Reviews

The man who said “the medium is the message”

has an important message for us.

The medium and the light: Reflections on religion. By Marshal McLuhan. Edited by Eric McLuhan and Jacek Szklarek. 3^rd edition. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers. 2018. 219 pp. $28.00. paper.

There are absolutely too many brilliant sentiments within the pages of The Medium and the Light to do referential justice to any of them. Every essay, page, and word exemplifies McLuhan’s scholarship and communication. Even the mundane is full of verve, vitality, conviction. He knows words matter, using them as both scalpel and chainsaw. He understands that character is determined within individuals and institutions by “religion” (15). He knows “significance” is a universal passion (17). But he sees within culture the pressure of speed (46-47). Print causes its own problems according to McLuhan suggesting the “illusion of self-sufficiency and private authority” (49). He does not believe in being a pessimist or an optimist for both are “a purely secular state of mind.” Rather, as a Christian, McLuhan believes in “apocalypse” because it is “salvation” (60). Incarnation is a central concern in Medium. “Electric man” is literally “dis-carnate” (50). “Zombie-ism” makes McLuhan wonder if Christians “go to Church to be alone” (117-35). But he sees that even unbelievers cannot help but adopt Christian love as the solution to problems born by every person (173).

Offerings range from sources as variant as letters to a wife to public addresses, to unpublished journal articles. What may seem to some uneven content will be a treasure trove of mindset expansions for others. McLuhan’s writing is thick: his phrasing makes the reader ponder. For instance, we should spend more time writing letters to show future generations how we think. Indeed, we should spend more time reading letters of our forebears to see how others think. The book’s organization is difficult to follow logically which is surely understandable given the fullness of the book’s interests. Part I has the reader encounter McLuhan’s Catholic conversion. The Church and its (non-)understanding of media incorporates a multiplicity of ideas in Part II. Liturgy with its media intersection takes up Part III. Forecasting future concerns for The Church as a whole incorporates Part IV. Two appendices on Thomas Nashe, Henry Newman, and T.S. Eliot round out the volume. It comes as no surprise that the man who made famous the phrase “the medium is the message” (79) is concerned that the visual has overtaken the verbal, that people are in danger of becoming “the walking dead” because of “technological innovation” (62).

Central to McLuhan’s concern is The Church’s responsibility “to shake things up” (62). But it is McLuhan who attempts to do the same to Christ’s Bride. A visually oriented Church attends itself to “bigger everything” (62). God’s people are “being wiped out electrically” (63) existing “on the Reader’s Digest level” of literacy (64). McLuhan’s faith is prayer-based, “superhuman,” uncomfortable, anti-cultural (64), committed to “Imagination” (66), words (69), community (72), “the formal cause” (74), and “the international motley” (75-78). The hermeneutics of the last phrase – a focus on attire – is itself worthy of its own explanation, insofar as McLuhan challenges every Church process in an electronic age (79-88). He worries that “now” will usurp the “then” (80). He confirms a need for “catechism” (94), the problem of Buddhist thinking in Christianity (95-97), even the prevalent problem of the microphone in worship (95, 107-16)!

McLuhan’s lasting contribution – among the myriad of beneficial insights – are his connections to educational psychology and educational brain research (i.e., 52). To say McLuhan was ahead of his time is an understatement. Chapter four brims with insights he made from the 1950’s anticipating concepts such as privatization, phone apps, podcasts, artificial intelligence, tribalization, global village, packaged curricula, and “decay of dialogue” to name just a few.  He is concerned with technologically ordered knowledge having an unconscious impact on human thought making it superficial. Essential synthesis between visual and verbal is well stated in negative terms, “Eye and ear, both are completely right, but when one begins making value judgments about the other . . . the trouble begins (44). He knows that a form of communication “acts upon you” and “invades your senses (38). He believes we are shaped by our tools (59). Change happens so quickly, McLuhan contends, that “no human psyche or any human community can withstand” while private identity “has been dissolved” (63) causing “new areas of blindness” (70). In his view, “philosophers and psychologists” have not properly understood how important technological innovations are to the shaping of human intelligence, hence, educational processes (89-93). McLuhan’s cautionary insights into educational practice are not to be missed (94-104).

Theologians, and seminaries that house them, ought to make this compendium of essays essential reading. Indeed, McLuhan takes to task “uninterested” theologians (45, 89, 129) whose research capabilities should have taught them better. He was disillusioned to discover time and again that he could not interest theologians in the insights he thought would have them guard against the “Prince of this World” who is himself “a great P.R. man . . . a master of the media” (xxiii). He disparages, rightly or not, preachers who hold learning and reason in contempt (22). McLuhan understands the importance of theology while unfortunately disparaging Protestants over Catholics; his incisive comments notwithstanding (24-30). What celebrity personages could learn from McLuhan’s committed stance, “I am loath to sacrifice my intellectual standards to achieve a more popular success” (29).

Looking back on McLuhan’s relentless attacks, one can see issues with which to disagree. His esoteric brilliance can be inhibited by his ethereal verbiage. He writes and speaks in the foreign language of erudition which, at times, compromises his essential arguments. His consistent attacks on “Protestantism” truncate his own belief in a catholic (universal) Church. Interviews belie a tendency to overstate his case. His view of Church administration (83) or individualism being “scrubbed right off our culture” (85) exaggerate their own importance. Church authority seems to offer a convoluted Scriptural authority (98-99). He also leaves one with the impression that the analysis of process can proceed without “value judgments” (140).

The Medium and the Light is not just a book for the communication department. McLuhan opines philosophically on politics, marketing, business, media, journalism, sociology, psychology, literature, and religion. Homeschooling groups could learn from a man who “wrote his doctoral thesis on the history of the trivium” (x). Moving easily between subjects and persons he can quote Hopkins (35), then Pope (36), making short work of mathematical philosophy (39), moving to Peter Drucker, and finally to the philosophies of Mircea Eliade (44).

The centerpiece, perhaps better, the vortex, of McLuhan’s remarks is his unbridled, uninhibited refrain that “Our senses are not passive receptors of experience” (91). The book’s summary (89) “There seems to be a general unwillingness to consider the impact of technological innovation on the human sensibility” is an indictment upon thinkers who should know better. He knows (in 1959!) that people are concerned with information overload (34). The subtitle, “Reflections on Religion,” could have included all the disciplines in an academic catalog. The editors cut to the chase, “There was at this time little or no distinction between literature, theology, and politics” (xi). Marshall McLuhan, who foresaw “cottage economies” (xxviii, 85) and the need to “build bridges between the arts and society” (174), would be amazed that people would still ignore “the pervasive and penetrating character of the TV image, or service, itself” (xxi).

Review by Mark D. Eckel, President, The Comenius Institute, Indianapolis, IN; Professor of Leadership, Education and Discipleship, Capital Seminary and Graduate School, Lancaster, PA. [Published July, 2019 in Christian Education Journal.]

We all need a “tenth man.”

In the film World War Z Brad Pitt attempts to uncover the origin of a zombie apocalypse. Meeting a leader who saved his nation of Israel from the nightmare, Pitt asks how he knew what to do. The Jewish leader explains that on a council of ten, if nine of the members agree, it is the duty of the “tenth man” to take the opposite tack, to assume the nine are wrong. Alan Jacobs would appreciate the metaphor, the pictorial display of his dictate: we are all in debt to one another. The subliminal question Jacobs asks us to consider is “Who will I think with?” Then, the next is, “Who is trustworthy to think with?” In The Year of Our Lord 1943 Jacob gives us five: Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil (1-4). They, the collective “tenth man,” bore the “responsibility to set direction for churches and society” in their generation (xi).

The five forecasters were prescient in their observations for any future. They circulated ideas (xviii). They knew that ideas change people and people, then, change a culture. In unison these Christian thinkers began with a premise:

“Christianity was uniquely suited” (xv-xvii) to speak to the great questions of the day, of any day (204).

Jacobs’ unique approach is based on the Orson Wells movie A Touch of Evil (xvii-xix): ideation explosions ignite every page. In the first of seven sections Jacobs notes there is always a need for leadership “renewal” for churches, education, and society (30). The progenitor of renewal, second, is theology but also literature and the arts (50). “Learning in War Time,” the famed Lewis title in the third section, focuses on the belief that one’s duty develops the future by importing the past (62). Each of the five forecasters knew that renewal would come with its own “dangers and temptations” (81), a fitting reminder in the fourth place. These “demons,” these “humanistic commitments,” would bring “force” to the world and “we find ourselves subject to force” (99).

After the fifth component, Jacobs inserts an interlude, introducing other “pilgrims” (119-22), including other historic luminaries of the period: Day, Bonhoeffer, Greene, and Liddell. The necessity of affective change, rooted in moral formation within education, is the sixth commitment – and necessarily the longest section of the book (123-66) – to which all adhere. “Approaching the end,” in the seventh place, all consider the coming scientism-technoism and forecast its institutionalization, leaving an empty culture without the humanities (182). Jacobs’ afterword focuses on Jacques Ellul, his critique of technique and the lack of Christian “participation” leaving the world “materially triumphant” yet “spiritually vanquished” (199).

To avoid becoming manipulated, subdued, then conquered, we need to appropriate what Jacobs offers. We continually borrow. We are dialogical beings.

We are made for relationship. We are made for conversation. We are shaped and formed by others. We cannot think for ourselves, nor by ourselves. We are thinking thoughts given by others. Once I think with others, I begin to understand others, loving them, as God does.

I want to think with Jacobs’ five. I want to see the synthesis of education with politics with culture with literature with history. I want to be invested with the inner working of a mindset over a long period of time. We always need the subtitle Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis because we always are “in crisis.” Every year is The Year of Our Lord (Jacobs’ point I surmise). Ageless, the book deserves to be pondered in a Twitter world where Twitter is not the world. Ageless, the book prods us to promote, publish, and present a Christian cultural-relational response to any day. Ageless, the book’s five luminaries open our eyes to consider who among us now appropriates Jesus’ implied command “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). Ageless, In the Year of Our Lord 1943 is a consideration of what our current years may need.

The book should be used across a wide audience. Academics, yes. But honestly, Jacob’s writing is an encouragement to all creatives – prophetic voices all – who care to see a Hebraic-Christian foundation for life. Jacobs’ writing is to be savored, sipped slowly. When I read books for reviews, I read them once, taking notes as I do so, then write my review. With Jacobs, I read everything twice then wondered what salient points I may have missed. Even now I am asking myself, “If I include that line, I must include this line,” until, at last, I reason, I must just read the book again. It is my hope for everyone reading this review: read the book again and again and again. If professors want esteemed, positive examples of how to practice reflection – Jacobs’ five luminaries – we might do well to ponder these questions ourselves:

(1) Are we able to distinguish between prophetic voices?

(2) Do we see the artists who simply accommodate to the cultural hierarchies, viewing their musical additions as more of an assembled chorus than an anthem?

(3) Do we hear musicians who accept the accepted views without considering another melody?

(4) Do we examine the artifacts of our own era, digging for finds that will explain our present from our past?

(5) Do we honestly, openly invite a concert of voices to orchestrate a harmonic resolve committed to the same song?

(6) Do we write poetic lines with that same tenacity, knowing we cannot keep “law” or “love” by ourselves (6-7)?

Every time period has its pronounced concerns. It is the responsibility of cultural gatekeepers – the collective “tenth man” of World War Z – to point to problems or call out conditions which need prophetic warning. The creatives, the innovators, are the first line of defense for any people group in any space, in any time who heed the clarion call. Our own time is no different. Artists, poets, cultural commentators illumine dark corners and shadowed rooms of our political, social houses. We need people who can see the past, anticipate the future, see a way forward, and build structures for what is to come. Such was the case before and during World War II. Five contemplative Christian thought leaders saw ahead just as we will need “future thinkers” alerting us “to the signs of the times” (206).

The year of our Lord 1943: Christian humanism in an age of crisis. By Alan Jacobs. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 2018. 256 pp. $29.95. hardcover. Published in Christian Education Journal (August 2020)

Review by Mark D. Eckel, President, The Comenius Institute, Indianapolis, IN; Director of Professor Ministries, Ratio Christi, Professor of Leadership, Education and Discipleship, Capital Seminary and Graduate School, Lancaster, PA.