National Council of Churches Statement on UCC ad.

Good for the NCC. One of the things which has been so strange about this controversy is that the religious message presented in the ad is a perfectly liberal one, thus questioning not only the conservative obsession with the idea that the mainstream media discriminates against religious conservatives, but also the presumption of many liberal believers that all the noise coming from the right about the tone-deafnesses to religion by the state and big business is groundless. In short, the religious right isn’t always wrong, but it isn’t always just them either. Stange bedfellows indeed.

That’s interesting Russell — you’re right of course, and I hadn’t thought of it. I was careful in my own letter to do three things; first to specify that I am not a religious believer or a member of the UCC; second to point out the reprehensibleness of the values that their sponsor (and programs) routinely promote; and third to say that if they had done this to a church which espoused different values from the UCC (values I had much less sympathy with, in other words) they would still be misusing their power over the public culture, a power that I think they shouldn’t have.

What about this Sebastian; they are not so much anti-religious as anti-the-public-expression-of-religious-sentiment. Of course, that amounts to the same thing when they are controlling the airwaves. But my conjecture is that it is religious expression, rather than religion per se, to which they are hostile.

I’m not sure I think the distinction between restricting religious expression and disliking religion is a distinction I think is important. I would tend to suspect that, in US television networks, the interest in restricting relgious expression is most likely fueled by a dilike of religion. Furthermore, being against religious expression while actively promoting nearly every other kind of expression, including huge amounts of violence, suggests that the networks have some special problem with religion.

Maybe the UCC ad wasn’t as accurate as the DanRather memo. /sarcasim

OT

http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/var/am_sup.htm

http://instapundit.com/archives/019440.php

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/lgf-fallujahchem-slideshow.php

bq. The ad is infuriating to all of the millions of Christians from other denominations who are maligned and slandered as being so racist that they employ bouncers to keep out minorities.

Is that right? No-one else is mentioned. Could the ad be challenging a widespread view of non-believers that Christians exercise a certain kind of exclusivity that Jesus wouldn’t himself endorse? I would be upset if a competing University said that it, alone, was non-racist, or (more-or-less wrongly) accused mine specifically of being racist. But I don’t think I’d be worried if it sought to claim that it was not racist and implied that some others (as opposed to all other) were racist. I believe some are.

“There is an unnecessary, and ultimately discriminatory, hypersenstivity to the perils of specific religious messages out there. Religion is fine if it can be transformed into gooey sentimentality.”

If I may make a distinction that may be hyper-fine, I suspect that US networks are fine with gooey sentimentality in all its forms. Gooey sentimentality that is also blandly religious sneaks in for that reason.

I disagree with Jack that the primary aim of the ad was to slander other denominations; however, there was clearly an element of distinctionism in the ad. The UCC wants it to be known, particularly by those who may be exploring Christianity, that they are a liberal, inclusive church. The message was no doubt perfectly acceptable; but the fact that is was a church saying it, and making an implied doctrinal claim to boot, however, is probably which set off network executives’ alarm-bells. Think about it: how many anti-racism public service announcements or ads have you seen? Dozens. Why is it, though, that when one is connected to a “worship with us” message it becomes controversial? My guess: because for a church to put their doctrine, their religiosity, on comparative display is just not gooey enough to slip by the decisionmakers’ paranoia.

You all miss the point. They would have loved to run this demostration of a “cult” justifying sinful, destructive behavior. They didn’t do it because in fairness they would have to run ads from the evanglical community. THAT… they could not stomach. If they ran the pro-homosexual ad, to be fair and balanced, they should run ads documenting the depravity, drug and alcohol abuse, grave mental and physical health conesquences of homosexuality. Or we would have more evidence of their left-wing propagandistic nature!

I think Scott has it mostly right–this is about avoiding controversy. Not so much because they don’t want people to complain to sponsors, but because they don’t want people to change the channel.

I don’t think it was anything in particular about the UCC ad that bothered the networks. Rather, the issue was likely with the next ad: what to do when the next denomination comes in and says something from the other side (“we’re not watered down, like some denominations”, or “you’ll go to hell if you’re not one of us”, or “join us this season in praying for the conversion of the Jewish people”). Better a clear policy against evangelizing ads than to pick-and-choose, thus being forced to accept or reject the hypothetical offensive ad on the merits (and thus offend that particular constituency in a much more visceral way).

Think about it: how many anti-racism public service announcements or ads have you seen? Dozens. Why is it, though, that when one is connected to a “worship with us” message it becomes controversial?

But, to the best of my recollection, I haven’t seen one anti-homophobia public service announcement or ad. Surely that’s a large part of what might make the ad controversial; while no major denomination excludes people by race anymore, lots and lots of denominations demand that their gay and lesbian members remain celibate, and that is even something of an issue politically.

So it’s at least possible that the controversy is related to the message of tolerance of homosexuality–let me repeat, a message that is explicitly rejected by our ruling political party–rather than to the religious message. In the current political climate that message really sticks out.

I also thought that it might be possible that the bits about race are meant to say that excluding gay couples is as bad as excluding non-white people, rather than to say that other churches are racist. But I don’t really think that’s that convincing, so Jack V does have a point there.

(abb1–You must not watch football on TV. Miller and Budweiser are running so many negative ads they must be trying to drive down turnout.)

and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman

This, I believe, was the crux of the controversy. If they had simply used the “no evangelizing” line at first and left it at that, the whole issue would have drawn a lot less attention. Given the very convincing “slippery slope” arguments offered above, I don’t really have a problem with that policy.

It was mainly the nonsensical (and chilling) reference to the “Executive Branch” opposition to gay marriage (the ad itself makes no reference to gay marriage whatsoever) that set off the controversy.

Harry,
Excellent post and I agree completely. Bravo to the National Council of Churches for their fortitude. I clicked through the link to assist in “piling on the networks.” And the UCC “God is Still Speaking” ad actually did cheer me up. Thanks.
–TGM

Harry said:

Is that right? No-one else is mentioned. Could the ad be challenging a widespread view of non-believers that Christians exercise a certain kind of exclusivity that Jesus wouldn’t himself endorse?

No one else is explicitly mentioned, but skilled videographers know how to leave a visual impression without saying things explicitly. Like the commenter above intimated, if you see a Volvo commercial that starts off with 3 or 4 people crashing and dying in other other cars, while people who drove Volvos alone survived, the commercial wouldn’t have to name the other cars explicitly. The implication would be obvious: Drive another car, and you’ll die.

That might be relatively harmless — although untrue — in the car scenario. But with something as part of your core identity as where you go to church, you might be naturally prickly when a commercial heavy-handedly implies that other denominations exclude minorities by using bouncers.

Reverse the situation: Imagine the Southern Baptists producing a commercial showing people going to hell because they attended some other unnamed religious service, while ending on the happy note that Southern Baptists go to heaven. That would be roughly equally offensive. Get the picture?

Heresy is also religion, to its adherents. The silliness here is the conceit that the networks are independent actors making decisions out of economic self-interest. Maybe 20 years ago. Not now. Now they’re the p.r. machine for the men behind the curtain. Scalia’s in New York saying publicly that the separation of church and state was a mistake. Scalia’s probably headed for Chief Justice.
And though I’m sure we all agree it’s pure co-incidence both Rather and Brokaw have bailed virtually simultaneously, there is a thread…

Still, even a “Yay God!” message is religious. I haven’t seen one of those ads in recent memory (unless you count seeing one being shot in my apartment complex) but showing those ads would indicate a lack of hostility to religion–though it might not indicate a lack of hostility to the particularity of religion, as Russell mentioned above. None of which is to say that they resemble the UCC ad in any way.

oh well, for unhappy gay christians, there’s always the last Morrissey video…