Amusing Ourselves to Death: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

This chapter concerns the preaching of evangelical pastors. Postman looks in particular at Reverend Terry, Pat Robinson, and Jimmy Swaggart. They are all capable of delivering what Postman calls the “perfect television sermon.” They are theatrical, emotional, and comforting. This chapter thus concerns “television’s version of religion.”

Postman claims that religion, like anything else, undergoes a fundamental change when it becomes televised. When we watch a preacher deliver a sermon on television, we are always capable of, at the push of a button, changing the channel or shutting the screen off. Thus a certain kind of secularism hangs over televised religion, as the secular world is only a split second away. Since televised preachers know this, they must make their programming compete with other programming. They offer it at convenient hours, and spice up their sermons with entertainment.

This ought to upset us, says Postman, because television has thus turned religion into something that gives us what we want, not something that gives us what we need. Postman’s worry is not that religion is becoming the content of television shows, but that television will become the content of religion.