A Theology of Communication - Part 3:
Christianity as Communication
By Rev. William F. Fore - Founder of
Religion Online
Christianity can be understood as a religion of communication. Johannes
Heinrichs and Avery Dulles, among others, have proposed this. One reason that
the Christian Trinitarian view of God is important is that for the first time in
history a dialogical – that is, communicational – view of the deity was put
forward; God is both before us, with us, and in us. The doctrine of the
incarnation represents God’s self-giving, communicative, action toward creation.
The doctrine of redemption takes place through a communication process which
allows us to maintain and to increase our sense of identity, an awareness of who
we are, by means of interacting with and contributing to the total society. And
love, the essential Christian message, can be made manifest only by "credible
preaching by word and deed, on the one side, and by practical commitment (i.e.,
faith) on the part of the recipient."
Religious communication between human beings may be "anonymously Christian,"
that is, may occur even when the name of Jesus Christ is not mentioned, since
communication about what is ultimately real is not exclusively Christian.
Nevertheless, the entire content of Christian faith is "nothing other than the
development of the dialogical principle itself," and "the relationship to God is
not simply communication. It is rather that which makes communication possible."
If we take Heinrich’s analysis as a starting point and at the same time accept
the requirement that theology must at all times take into account the meanings
present in common human experience, then for Christians the aim of communication
is to help people interpret their existence in the light of what God has done
for them as manifest in Jesus Christ.
This means that the purpose of Christian communication is not to ask, "How
can we communicate the gospel in such a way that others will accept it?" This is
the wrong question, the public relations question, the manipulative question,
the question asked by the electronic church. Rather, our task is to put the
gospel before people in such a way that it is so clear to them that they can
accept it, or reject it – but always for the right reasons. As Tillich points
out, it is better that people reject the gospel for the right reasons
than that they accept it for the wrong reasons.
Of course, one can never know with certainty what are the exactly "right" and
"wrong" reasons for someone else, any more than we can know perfectly the
innermost thought of others. Therefore, in fashioning a strategy to communicate
our faith we can only act in faith, never in certainty. But our objective should
always be to present the Gospel in ways so clear and self-evident that the
recipient will have an "Aha!" experience, so that the good news will make
complete sense to his or her own inner world, so that the recipient will say, in
effect, "I already knew that!"
Revelation as Communication.
How is the Christian faith authentically communicated? How does revelation,
or knowing about God, take place? H. Richard Niebuhr helpfully distinguishes
between two ways in which we know: our external history and our internal
history.
External history is that set of experiences which are available to everyone:
they are events, ideas, actions, experiments that can be duplicated. External
events are impersonal. In the Christian tradition, they include such things as
the "historical Jesus" and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Internal history is a personal story about "our" time. Although it, too,
deals with events that are verifiable by the community, it is not objective in
the sense of a physics experiment or hieroglyphics written on the wall of an
Egyptian tomb. The time involved is our duration. The history is our history.
The experience is present in our memory. In the Christian tradition, this would
include such things as our knowledge of Martin Luther King or Archbishop Tutu,
or our experience with a sanctuary church or a peace march.
The task of Christian communicators is to reveal our internal history, and
the internal history of our community, in such a way that it will help
individuals ask what meaning life holds for them and their community and
internal memory. The content of Christian communication is not a series of
logical propositions, or wall charts with connected squares "explaining" God’s
plan, or texts from the Bible committed to memory, or creed, or theological
statements. The content of Christian communication is essentially what God has
done in the lives of individuals, including me. There are many points of
potential contact -- history, nature, group experiences, individual’s stories,
the Bible. The content can be logical or charted or related to biblical passages
or theologies -- or it may not. What is important is that the content explains
the internal history of the communicator and results in the recipient gaining
perspective on the nature of what is ultimate reality, that is, the way things
are.
In terms of communication, it is important to note that it is not the words
or content or things in themselves which are revelatory, but the relationships
of meaning which are communicated. This means that authentic Christian
communication is possible, not only in face-to-face relationships, but also in
much more remote relationships, including those provided in and through the mass
media -- provided that relationships of meaning are communicated.
On the other hand, both communication theory and common sense tell us that
the difficulty of successful communication increases with the relational
distance one perceives. Note that real physical distance is not what is
important, but rather perceived relational distance. One can "be" very close to
one’s wife over a 3000 mile telephone, or "be" very distant from the president
who passes only 20 feet away in a swiftly moving motorcade. The great relational
distance in communication via mass media makes Christian witness difficult,
complicated, and problematic. The same holds true for any communication that is
remote in space or time: the greater the perceived distance between those
communicating, the more difficult the communication of meaning becomes. This is
true simply because the authentic source ("my story") is less available, less
present, and less accessible to the perceiver.
For example, the personality appearing on TV is not "really" present; the
taped program is not in "real" time; and I cannot affect a televised program I
am watching in any real way. It is this combination of remoteness of mass media
technology and remoteness of space and time that makes Christian communication
via television difficult, though not altogether impossible.
However, the mass media are technically ideal for the task of helping prepare
people to hear and receive the gospel. Mass media can provide education about
the faith and stories about people and communities acting out of their religious
convictions. It can examine issues and illuminate subjects which can help
individuals understand themselves better, to bring them closer to reality, and
to encourage them to ask the right questions about the meaning of life and the
meaning of their lives, as well as to learn what Christians say and how they act
regarding their involvement with the gospel.
To be revelatory, communication must take place within community.
Communication cannot be validated unless it is affirmed in and through the life
of persons in community. For this reason, the disintegration and rearrangements
of community in America today pose a major challenge to effective Christian
communication. Robert Bellah, in Habits of the Heart, has documented this
fragmentation of community. He points out that in pre-Colonial times individual
independence and social cooperation went hand in hand, but that this tradition
grew out of two incompatible models of the relationship of the individual to
society. The covenant model promised care and concern for others in exchange for
divine care and concern. The contract model joined people together only to
maximize their self-interest. During the past two centuries, individual
fulfilment has gradually eroded the sense of community until today the
individual tends to be the reference point for all values. This kind of secular
freedom undermines human commitment since it treats everything as a dispensable
commodity – marriage, friends, jobs, churches, religions, God – since everything
has value only insofar as they have utility for the individual.
This analysis underscores the urgency of redefining and rebuilding community.
From a Christian’s point of view, it is only through the resurgence of community
that the individual can reconnect with God who is manifest in the process of
participation and whose essence is relatedness, wholeness and harmony. Given the
new technological era with its rapid growth of the means of mass communication,
new forms of community will have be invented, identified, and constructed which
take these media into account. Only as we succeed in maintaining and recreating
community will we be able to meet the needs of the new humanity.
