EVANGELICALS AND THE SECULAR PRESS Robert Flood sees evidence of better, more objective and sympathetic coverage of evangelical concerns in the mass media.
his stereotypes and caricatures of the Christian from something he has read, or watched on TV, or seen in the movies. Chances are he has drawn his image of the evangelist from Elmer Gantry, his idea of the missionary from Ha waii and his opinions about the Christian's intellectual capacities from Inherit the Wind, a filmland version of the Scopes Trial which has been milked dry on TV. Wesley Hartzell, assistant man aging editor of Chicago Today (formerly Chicago's American) and an evangelical, asserts that years of fundamentalist resistance to social change and the more recent emer gence of extremist right-wing movements who attach the name "Christian" to their organizations have reinforced this negative im age both with the public and the communications media. Fortunately this image is finally beginning to change — perhaps partly because of the evangelical's new social conscience. The evan gelical movement in America seems
Reprinted by permission from Eternity magazine, copyright 1971, The Evangelical Foundation, 1716 Spruce Street, Philadel phia, Pennsylvania 19103. Right or wrong, Spiro Agnew is not the first one to have trouble with the public press. For years the mainstream press has generally treated the conservative Protestant with disdain and cynicism, or ig nored him altogether. Not all of the sour coverage, of course, has been undeserved. Some more extreme segments of the Christian church have been woe fully inept at winning the public's admiration. And the press seems quick to lump the mainstream of Biblical Christians in with the ex tremists. But without question the media, in part, is molding the public im age of the evangelical or, if you prefer, the fundamentalist. The man on the street too often gets
Mr. Flood is Managing Editor of Moody Monthly. Page 10
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