Jesus Christ & The Media Narrative: The Tactics Of The Media In Subverting Christianity

There is an overarching narrative in our country, the United States, that is projected through media. The narrative is guided by academic institutions, television shows, newspapers, and of course the world wide web. Narrative is a term that we'll use to describe the overarching framework of ideas, the general mood and worldview of the national public in the United States. And this is certainly true for other nations as well. In some nations this narrative is state run, it's controlled by the government powers. That would be true in nations like China or North Korea. But in most free nations in Europe and the United States this narrative is largely controlled and guided by media.

In the United States there is an interesting paradigm shift that took place at some point in the past 50-60 years. That is of the media in our country projecting and putting forth a national narrative, a national worldview that tends to not accurately reflect what most average Americans believe.

While most Americans would hold more traditional views, and tend toward more Judaeo-Christian views on reality, the national media tends to project the assumption that most Americans hold to more progressive views of the world, like evolution, naturalism, multiculturalism, identity politics, abortion, and increased government control over life.

Why? Well, it's important to remember that media outlets like NBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox News are private businesses. Thus they are subject to the political leanings of those who own those institutions. Thankfully increasingly we've seen that Americans are turning to radio, social media and the internet to find news and comprehend the national mood on their own. Thus we've seen a counter-narrative emerging. One is projected by the television news media, and the big newspapers, and a new counter-narrative is projected by more conservative and traditionalist outlets like independent news sites like National Review, Weekly Standard, the Daily Wire, the Daily Caller, The Federalist, Breitbart, and others. Contributing to this counter-narrative are talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham, and others. So increasingly we see two narratives battling for dominance and authority as the dominant worldview of the country.

This isn't a bad thing, I don't believe. For the longest time we've been prisoner to one narrative, the progressive narrative. Thankfully there is at least somewhat of a counter-narrative that espouses Christian and traditional views on life, history, and everything beginning to emerge.

It's affected my life, in a profound ways. I was raised up in public schools that taught profoundly non-Christian views on life. One could call it indoctrination, and this was before common core and the changes made in that curriculum that is even more blatant in pushing a leftist materialistic worldview. I was taught post-modernism in college. These are profoundly anti-Christian views, taught on public dollars.

This is a profoundly important for Christians today to understand. The United States is a nation that has been exceedingly Christian in it's worldview since it's founding in 1776, until the 1960s. And for the last 50-60 years, increasingly the media and academic institutions have labored to create a social climate that is hostile to Christianity. And especially in young people, they've succeeded.

According to a broad study conducted by former secretary of education William Bennett between 1960 and 1997, our society saw the following increases:

865% increase in the number of couples living together out of wedlock

511% increase in the percentage of out of wedlock births

280% increase in the rate of violent crime

248% increase in the percentage of single-parent families

215% increase in juvenile violent crime rate

160% increase in total crime rate

33% decrease in the marriage rate

106% in the number of children on welfare

a 59 point decrease in the average SAT score

-statistics taken from "Media Revolution" by Brian E. Fisher, original source of statistics from "The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators by William J. Bennett (New York broadway books, 1999).

It's reasonable to assume that these numbers have continued to increase, not decrease between 1997 and 2017.

So how can we as Christians understand how the media and academic elites have twisted our worldview and begin to take action in fighting back against lies, disinformation, and smear efforts? Let's look at some of the tactics that are put forward against us.

Note: These eight tactics are taken from "Media Revolution" by Brian E. Fisher, but the thoughts on these tactics and their application are my own.

1. "The Name Game"

This tactic is an interesting one, it's the use of terms and words that change the meaning of issues to better suit the narrative of the media. Thus someone who supports the abortion of unborn babies shouldn't be called "pro-abortion" they are instead referred to as "pro-choice" or "pro-woman." The slaughter of unborn children in the womb is referred to by the media as "women's health." Christian views of marriage and family are referred to as "hate speech." Any conservative outlet or individual is rebranded as a "racist" or "sexist" person. Anyone who espouses a view that doesn't jive with the media narrative is called " divisive." Illegal immigrants are referred to as "undocumented foreign workers." Christian pastors and leaders are commonly referred to in combination with words like "judgmental" "fundamentalist" and other slurs of language that cause negative feelings in the general public. An interesting one is "tolerance" that has been redefined to mean that if you even disagree with homosexuality or transgenderism or other redefinitions of human nature, then you are being "intolerant" or "hateful." Global cooling went out of fad in the 1970s, then it became global warming, and when that term was no longer working, it became "climate change." Terms are changed, instead of socialism, they call it "progressive." You get the idea. And you can see how this is a very manipulative way of redefining evils to seem good and goods to seem evil.