Christians influencing the media and pop culture

because i know you all read all of those articles i posted (ha... i know they were long)... i thought i would post one Brian McLaren's responses from "10 Questions for Brian McLaren."


Question:
I'm going to put you on the spot and ask for your thoughts about some conservative Christian organizations, like the Parents Television Council, seeking to pressure the government into censoring television programming. Is this going to work or will it backfire? [i think this question relates to the boycotting of certain media as well, such as "The Golden Compass," etc.]

McLaren:
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"I think the Christian community is making an extremely dangerous mistake with this. The mistake is we are going from dissatisfaction to legislation and missing the middle step of persuasion. Now you would think, from our beliefs from the Gospels, that God isn't just interested in us being focused on the law, but he actually wants to change our hearts. That’s my understanding of how the Kingdom of God works, but we (the church) don't seem to understand that.

So our first move when we're unhappy about something is to get laws passed about it. To me that is pure Colonialism; Colonialism says change the world, by controlling other people against their will. The work of persuasion would be much harder, and it requires us to change our rhetoric 180 degrees. You can't, and you don't, influence people you identify as the other side of the culture war. The language of the culture war is the language of "strength on our side" to dominate the other side. That leads to belief in things like redemptive violence, which is incredibly widespread in the Christian community, and which, I think, needs to be questioned in light of the teachings of Jesus. That discussion you certainly aren't going to hear on religious broadcasting.

So, firstly, I think it’s a gross and foolish mistake of strategy. If we were to take 30 percent of the effort spent on legislation and invest it instead on sensible and palpable persuasion, we would get an awful lot farther."
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i would add that sometimes McLaren's words can come across as cutting or extremely cynical towards others, but he really isn't... i've read his work and listened to him speak; he is very soft-spoken and is really trying to help by speaking what he believes; not discredit other people's beliefs.