Page - 122 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02

Review: Watching TV Religiously | 121www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 121–125 Richard Goodwin Book Review Kutter Callaway with Dean Batali, Watching TV Religiously Television and Theology in Dialogue. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016, 288 pp., ISBN 978-0-8010-3073-4 There’s a moment on The Simpsons (Jeffrey Lynch, US 1994) when Homer, smeared by the media as a sexual predator, begs his children to believe him rather than TV – but the kids waver. Bart explains, “It’s just hard not to listen to TV. It’s spent so much more time raising us than you have” (to which Homer replies, “Maybe TV is right. TV’s always right”). Few would deny that recent generations have been raised by television. At a time when it is more likely to be streamed “on demand” using a 5.8-inch screen than watched on the family television set at the time of broadcast, TV remains a significantly formative fea- ture of 21st-century life. Is the formative power of TV something to bemoan and resist? Or might there be genuine theological value there – a medium through which, perhaps, even God may be encountered? These are the questions that animate Watching TV Religiously, a compelling, comprehensive look at TV in which theologian Kutter Callaway and screenwriter Dean Batali argue not only for discerning theological engagement with the pervasive medium, but also for the possibility that it may occasionally serve as the site for the Spirit of God’s transformative work in the viewer’s life. “‘Conversation[s] about God’ … are regularly happening both on TV and among TV viewers”, write Callaway and Batali. “Our hope is to chart a path for Christians to join this theological conversation in ways that are as constructive as they are life-giving” (6). And the sophistication with which the authors approach this con- versation is decidedly fresh. Rather than focus solely on content, this book is con- cerned with how TV “is already functioning ‘theologically’” (6). As such, Callaway and Batali examine the medium with respect to not only form, but also “process” (i.e. production) and “practice” (i.e. reception). Moreover, they understand TV it- self as more than mere “text” (actually, the writers prefer the more dynamic term trace, less tethered as it is to a literary paradigm and more evocative of TV shows’ amorphous quality); television is simultaneously technology, narrative, commod- DOI: 10.25364/05.4:2018.2.8