Running Head: Christianity in Media

Christianity in Media
Dakota Schafer
Davenport University

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Media affects the US nation more than the average citizen thinks. It helps teach us, informs us, and
allows a connection to a large network of shows that all push their ideas. Christianity is not exempt
from this nature. The way that Christians are portrayed in media is closely how Americans see
Christians even without any true interaction.
Christianity is one of the largest religions in the world. Christianity is followed by 70.6% of
the entire US nation (worldbank.org). This is a pretty significant number. However, this number has
been steadily decreasing since the 1800s (Lenaers). This means that there may be more of a push
against the Christian faith in the general public. Still, you would expect that there would be a high
percentage of Christian ads on TV. On radio sites like 91.3 WCSG, they run mostly businesses that
have a Christian background. This is different from a standard TV station due to the fact that they
are exclusively Christian radio site. Most TV stations either lean towards democratic or don't really
push a Christian agenda.
In the US TV source Christianity was not very well represented. Due to the fact the you
would expect that there would be about 71% of commercials geared towards Christians it was
definitely a surprise to only find that only about 7% of ads are geared towards Christians.
(Appendix A) There are a few factors that influenced this result though. The researcher would like
to state that these numbers do tend to rise around the big Christian holidays, Christmas, and Easter.
There are more movies geared towards those holidays due to their national spotlight. There were
only 2 specific ads that kept showing up during the authors' research. This is a highly untapped
media base however. Trammel states, "Far from being a meager, niche, underground business that
serves a modest consumer base, the Christian media industry generates an estimated $4.6 billion a

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year" (Trammell). This is a huge amount of retail money that is restricted to a small area of the
market. More companies need to be willing to join in with advertising Christian ideals.
God's Not Dead 2 is the sequel to the critically acclaimed movie God's Not Dead. While
GND focused specifically on one topic, GND2 focused on how Christianity is hard to follow in the
classroom. This movie represents Christians in a few different places. They are students, Teachers,
and support groups, which include the Newsboys, a top Christian band. They basically take shape
in any of the Character type's possible, weather that is Main role or minor roles. The teacher
teaches about a Christian verse and is challenged in their faith. This movie tries to touch on the
basic stereotypes that Americans have for Christians and expose the truth. The second movie is
Hacksaw Ridge. This movie is based on a Christian during WW2 that was against violence. This
story was a about how a medic was able to act on his faith even while encircled by things he did
not believe in. Hacksaw Ridge does a good job of trying to break the stereotype Christian model. It
really builds a new idea of what a Christian is and what they can stand for.
Christians tend to have a stereotype when displayed in news stories or even in general TV
shows. However when going to conduct this research this researcher expected to find just the
opposite. There is justified reasoning behind this. When a person wants to publish a video based on
a group they will not tend to stereotype their main group. A Christian movie does not want to set
the bar where the media has put it, it wants to build on who they are and really break the mold on
those stereotypes. A company selling the new Amazon echo won't try to just say it's just a
microphone connected to the internet. They want to give it life and really allow it to pop. This is
true for any culturally specific show or Movie.

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During the authors research it did become obvious that not all companies take the Christian
faith for all it actually is in their ads. In a single instance there was a famous Romanian TV ad, "
one where two men throw a priest from a tower mistaking him for the famous Batman movie
character and hoping he would fly" (Cernat). This is not a US ad, plus it only aired for one day.
However it did set a precedent on what people think of Christians. The popularity continues to fall
and becomes more of a mockery in the US community. This commercial in a way exemplifies this
idea. How many people do you know that would through a person off a building because they were
a pastor and thought he was Batman? If it truly was Batman you wouldn't even be able to grab him
in the first place. Joking aside Christianity needs these new movies like Hacksaw Ridge and God's
Not Dead 2 to really put a better perspective on the Christian Faith.
Now the 7% of the 100 ads that I researched may not totally be accurate. I focused on the
100% knowledge that the ad had Christians and Christian ideas portrayed in them. You never know
when there is a Christian in an ad unless they say that they are, or have in the past.
This paper gave the author a better outlook on how Christians are represented in the public,
through the media. It really showed how under represented we are in our Nation. This research
really wants me to find new ways to represent our faith through the media. We are so highly
unrepresented that it is almost sad. There needs to be more companies that take the plunge and
more willingly supports the true Christian media.

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Works Cited
Cernat, M. (2014, December). The Role of Religion in Advertising: Case-study on the "Batman"
TV Commercial. Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies. Retrieved from
library link
Lenaers, R. (n.d.). Can Christianity and modernity go together? Retrieved from library link
Population, total. (n.d.). Retrieved from Worldbank.org.
Trammell, J. Y. (2014). The Grandest, Most Compelling Story of All Time: Dominant Themes
of Christian Media Marketing. The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture. Retrieved
from library link