Taking The Fortresses

It's almost astounding--mindboggling really--how much this article captures EXACTLY what I was thinking late last night and on the drive in this morning. I was thunderstruck! But in the final analysis I'm comforted that someone else sees this as I do; I'm not alone:

The New Media have not yet beaten the Old. They are making a difference, but the Old Liberal Media have protected their power, at the cost of major alienation from millions of America. Over time, the Old Media will continue to move to the Net, but the political debate will continue. The New Media have a voice, but not as powerful as ABCCBSNBCPBSNPR.

I've often shook my head in disbelief to hear Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, and others dismiss the "old media" as essentially a doddering old man that nobody really listens to. The media is one of the fortresses that must be taken if we are to impact the culture because the "old media" really still is THE media and their influence has never been more apparent than in last night's events where the American people apparently rejected a 4.4% unemployment rate, a record performance in the Stock Market, no major repeated terrorist attacks, and fairly quick and amazingly bloodless, decisive ground battles in both Afghanistan, and Iraq (in which millions of Iraqis have voted TWICE in historic elections). And how could you blame them when the tube spews out nothing but "We're losing! Halliburton! Where's Osama? The rich are getting richer! We're all one paycheck away from complete and utter destitution!" "Christians are imposing a theocracy!" and, to top it all, "the GOP WANTED it that way"?

Christians that hold that the work of the Gospel is to advance the kingdom of God through evangelism into every area of life understand the problem here. We need to take the fortresses.

As James Lewis notes later in his article, it's not enough to have great individuals--you must sway institutions that survive beyond any one individual in order to have long term impact on your world. The Left has long understood this. Now we need to as well.

We must take the fortresses of academia, popular culture, and--case in point here--the media, if we would see the world change for Christ. Many Christians understand that; some of us don't and have too often looked to a single political party with almost salvific expectations.

Christians can take this last election, where we saw the party most friendly to Christian values defeated, as a salutary warning to not set their trust in the chariots of GOP Egypt and as a call to work toward conquering the culture (including the media!) for Jesus' sake, through His power--one individual and one fortress at a time.

Comments

[michele]

Did you see the article in the Washington Post (one of the MSM) that stated that Christians really don't want a theocracy. It was actually posted the same day as this post. I'm linking to it later tonight.

[MajO]

No, I haven't seen that. And they are right on the whole, I think; Christians don't want a "theocracy" but I can't think of a single Christian who wouldn't agree that the world would be better off following the Law of Christ than under it's own ideas.
When we all banded together behind the president to try to stand up for Terri Schiavo, when we push for pro-Life causes, that is standing up for the cause of Christ in the world--and that's not a theocracy.

[michele]

No it's not, it's just standing up for our principles. Though the world probably sees it as pushing our weight around.

I think they are worried about the wrong religion. We may not want to live under a theocracy but the radical Muslims do.

We don't believe in forced conversions but they do.