Article November 12, 1979 Issue

OF INTEREST

Harvey Cox

Professor Harvey Cox
Harvard Divinity School
in The American Baptist
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

I have serious reservations about just how much [the mass media] can be used, given their present pattern of technical organization and financial control, to present the Christian gospel. In fact, let us try a mental experiment. Suppose, though I grant that it is impossible, all the mass media of all the countries of the whole world could be turned over to the churches for one whole week, or one whole month, exclusively for making the Gospel known.... Now at the end of the month, do you really think the world would be much better off, people would have a clearer idea of what the gospel offers, many souls would have been saved, or the Kingdom of God would be appreciably closer?

Personally I doubt it very much. The reason is this: although the specialists who work with "the media" deny it or don't want to know about it, most people do not really "believe" what they hear or see or read in the media, in any directly personal way.

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