Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

p. 116

Already in 1986 Neil Postman saw deeply that religion fits the television medium only uncomfortably: “on television, religion, like everything else, is presented, quite simply and without apology, as an entertainment. Everything that makes religion an historic, profound and sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no tradition, no theology, and above all, no sense of spiritual transcendence. On these shows, the preacher is tops. God comes out as second banana.”