Page 164 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

Born-agains and mainstream believers 153

There has to be a balance, I would think. Sometimes people go over-
board on stuff like that. And where can it fall . . . there has to be a
balance. You can either go the other way and go fanatic about it or
you can go this way and be wishy-washy, you know what I mean?

This once again seems to be rooted in her belief, shared by Jay, that ulti-
mately it is the individual’s responsibility to make sense of faith and to
craft a sensible and meaningful set of ideas and practices. This is not some-
thing that one surrenders to another or to a center of authority, religious
or otherwise. The Millikens own a range of video and audio tapes
distributed by the Focus on the Family organization, but they see these as
resources to their own meaning-making and sense-making, more like a
reference library than materials that would dictate belief and action to
them. Besides their library of Focus materials, the Millikens also own a
number of religious CDs, including some from the “Contemporary
Christian Music” genre, and are fairly regular listeners to Christian radio
stations in their market area.
Ray, the 13-year-old, is the focus of a good bit of the family’s attention
in media use. While he likes Contemporary Christian Music, Ray also has
a penchant for Internet and video games that his parents sometimes find
questionable. This has led to the withdrawal of Internet and gaming
privileges in the past as punishment. Beyond this, however, the Millikens
are not a family that holds to a strict sent of media “dos” and “don’ts.”
Ray clearly has different media preferences from his parents. At one point,
speculating about what he might watch if and when the family would
get cable television at their new home, he says he’ll watch Nickelodeon
and the Cartoon Network, to which his father adds the Learning Channel
and the History Channel. Ray, in fact, is at the age where he often
verges into the dark edges of the media marketplace, enjoying videogames
such as Starcraft and Carnivore, and going online to play games at the
Shockware site.
Like many families in our (and others’) studies, the Millikens exhibit
some conflict between their beliefs about media and their behaviors. For
example, while they express dislike for the “reality TV” genre, they
nonetheless seem to watch Survivor, one of the originators of the form, as
well as some others. In this passage, the Interviewer has asked the family if
there are programs they regularly watch together. Laura, age 7, begins to
answer.

Laura: Me and Ray watched that movie that these kids like they have a
partner and it’s like they have races and stuff on red teams and blue
teams. And the last one. . . .
Jay: What’s it called Ray?
Ray: I don’t know what she’s talking about.