October 2000 – AFA has long observed that the media too frequently marginalizes conservative Christianity and often distorts it beyond recognition. So when the August AFA Journal reviewed the ABC special, The Search for Jesus, it should have been aware that things are not always as they seem.
For example, because of the way one of the scholars, Rev. N.T. Wright, was portrayed on the ABC special, the Journal erroneously characterized him as a liberal scholar. As it turns out, Dr. Wright, Canon Theologian at Westminster Abbey in London, is anything but a liberal scholar.
Wright’s introduction in The Search for Jesus followed a segment in which journalist Peter Jennings said he talked to Biblical scholars who don’t take the Bible literally and who speak of contradictions within the Gospels. Not only that, Jennings said, “it is pretty much agreed [by scholars] that [the authors of the Gospels] were not eye-witnesses” to the events of Jesus’ life, and the writings themselves were probably penned 40 to 100 years after Jesus’ death.
The next face the viewer saw was Wright’s, and the words he spoke appeared to be in agreement with Jenning’s comments. He was quoted as saying the Gospels are merely “what people thought really happened.” Unfortunately, as the program progressed, some of Wright’s other comments were edited to take on the hue of the liberal scholars that appeared.
That is not to excuse the mischaracterization of Wright as a liberal scholar; it does, however, help demonstrate the enormous power of media editing to filter reality, in effect distorting it.
History as friend of Christianity
Dr. Wright has enthusiastically spent his professional life researching and writing about the New Testament, especially the historical circumstances surrounding the writings of faith that so many Christians worldwide treasure so dearly.
His perspective on New Testament studies is an orthodox Christian view, however, often pitting him against colleagues who dismiss everything in the Gospels from the Virgin Birth to the Resurrection. Wright was the only conservative Christian scholar, for example, to appear in The Search for Jesus.
Many conservative Christians in the U.S. viewed the ABC special as a shameful attempt to pass off liberal scholarship as accepted truth – as if the debate had already been settled.
Not only is the debate not over, Wright said, but it may be beginning again in earnest. In an interview with AFA Journal, he said that in the last decade or two, “worldwide scholarship has had some significant explosions, and we’re still watching the bits fly around the room, and waiting to see where they’re going to settle.”
The fixed truths of 20 or 30 years ago – many reflecting liberal ideas about Jesus and the early church – have been jarred by new scholarship. “Today, a great many of those positions are not fixed and not agreed at all... We know a lot more about the first-century Jewish world than we did, and that has impinged enormously on NT studies,” he said.
Such scholarship makes for a “more robust Christian orthodoxy, rather than a less one,” Wright said, because “if you have a religious view which is always a little worried about asking the historical questions, that’s deeply damaging to a Christian faith.”
Even though some theologians have used historical research to tear at Chris - tian beliefs, Wright said Christians should never fear such work. “My view is that the historical questions are ones that you have to face, and that if you do so courageously, you’ll find that the facts are kind, that they are God’s facts, and that this stuff actually comes out right on the other side,” he said.
Different TV, same message
Still, the media, in both the U.S. and the U.K., appear to remain ambivalent – some would say downright hostile – to orthodox Christianity. In Britain, Wright said, the media treats Christianity “as a bit of a sideshow, on a par with, say, cross-country skiing or collecting antique clocks.”
Wright said, “It is regularly observed, for instance, that when the religion depart - ment here at the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] does make a good docu - mentary about something that’s going on [of a religious nature], then it will end up being [aired] at 11:15 p.m., maybe on a Sunday night when everyone is sort of in bed because they’re going off to work the next morning.…As we know, that drops the proportion of the audience by a fairly sizable factor.”
It’s not simply a matter of giving Christian subject matter a poor time slot, Wright said, but also a matter of how much Chris - tian programing gets on television to begin with. “The BBC used to [air] a main wor - ship service every Sunday morning. They now do that only on Christmas, Easter, Advent and one or two other key times of the year,” he said.
Just as in America, this disinterest in religious issues – except when it provokes controversy – may have something to do with the journalists themselves. Wright said that, regardless of whether it’s in print or broadcast journalism, those in the media “are often people who have either no reli - gious background whatever or gave it up when they were 13. So they have a vested interest in trying to make out that this is now totally old hat.”
Wright said, “If in doubt [those in the media] will stick on another rerun of a soap opera instead of a documentary about Jesus." 
