It is sobering to realize that estimates indicate people between the ages of 30 and 50 have watched an average of 40–50,000 hours of TV and some 300,000 advertisements.
The advent of 24-hour television news is illustrative of the demands of communicating content within the constraints of a medium defined by entertainment. A story only lasts as long as it can remain interesting or evoke an emotional response on the part of the audience. New angles can be explored and the speculation by commentators and pundits that precedes, accompanies and follows after events is constantly refashioned to maintain interest. When interest wanes, stories are dropped before ratings fall. This bears no relation to the substance and significance of a story, only to its ability to keep the attention of the viewers (Davies, 2009; Rosenberg and Feldman, 2008).
Narrative
If television has been the dominating medium of the last generation and it has embedded entertainment as the key component of communicating ideas within contemporary western culture, then it needs to be remembered that the staple diet of TV is story, and the narrative form heavily influences the whole viewing experience.
Narratives are impossible to escape. Like the air we breathe they are all around us. Most obviously in novels, films and TV programmes narratives actually inhabit the full range of human experience from our historic myths and legends, through conversational anecdotes to our own personal histories with their dreams and nightmares. Some have argued that narrative is so widespread that it must be one of the ‘deep structures’ of our makeup, somehow genetically ‘hard-wired’ into our minds (Abbot, 2002, p. 3). Certainly the early indicators of narrative ability begin to appear in children in their third or fourth year. You only have to witness their sheer delight at having a story read to them or their appetite to watch and re-watch a favourite film or TV programme to appreciate that narrative is fundamental to our human makeup. Indeed, without the ability to construct and understand stories it would be very difficult to order and communicate our experience of time.
The power of storytelling is in the way that the unfolding plot of a story mimics our own experience of life and the way reality unfolds sequentially for us as people. As such, narrative produces the feeling of events happening in time and evokes a personal and often emotional response from those listening to it. Whether true or false in what it depicts, it appears to replicate life. This is the reason for its penetration of our collective imagination and its dominance as a means of communication over against more analytical approaches. For the journalist Robert Fulford this is ‘the triumph of narrative’ (1999, pp. 15–16).
Narrative is so all-pervasive that it is impossible to ignore. Indeed, it would be unwise to do so.
Consumerism
It was the Christmas Eve edition of the Chicago Tribune in 1986 that provided the first recorded use of ‘retail therapy’.
We’ve become a nation measuring out our lives in shopping bags and nursing our psychic ills through retail therapy. Freely and enthusiastically embraced by shoppers around the world, it is the explanation of choice to account for the trip to the shopping centre to buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have. But it makes us feel better!
There can be no doubt that one of the most significant developments of the second half of the twentieth century, if not the most significant, was the rise of consumerism. Historically the patterns of consumption and commerce within the life of a culture were expressions of the core values of the society. At some point within living memory this relationship flipped. As Craig Bartholomew points out, the idea of consumerism points to a culture in which the core values of the culture derive from consumption rather than the other way around (Bartholomew and Moritz, 2000, p. 6).
The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman identifies three key elements in contemporary consumerism (2007b, pp. 82–116). The first has to do with identity. What we consume defines who we are by association with a particular reference group. It is a sobering exercise to sit down and ask ourselves what our clothes, our car, our house, the possessions that we value highly actually say about us. More telling are the things that other people see and associate us with. Bauman makes the point that consumer goods come with a ‘built-in’ identity, they are rarely value-free. Of course, the possibility of redefining ourselves and becoming someone else is always there. He sees this as a present-day substitute of the older ideas of salvation and redemption. Second, he observes that consumerism has increasingly built-in obsolescence to the products it sells. While this is clearly a requirement of keeping the marketplace alive, a consequence is to liberate the present from the past and the future ‘that might have impeached the concentration and spoiled the exhilaration of free choice’ (2007b, p. 84). Of course, the freedom to choose has increasingly become adopted as the defining characteristic of contemporary ethics. The third element of consumerism that he identifies flows on from this idea of free choice. In it he demonstrates how consumerism both appears to affirm choice while at the same time limiting it. Consumerism is a forced choice from the available options that have been provided. However, it is important to recognize that freedom is identified with choices made in private life.
Choosing . . . is not at issue, since this is what you must do, and can resist and avoid doing only at peril of exclusion. Nor are you free to influence the set of options available to choose from: there are no other options left as all realistic and advisable possibilities have been already preselected, pre-scripted and prescribed. (2007b, pp. 84–5)
Ethos and atmosphere
Commentators often talk about ‘the spirit of the age’, the overarching ‘feel’ of a particular point in history. The importance of such observations is that they identify the broad themes and sensibilities of time and place. They are significant for preachers in that they indicate where the gospel message has deep resonances with the surrounding culture and where, by contrast, it is profoundly counter-cultural. Where there is commonality between Christian discipleship and the context it inhabits, clearly it is right for the Church in general, and preachers in particular, to embrace it fully. Indeed, where contemporary culture is genuinely indifferent to biblical teaching and neither affirms nor contradicts it, it is wholly appropriate for our proclamation to inhabit that world too. It is only those things that are inimical to Christian faith that should be resisted.
So, what are the elements of the ethos and atmosphere of contemporary Britain that preachers have to have in mind? What are the broader trends in attitudes that impact the homiletical task? Perhaps the most critical for the pulpit is the suspicion of motives of those in authority and a tendency to entertain the most damning interpretation. This has been fed in no little part by the sceptical interrogation of those in positions of responsibility by certain sections of the media and catastrophic breaches of trust in public and commercial life. The Christian community has not been beyond this with abuses of position that range from the scandalous financial dealings of televangelists to the predatory abuse of paedophile priests.
This has left those in leadership in a much weakened position. Trust has to be earned rather than just given as a mark of deference. Leaders have to prove themselves to those they lead through their practice of leadership. If it is seen as manipulative, bullying or self-serving, what trust there is will quickly evaporate. Christian leadership should be open in style, consultative in process, transparent in practice and accountable.
A second identifiable trend is the evolution of ‘soft’ levels of commitment. Membership of political parties, trades unions and churches are at an all-time low. Only the National