combined the magic lantern with his picture box. Then came the nickelodeon, Charlie Chaplin, “talkies,” 3-D, Cinerama, and John R. Rice’s little pamphlet, “What’s Wrong with the Movies?”
To Dr. Rice, writing in 1938, Edison’s invention was “the rival of schools and churches, and feeder of lust, the perverter of morals, the tool of greed, the school of crime, and the betrayer of innocence.” His pamphet, read by thousands, set out to prove that the motion picture was “an unmitigated curse … so vile in its influence that no Christian should ever set foot in a movie theater.”
Twenty years later Dr. Clyde Taylor, then secretary of public affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, remarked that “evangelical Christians, as a rule, do not attend the movies.” Dr. Stephen W. Paine, president of Houghton College, picked up that remark and wrote a pamphlet in which he affirmed this “unpremeditated agreement of spirit … that we [evangelical Christians] do not attend the movies.”
Movie-Made Minors
Both Dr. Rice and Dr. Paine built their cases in good part around Henry James Forman’s book, Our Movie-Made Children (Macmillan, 1933), based on a study by the Motion Picture Research Council. This study reported that of the 50 million Americans who then attended movies on a weekly basis, 18.5 million were minors and 7.5 million were under fourteen.
“Alas,” said Rice, “nearly four times as many people attend the movies in America as attend Sunday school. They stay twice as long, and the movies have a far more thrilling scientific medium of appeal to the imagination and interest than the church.” Both pamphlets are rich in details illustrating the depravity of the motion picture.
The worst indictment leveled against the movie industry by both men concerned its effect on the spiritual life. “Doubtless,” Rice said, “in thousands, perhaps millions of cases, sinners become enamored of sin with the aid of movies and turn away from Christ never to repent, never to be saved, but to spend an eternity in hell. The spiritual results of the movies are incontestably worse than all the other results combined.”
Now, few would argue with the biblical and statistical evidence these men use to support their positions. Each has made a strong plea for an eleventh commandment, “Thou shalt not attend the motion picture”—a plea born out of a sincere desire to protect youth from the sex, sadism, and sensationalism that admittedly seem to dominate the screen. And yet—the whole truth must be faced. The Church cannot build walls high enough to protect her young people from the pressures of this modern age.
The Film Invades The Home
Television has enabled the motion picture to invade 47 million of America’s 53 million homes. A study by Elmo Roper and Columbia University reports that 90 per cent of the nation’s homes have a television set on one-third of every waking day. Another study indicates that the average American youth watches television twenty hours a week, or approximately one and one-half months of the year.
Pressures of the mass communications media no longer center in the theater; television has shifted the center to the home. Fortunately, there are Christian parents who understand the influence of this new medium and try to regulate its use; but the most careful parent soon realizes that complete control of the television habits of his children is very difficult, if not impossible, to attain.
If one thinks of the influence of television on young people along with the mounting pressures of advertising, paperback-book publication, the multi-million-dollar record and radio industries, and the situational ethic with its back-seat morality, he quickly realizes that to avoid the theater is to avoid the issue. The decision to ban the motion picture for evangelicals may have been valid in 1938, but in 1966 it must be seriously questioned.
No More Parrots
We must first define our attitude and responsibility toward modern Christian youth. Today’s student is trained to question, to analyze, and to make responsible judgments. He is no longer content to parrot decisions others have made. He wants to find the answer for himself. Some churchmen feel threatened by youth’s questions. They seek to avoid certain areas of social significance. Although their young people ask “Why?” again and again, they consistently avoid giving frank, realistic answers, hoping the questions will somehow go away. When will they realize that questioners, not questions, go away? If young people want to know, let us commit ourselves to helping them find out. No question should be ignored, no issue avoided.
Other churchmen attempt to legislate morality. They seek to suppress or postpone critical judgment and make obedient followers of youth by internalizing a condemning conscience. For a brief time these young people live in a clearly structured social world. Then comes adulthood, requiring a stream of value judgments that guilt cannot help them make. Often they rebel and leave the church, because they cannot relate their Christian faith to a modern, complex age.
The Church must neither avoid the issue nor make all the decisions for its youth. Its task, in the words of poet and critic John Ciardi, is to guide youth to “the ability to make judgments, to discriminate between good and bad, great and good, good and half good.” To build courageous Christian youth capable of making responsible decisions is a difficult and dangerous task, but it must be done. We must help them learn, as the Apostle Paul put it, how to “test everything and hold fast what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21, RSV).
It is time for us to reconsider the motion-picture question. When Christian youth have the courage to ask, “What does the Church think of movies?,” there are some leaders who mutter something about violence, sex, and Philippians 4:8 and then go home to watch “Bonanza” or Ed Sullivan. Others try to settle the question with a kind of moral truce. Some churches, Bible colleges, and seminaries will accept only those who pledge abstinence from movies. Reasons for this attitude are often rooted in another age. Look at the problem from the perspective of today’s youth. To tell a Christian teenager that “all films are evil” is to risk losing his respect, for he knows that films can be an exceptional source of entertainment, education, and even inspiration. Not only television but also the school and the church (with their extensive use of visual aids) have helped show him that.
To say that “all theaters are immoral places” is not true. Teen-agers know that theaters, like people, have individual reputations, and even Christian youth who have not attended movies know the difference between the clean, well-run neighborhood theater and the shabby drive-in at the edge of town.
To say that we “support an evil industry” when we attend a worthwhile film may have some validity; but the thinking young person knows that if we consistently supported only those industries with no evil aspects, we should be hard put to find a place to work, shop, or play. Also, youth have learned in their classes in government or economics that the law of supply and demand controls any industry. They know that tickets purchased for a decent film are ballots cast for more decent films.
To say that a youth “risks his Christian witness” by attending a good movie is questionable. Today’s Christian may also jeopardize his witness by making Christ and the Church appear completely other-worldly, impractical, and unappealing. A churchman can destroy a teen-ager’s witness by isolating him from his peers. Christian youth should be equipped by the Church to stand for their Lord in the midst of their contemporaries.
To say that even the best movie “might expose young people to subtle worldly influences” is to say something that is obvious to the honest teen-ager. Yet he also knows the impossibility of escaping these influences. He must be taught how to handle them.
It is only natural for the home or church to want desperately to protect young people against the evil influences of this age. Nevertheless, laying down rules against the pressures of the various media is like voting against a tidal wave. The wave is upon us. We must teach our youth to swim.
This essay is not a defense of the motion-picture industry, which surely deserves criticism. Its purpose is rather to seek ways to help youth become discriminating in their use of modern media. Young people need self-controls that will serve them when they turn on television, attend films or plays, choose books or magazines, or listen to the radio, records, or coffee-house folk singers.
A Most Influential Art
What is needed is a revised Christian philosophy of mass media arrived at through a re-evaluation of our attitude toward motion pictures, often called the greatest art of this century. Films are a product of machinery and equipment, and of technical and artistic skills. They are not inherently evil. Some in the industry, in their eagerness to meet the public’s demand, have indeed misused and corrupted the art. Yet there are many others who are anxious to communicate truth through films of high quality. Let us not condemn the art for the sins of many of its practitioners nor destroy the good in our enthusiasm to eliminate the bad. Above all, let us teach our youth how to discriminate. This is a day of laissez-faire in book publishing. Yet who of us would, because there are corrupt books printed, do away with publishing?
A television party for young people might be a natural place to begin developing standards. An evening might be planned at which a popular or controversial program is watched. Then, over cokes and potato chips, there could be a frank discussion of the show’s purpose, contest, and form. Did the program have something to say? Was it well said? Was it worth saying? Or was the program sheerly for entertainment? If so, did it entertain? Why? This kind of discussion in a Christian setting will help young people develop the ability to discriminate, to think critically, to understand the obvious and the subtle effects of the medium.
Leaders Must Learn First
But an honest leader soon realizes his own weakness in this area. He himself needs to learn how to view television critically. In his local library, he can find helpful articles, pamphlets, and books. He can get acquainted with local radio, television, or film executives and try to understand their point of view. We can only help others use the media well when we ourselves have developed a discriminating Christian taste.
Church libraries might have shelves with histories of the communications media, a grammar of film language, and several sources of responsible film and television criticism. Weekly TV guides in which desirable programs are circled might be posted. Thus the lurid and exaggerated advertising of the industry might be offset.
It should be made clear that these materials are intended as a help for those who attend the motion pictures, not as inducement to those who do not.
Further helpful discussion might concern how programs are selected for network release, how religion is handled by different media, and what opportunities lie in Christian radio, television, and film production. There might be a tour of a local broadcasting station with an interview of a staff member. Or a theater manager might be invited to a special forum to discuss how films are chosen for local release and how church people can influence local and national film standards. Young people might even plan a radio or television production, perhaps in cooperation with other church groups, as a local public-service program. When the media are better understood, they can be used effectively for Christian communication.
Again, there might be an interchurch film forum at which a controversial motion picture is shown preceded by a synopsis of the story and facts about the author’s background. After the film a panel might discuss the film frankly, with all present invited to share their own reactions. This kind of honest, Christ-centered discussion will do more to help young people develop good taste and judgment than warnings and rigid censorship.
Teen-agers are the biggest audience for radio, television, and movies. They need to develop responsible Christian stewardship in using these media. They will respond to the courageous presentation of conviction about what is inferior and debasing. And such positive action will help convince them that the Church really cares about their problems and that Christianity really works where people live.
For years we have feared motion pictures. With realistic awareness of their dangers, let us build in young people a constructive, discriminating attitude toward them.
A Long Way Behind Wesley
The lay preacher mounted the steps of the polished pulpit, eyed the small congregation, and launched into his subject. “My friends,” he declared grandly, carefully placing the large pulpit Bible on the seat behind him, “we are here to consider the mythological content of the resurrection narrative within its litero-philosophic framework. My reading is taken from the abridged version of Doctor Fillibust’s monumental theological work, What Is, Is. Whilst the doctor is not a member of any denomination, he considers himself a representative of a new community-oriented worshiping group within the united church of the future. Denominations are, as we all understand, mere accidents of historic change.”
The lay preacher took a slim, yellow-covered book out of his briefcase and held it up a moment. Then opening it carefully he said, “Our reading is from Doctor Fillibust’s first chapter: ‘Historic perspective and the search for ascertainable fact are products of a scientific, rationalistic era. But since our basic thought patterns are created in early environment, it follows that, in a time of rapid change, our basic beliefs are obsolescent. Thus, in examining what the ancient world considered to be the truth—if you will momentarily excuse the word ‘truth’—we should regard the prophets as children.… To put it simply, they believed what they believed because they were unable to believe anything else. We, on the other hand, are more fortunate. By understanding the ways in which beliefs are structured, we can organise creational concepts appropriate to the needs of modern society.’ ”
An elderly saint in the back row of the church unwrapped a peppermint. Almost every week, at about this time, he placed one in his mouth.
“And now,” the lay preacher continued, “let us sing a hymn.”
Like the organ, the hymns were quite elderly, and the lay preacher, steeped as he was in the modern outlook, always found it a little difficult to choose one that did not offend his respect for modern science. He suggested that the congregation sing a few carefully selected verses of a hymn couched in fairly general terms. Where it offended him, he just refrained from singing. This brief interruption concluded, the preacher began his discourse.
“I want you to realize, my friends,” he said gravely, “that this book is not to be confused with other so-called liberal interpretations that only confuse the issue.”
The organist, a nervous man, accidentally pressed the C sharp key, and a shrill note echoed through the building.
“If we want to grasp the fruits of modern theology,” the lay preacher continued earnestly, “we must wrestle with the vocabulary involved. And we must not be disheartened if at first we do not understand it.”
He leaned over the pulpit and looked intensely sympathetic. “At first, I didn’t understand this book,” he confessed. “I was baffled. And then I discovered the main theme.… You see, my friends, to put it simply.…”
He paused. On reflection, he was not at all sure that it could be put simply, and he had already spoken for nearly twenty-five minutes. “Even if the events described by the apostles didn’t really happen,” he went on triumphantly, “they are still significant, because the apostles said they happened. They were, in fact, rationalising a reorientation that had involved a profound psychological experience. If they had possessed our knowledge of clinical psychology, they would have described matters quite differently. Now, all this is good news.”
He now spoke with less enthusiasm. Actually, he hadn’t been able to follow the learned doctor beyond chapter three of the epoch-making book.
“It means that we can adopt a pragmatic, rationalistic approach to our church activities, in terms of social significance and group dynamics.” He smiled. “We can abandon tradition without the smallest twinge of conscience, because what our fathers believed, they believed only because their circumstances made them believe it. They didn’t have our grasp of … of.…” Outside the sky darkened. Someone moved and switched on the church lights.
“My time is up,” the lay preacher concluded. “But I urge you all to go home and read Doctor Fillibust’s book.”
The congregation nodded politely. After the meeting the lay preacher, beaming at the door, encountered a man of similar donnish appearance.
“I enjoyed what you had to say, brother,” the stranger said, “but you must have the doctor’s 1961 edition.” He took the slim yellow-covered book and examined the flyleaf. “Ah, yes,” he remarked. “This is the 1961 edition. All this is rather old-fashioned. The 1965 revision is called What Is, Is Not. You should read it sometime.”
As the two men talked, Mr. Furze, the devout church secretary, sat in a pew and quietly said his prayers.—DAVID LAZELL (a lay preacher in the Congregational Church of England), Bingham, Nottingham, England.
