The Christian community has always had varying attitudes toward the surrounding culture. From the church’s early days when believers shunned the Roman games to the established church’s condemnation of the theater, there have been times when entertainment was seen as threatening. Other times culture arose from within the church with medieval miracle and morality plays. American evangelicals have a long history of eschewing the “idle amusements” of the novel, theater, and other popular entertainments, often condemned from the pulpits in 19th century as diversions from the pious life. Thus disengaged from the surrounding culture, Christians were unable to contribute much in the 20th century except protests when the new media of film, radio and television shaped society.
Now in the 21st century, attitudes have to some degree moderated with the recognition that all creative efforts aren’t necessarily evil, frivolous or corrupting. But wishing to avoid the bad and appreciate the good, many may find that the tastes of mainstream media critics don’t always align with their own biblical worldview and seek intelligent reviews that aren’t preoccupied with counting bad words or focusing on exposing supposedly nefarious ideologies in popular culture.
I’ve read reviews in print media ever since I was a boy reading my dad’s Time magazine and today read Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide to keep up with new programs and movies. But I know those critics simply don’t grasp the values I and a lot of my fellow Christians have that establishes certain basic parameters of taste founded in our view of human dignity arising from being made in God’s image–thus the extremes of exploitation of human sexuality makes many wary of shows such as you’d find on cable television–which often feels obligated to flaunt it’s greater freedom to show skin and sex regardless of the lack of artistic justification.
Thus I appreciate when publications like World newsmagazine reviews movies, books and new musical releases. But I’m also excited about a new site dedicated entirely to reviews of movies, television, books, music and even video games. The Fish is all about keeping up with the latest in pop culture, but with a Christian sensibility. To those who think such a site is needlessly sectarian, think of The Fish as an evangelical version of Latino Review, an excellent site offering “the Latin Perspective on all movies and pop culture.” That site exists because the second largest ethnic group in the US has interests in reviews that take its cultural distinctives into account. Similarly, the Fish has its Christian audience in mind when reviewing many of the same items found in mainstream publications and seeks to take those values into account.
That’s the nature of our widely diverse digital landscape–yes, it’s narrowcasting but the web makes niche criticism relatively more affordable in an era of declining newsstand publications suffering from a dearth of advertising revenue. The Fish is part of Salem Communications, the company behind the big Christian radio group and two other big sites Christianity.com and Crosswalk.
Finally, this is a plug for a site that I write for, fulfilling a long time dream of doing reviews of popular culture, which for the most part, will be television reviews. And the site will feature posts from The Culture Beat that I hope will direct attention here as well.
I think you’ll find The Fish is a place you’ll want to bookmark and visit regularly, with discerning and discriminating writers you’ll enjoy reading who love popular culture as much as you do.
