| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Quentin J. Schultze. Christianity and the Mass Media in America: Toward a Democratic Accommodation. (Rhetoric and Public Affairs.) East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. 2003. Pp. viii, 440. $84.95.
A thriving democracy, argues Quentin J. Schultze, requires a careful balance of the universal—a common culture accessible to all—and the particular—languages and ideals specific to ethnic or religious "tribes." This balance is particularly important in a culture infused with religious language and belief. A scholar of communications theory, Schultze works through the implications of this argument by investigating the relation of Christianity and mass media, blending history, theology, sociology, and media studies. This book is a set of case studies comparing and contrasting how American mass media and Christianity understand the world. The result is frequently thought provoking but too often needs some judicious editing.	1
Schultze is trying to do a great deal in one volume, which is both a blessing and a curse. It allows for some rich interdisciplinary discussions and synoptic comparisons, but the book sometimes shows the burden of too many agendas. Schultze is thinking theologically about media, analyzing rhetorically how Christians think about the media and vice versa, reflecting on the political role of the universal and the particular in liberal democracies, and looking historically and sociologically at the relationship of religion and media. He is very widely read, drawing on thinkers from John Dewey and Martin Heidegger to theologians known largely in the evangelical Christian community and theoreticians known mainly to others in communication studies. It all makes for a dense set of arguments; each chapter could be a book.	. . .

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