..The church must speak with wisdom and expertise, and not be put off by the neo-atheists or anyone else; the media must recognise that this is part of the church’s vocation and task, and must find ways of working creatively so that the proper vocations of all may be properly exercised. And if possible the church itself should seek out and celebrate its own poets, philosophers and dramatists who, like St Paul in his famous Christ-poem in Philippians 2, are able in sharp and memorable phrases to declare under Caesar’s nose that Jesus is Lord and Caesar isn’t. This is part of the task of early Christian ”˜apocalyptic’: to create a glorious, poetically imagined world in which people are able to glimpse what it might mean to say that on the cross Jesus defeated all the powers of the world, and then to live from within that newly imagined world. And if the church’s artists, musicians and poets are to do this for tomorrow’s world they will need to know how to use the media itself wisely and well.
I am calling, therefore, for a fresh appraisal of the vocations of church and media alike, rooted in a larger biblical theology of the God of Israel, made known in Jesus and the Spirit, and able to address the multiple confusions and sorrows of today’s dangerous world. The vocations themselves are dangerous, there’s no question about that. We will get them wrong and need further internal and external critique and correction. But that is no excuse for not making a fresh start.