Blog Post 8

Reflection: Postman may seem to be attacking religion in this chapter. The same may be said of Drive In Jesus. In actuality, these two pieces are only attacking a certain kind of religion, a kind that cheapens and makes less important the things that make religion significant. Religion is inextricably tied to the holy places where services are conducted. We do not say “I’m going to hear a sermon”, we say “I’m going to church.” These hallowed places and the import they lend to those who preach and listen within them are just as critical to the idea of organized religion as anything in their theology. Without them, religion is taken much less seriously. If I can watch a sermon from my couch while in my pajamas and eating Doritos, it will feel just as impersonal as the episodes of television I will inevitably watch afterward. Going to church is not just important because of the content of the pastor’s message ; it is important because going out of our way to attend is a ritual that we must complete to show that the message matters to us. Online lectures never hold up compared to the in-person variant, and the exact same thing can be said of church: seeing the televised variant is perhaps better than nothing, but only when extenuating circumstances demand it, because otherwise the experience will be so cheapened by the medium in which it is delivered that it will become meaningless to the receiver.