What Broadcasting should do for Religion

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 13, 23 November 1928, Page 8

What Broadcasting should do for Religion

In this article Dr. Archibald Fleming considers the possible influence of broadcasting upon the future of religion-and in particular the tremendous responsibility of the religious broadcaster.

AM asked to say what. as it appears to me, broadcasting should do for religion. I confess to a first inclination to suggest that perhaps the shoe might be put on the other footthat one might inquire what religion ean do for broadcasting. Had _ this been the question. the immediate answer would have been: See what it has done already. It is not too much to say that it is largely because the spirit of religion in the widest sense has inspired and permeated the policy of the B.B.C, from the beginning that it has become, by common acknowledgement. the finest broadcasting system in the world. An always cheerful, yet steadily maintained idealism in everything -not merely in spheres’ theological and ethical, but in the educational, aesthetic and recreative departments as well-has given British broadcast ing that unique tone and character of which all of us are so justly proud. So much for what religion has done for broadcasting. But-‘"What shoul

broadeasting do for religion?’ Perhaps I have been asked to attempt to answer thig question because every year, since the beginning of broadcasting in this country (save in 1927, when JI was ill), 1 have been allowe) to give the midnight New Year message to the listeners at all the stations. And those who broadcast are the recipients of verbal and epistolary messages: after their work is done which enable them to judge of its effect. It is my experience-and it is rastly supplemented by what. I hear on all sides regarding the weekly or incidental religious services. the wonderful 10.30 p.m. Sunday "Epilogue," and the (too little known) 10.15 a.m. short daily service-that an unto!d number of listeners, and these of an infinite variety, derive benefit from those services. whether formal or informal. for which they hasten to ex: press the most encouraging gratitude There was a grotesque fear at one time harboured that broadeast services

would empty the churehes. The opposite has been the case; by vastly widening the appeal of religion, and often re-awakening long-dormant religious instincts, they have helped to refill the churches, and to nourish the already reviving interest in things appertaining to religion. There was, again, an equally unfounded apprehension that listeners might resent the obtrusion of religious subjects upon them, On. the contrary, opposition has been still; and vast, unsuspected multitudes have shown that broadcasting is giving them that for which they had thirsted for long. ; God only knows how many broken lives and hearts have been cheered and mended; how many half-made good resolves have been confirmed: into how many monotonous or sordid bread-earn-ing jobs a glimpse of idealism, and the inspiration to raise higher the standard of duty and integrity, have been introduced; how many lonely beds of pain and how much weariness in outposts of isolation have been made less intolerable by the hearing of confident messages of patience and courage, of hope for this life and the life to come; how many pure and hallowed associations of earlier, better days have been revived-by the quiet, pervasive, vitalising power of unaffected, earnest utterances of religious import, sent forth. not without a prayer, from studio or pulpit. So broadcasting has done much for religion. But it might do more. Some of those who are asked to use it for religious ends are not, perhaps, quite successful in visualising the vast audiences they address. They sometimes speak to them as if they were mainly made up of habitual churchgoers. They are not. They approach them as if they were versed in the jargon of theology. and familiar with the sequences of public worship. They are not. They address them as though they were academic intraining, deeply and widely read, interested in the controversies of the schools. In most cases, they are not. The vast majority are intelligent, but busy and often simple folk; working with their hands, or deep in the routine of shop or office. Yes: but they have all within them the "human heart by which we live’; the spirit hunger from which all of us suffer; the frailties common to us all and the regrets or troubles so often consequent upon these frailties and downfalls. They all know what temptation is, what frustration is, and hope deferred. And they all have a_ longing, faint or strong, for some contact with the Unseen-though, perhaps only, at the moment, for the "touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still." It is to that universal ecry-pathetic, heroic, or perhaps only commonplace-that the | broadcaster must answer. Virtue must go out from him, as from heart'to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul. Nothing that counts him nothing will be worth more than nothing. He must not preach, still less must he pray, a@é his unseen hearers. His pulse must-beat for beat-respond to theirs. If it does so, he will find that he has commended the "Love divine, all loves excelling," to the invisible multitude; for he will have communicated somehow his love and symapthy to them. And this Bread which he breaks for them. will be ‘no whit less than sacramental. For it will show forth his Lord's love to them till He come. .