Religious broadcasting appears to have hit a new low: Channel 4 have managed to produce an ostensibly religious programme that actually features nothing about faith or belief whatsoever. In the ultimate demonstration of consumer-centric spirituality, the programme manages to completely divorce spiritual practise from spiritual belief and therefore robs the practises featured of any sort of meaning – Christianity being represented by giving up hair straighteners for a month? Give me a break.
Now, don’t get me wrong; I don’t have any issues with people exploring different beliefs and practises – but to take these practises out of their context is pointless, meaningless and almost insulting to the people who do take part in these practises as a genuine outworking of their faith, rather than simply as an attempt at some sort of spiritual quick-fix.
All this is thrown into even sharper relief by the recent BBC programme, The Monastery. Billed as a sort of spiritual Big Brother (except without evictions), this put a disparate group of men with a wide range of spiritual beliefs in a monastery for a month, as a sort of experiment to determine whether monastic life was still relevant to ordinary people even today. The answer, as it turned out, was a resounding yes – none of the guys came out as raving fundamentalist Catholics, but they were all affected by the experience and spoke genuinely and warmly about the way the time there had changed them and helped them learn about themselves. The testimonials at the end of the programme were honest, heartfelt and often profound.
The testimonials at the end of Spirituality Shopper, by contrast, centred around vague, fluffy sentiments and sounded contrived and somewhat forced – the biggest change in the girl’s life seemed to be that she’d realised she didn’t need to use her hair straighteners every day.
Well, whoop-de-fricking-doo.
I agree with your statements. As a Christian I was disappointed with the picture the ‘Christian meditation’ sent out which has very little to do with the way the majority of Christians live their lives. I was very surprised at Jonathan Edwards, a professed Christian, and the Priest who when the lady was very moved and grieving (episode on 13 June), evidently touched by the Holy Spirit but who did not understand what was happening to her, that they did not follow up by explaining this experience and leading her to Jesus. What a wonderful opportunity that was and I felt it was just left hanging and she eventually drifted away from Christianity, prefering yoga, which incidentally I was also amazed that Jonathan was engaging in. I sincerely hope that this lady is not now totally muddled as she has been exposed to a host of unhealthy spiritual experiences. I just felt that this programme sent out all the wrong messages, especially because the whole focus was on ‘spirituality’ whereas we know that Christianity is about one God and one Spirit, the Holy Spirit.