William D. Romanowski

In the introduction, Romanowski dives right into his subject with some statistics from a Barna Group study, which found that "born again adults spend an average of seven times more hours each week watching television than they do participating in...Bible reading, prayer, and worship...they spend roughly twice as much money on entertainment as they donate to their church. And they spend more time surfing the net than they do conversing with God in prayer." He continues by discussing the different attitudes Christians have concerning media, and encourages us to have "an engaged, critical, and productive involvement with popular arts, grounded in a faith vision that encompasses life and culture," and to be "shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves" when dealing with media. He goes on to describe how popular arts often reflect on the current issues in our society. In response to people who would brush off the importance of evaluating media, Romanowski says, "...developing good critical skills is and practices does not have to ruin the fun...we need to look, as Christians, at the stories that contemporary culture is telling us...[we need to have] a fair and rigorous Christian criticism, one that investigates weaknesses, takes pleasure in achievements, celebrates virtues, and laments failed opportunities. Christians should help preserve the best features, improve the weakest parts, and eliminate the worst traits of popular art." And this is all just in the introduction! The appendixes provide lists of questions to help Christians evaluate popular artists, and includes a sample evaluation of a movie.… (más)