The Medium Is The Problem
Unplugging the Plug-In Drug, by Marie Winn (Penguin Books, 206 pages; $7.95, paper). Reviewed by Quentin J. Schultze, professor of communication, Calvin College, and author of Television: Manna from Hollywood?
Karl Marx called religion the opiate of the people. Marie Winn credited television with the same dubious distinction in her first book on the subject, The Plug-In Drug, and now offers a cure for the habit in Unplugging the Plug-In Drug.
In her earlier book, Winn reviewed considerable evidence that showed television is addictive and makes people passive. The result is what novelist Jerzy Kosinski (Being There) called a “nation of videots.”
We are to thank Winn for shifting the focus of public discussion from the content of TV programs to the medium itself. The Christian community has frequently complained about sex and violence, while largely ignoring the impact of the medium on families, schools, and the nation.
As Winn argues, TV competes with other activities for our precious time. All of life is affected: play, sex, study, political participation. Although Winn does not address the issue, believers might also consider the impact of television viewing on our prayer life. Is there time for God in the average home where the set is on over seven hours a day? And what of the effect of TV on the quality of church fellowship?
National surveys are quite revealing. If Americans had more free time, they say they would most like to spend it with friends and relatives. How do they actually spend their available time? Watching the tube.
Tv “Turn-Offs”
Unplugging the Plug-In Drug is a handbook for schools and families that want to kick the TV habit. It’s a book so loaded with common sense that one wonders why anyone had to write it. The book is engaging and readable, thanks largely to the hundreds of excerpts from interviews with, and diaries of, people who have kicked the habit. Winn offers both advice and encouragement based on successful and unsuccessful “No TV Weeks” held in schools and homes around the country.
Winn cautions families about scheduling a Turn-Off during school vacations, high-stress periods, and special sports events, such as the World Series and the Super Bowl. She encourages families to load up on library books and other reading material before turning off the set. Winn also suggests that families decide in advance on a reward that they will share after a successful Turn-Off.
The book provides teachers and school administrators with helpful guidelines for organizing classroom TV Turn-Offs. Winn offers techniques for getting parents involved and motivating students. And she includes a list of classroom activities, such as interviewing people who grew up before the advent of television and charting family viewing habits.
Winn writes with evangelistic determination. She hopes to convict people of their TV sins and get them on the road to video sanctification. After reading pages of testimonies from happy converts, it is hard not to join her church.
Crash Diet
If Winn’s book has any major flaw, it is in the thesis that a “Turn-Off” is the best way to untangle TV from our lives. Dieters sometimes starve themselves for a few days, only to put on pounds later. Winn rightly admits that a “No-TV Week” is only a forum for increasing awareness of the problem and motivating people to do something about it. But her book lacks what humankind needs in a fallen world: a world view and lifestyle with the Creator at the center.
Winn offers few ideas about what to do when the set goes black. Reading is high on her agenda—it should be. But there are many more avenues to be explored. What about volunteer work and Christian service? What about worship and celebration? What about prayer and meditation?
In the TV age, even anti-TV campaigns can resemble the wrap-it-up-in-one-half-hour world of show business. Sanctification is a lifelong process. Revivals may get us on the right spiritual highway, but without ongoing support and encouragement the car will soon run out of gas.
Winn never suggests it, but I wonder if the church is not the ideal institution for fostering the balanced and edifying use of television. Or is TV viewing too “personal” for most local congregations to risk pronouncing the lordship of Jesus Christ over it? A courageous church will find Winn’s book an excellent place to begin.
Plymouth Rock Revisited
The New England Soul, by Harry Stout (Oxford University Press, 398 pp.; $32.50, cloth) and Worldly Saints, by Leland Ryken (Zondervan, 281 pp.; $18.95, cloth), reviewed by James Laney, pastor of New Life Church in Rolling Meadows, Illinois.
H. L. Mencken provided the modern definition of Puritans as people who have a deep, foreboding fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time. Two books have appeared recently that go a long way toward revising that stereotype: The New England Soul by Harry Stout, a straightforward and readable account of the early American Puritans; and Worldly Saints by Leland Ryken, a highly informative survey of English and American Puritan ideals.
Stout, a professor of American religious history at Yale University, offers a thorough study of the interaction of the preacher, the preached word, and the larger society in Colonial New England. What emerges is a portrait of the American Puritans as intense and godly Christians, eclipsing their current reputation as killjoys best noted for their scarlet letters and witch hunts.
Stout, however, is not the pioneer of such a re-evaluation. In the 1930s and 1940s, Perry Miller of Harvard set forth a perception of the Puritans that diverged widely from the prevailing view. Miller, however, has not been widely read. With his book, Stout has built upon Miller’s foundation while fashioning a story more accessible to the general reader.
Miller discovered in the minds of the first Puritan settlers profound conceptions about their role as the “redeemer nation.” Moreover, it appeared that these conceptions were, over time, so deeply woven into the American mind that to this day they inform, often unconsciously, a national dream of messianic destiny.
Preacher As Power Broker
Stout’s book, subtitled Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England, introduces five generations of preachers who bear the burden of bringing this dream to fruition. In the beginning, these men were the pre-eminent power brokers of their day, wielding an influence even more pervasive than today’s modern media. They had come with a calling and a purpose in mind; they were intent on seeing it achieved. Passing the torch to the next generation was not easy and was never a complete success, but the original message and vision of a redeemer nation proved malleable and powerful through the rapidly changing circumstances leading to the Revolutionary generation.
Stout tells a good story. Besides presenting careful research, he has drawn on a good imagination to bring the past alive. As we follow the narrative from first landing to First Continental Congress, the roots of the nation begin to appear. Meanings for America emerge, ones that prevail to this day, though dressed in garments quite different from those of the first days of “a city set on a hill.” We see the impact of New England’s religious culture on the evolving American republic. We learn that for New Englanders the Revolution was “first and foremost a battle to preserve their historic identity and messianic destiny.” We watch the common people emerge from a world based on deference and fixed hierarchical relationships to become America’s most distinctive asset.
And we learn that, contrary to the current scholarly assessment, there was not a secular drift among the ministers from the first generation to the fifth. “However much social theories and political circumstances might change, the demands of the gospel remained fixed for fifth generation ministers.”
An Identity Of Destiny
In all, the Puritan history is a story of the interplay of power, piety, and liberty: how social roles changed and how these words took on new meanings. The story comes to light because Stout has taken the time to read thousands of the unpublished sermons of the period, as well as the published ones that until now formed the basis for interpreting the Puritan experiment on these shores. Such a story—and the need to understand it—is relevant today. The interplay of power, piety, and liberty is still an underlying dynamic of our American society.
If Miller, and now Stout, are correct, there is a sense of destiny for America. From the beginning, it has been woven into our national identity. Ignoring its roots leads us astray. Embracing its ideas without knowledge creates havoc. Proper understanding of the beginnings of our nation can only enhance the work of those in all walks of life who now labor to chart the future course of this nation.
Puritan Sampler
For a general introduction to Puritan thought, Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were provides an excellent starting point. Ryken, professor of English at Wheaton College, offers a sampling of Puritan ideals and aphorisms on a wide range of topics.
Ryken has pulled representative excerpts from the writings of the mainstream Puritans and gives the reader a balanced and honest presentation of what they stood for, including both strengths and weaknesses. More important, he also explores what their ideas can mean to a modern believer.
The layout of the book is well suited to its purposes. For the main part, it is organized by topics: how the Puritans perceived personal concerns such as work, marriage and sex, money, the family; religious concerns such as the church and worship, the Bible, and preaching; and social concerns such as education and social action.
Ryken makes it clear to the reader that this approach is merely a convenient way to gain a better understanding of the Puritan stance. In reality, the Puritans did not compartmentalize their lives. For them, Christ unified all aspects of living.
This unified view of Christian living is one of the hallmarks of Puritanism. Ryken seeks to resurrect it and set it in context so that today’s reader might partake of such a rich legacy, and perhaps incorporate it into his or her own daily living. Of equal importance are the failures of Puritanism, some of which Ryken enumerates as warnings to all sincere and zealous believers.
Each chapter ends with a brief summary and a list of suggested reading on the topic at hand. It is an unpretentious study, obviously grown out of Ryken’s deep love and admiration of the Puritans and what they represent.
That Ryken is an English professor and not a theologian or historian is evident. Although he handles historical and theological aspects of the Puritans quite well, it is his appreciation of language and the arts that enhances this work. The captions under the illustrations, for instance, are far more perceptive than what normally fills such space.
No Room For Critics
Anyone who reads this book will gain a proper introduction to, and, no doubt, a healthy appreciation of, the Puritans. It should be kept in mind, however, that as inspiring as the Puritans can be (witness J. I. Packer’s excellent foreword), there were some deeper weaknesses in their position than those highlighted in this book. The shortcomings of the Puritans that Ryken discusses are surface manifestations of their underlying failure to comprehend fully and experience the work of the Holy Spirit. There were those in their midst, on both sides of the Atlantic, who perceived this inadequacy and sought to address it. The mainline Puritans did not, however, receive their critics at all; rather, they harried them out of the congregation.
In retrospect we can understand, without excusing, such behavior. The Puritan divines had devoted ample space in their writings to discussions of grace and the Holy Spirit and felt they had afforded such doctrines a balanced place in their view of godly living. At the same time, however, these Puritans were, without knowing it, a transitional people seeking to keep alive the medieval world view of order and unity in the midst of an emerging modern outlook of tolerance and independence.
Their critics, on the other hand, were unwittingly tossing aside the medieval and embracing the modern as they sought to accelerate spiritual renewal. Ryken points out that holding apparent opposites in tension was a Puritan strength. And the Puritans succeeded in keeping a well-tensioned balance in many areas of their lives. But the historical shift from medieval to modern was simply too monumental and shattering for them to integrate successfully.
The nobility of these men and women is that they tried. The Puritan legacy is rich and instructive. Those now known as Congregationalists and Presbyterians can most directly trace their ancestry back to these godly forebears. And Quakers have their roots in the more radical wing of the Puritan movement. But with Worldly Saints, Christians of all persuasions have a tool that provides ready access to the vast treasures of Puritan thought.
