Media Literacy as Spiritual Care: A New Calling

By Rev. Dr. Robin Blair, Chair, Commission of the Role & Status of Women (COSROW) | Email

I have stepped away from local church leadership for a season to answer another call God has been speaking to me for years and I am to share it: Media Literacy as Spiritual Care. When did you last hear those words in a sentence? Probably never — but here they are.

Media has a powerful spiritual influence on our lives, particularly on the children in our orbit. This digital culture is everywhere in their lives and in ours. If you question whether that influence is truly powerful, it's a bit like trying to convince a fish it's swimming in water—the medium is so constant, it becomes invisible. As people of faith, I am convinced we can do better.

I can trace some of media's influence in my own life to my eighth birthday, and a special event.

We almost never went to the movies. We had a car and a local drive-in, which was how our family watched anything on a screen bigger than the television. So when my parents took me to an actual movie theater, it was a big enough deal that I got dressed up for it. I remember that more clearly than almost anything else from that age — the getting dressed, the sense of occasion, my one girlfriend there beside me, the dark of the room settling in around us like something enormous was about to happen. It was a birthday present that year. My siblings weren't invited, which was its own mark of how rare the moment was.

The movie was Bye Bye Birdie. Ann-Margret was on the screen, and I wanted to be her before the film was even halfway through. Not admire her — be her. Pretty enough to be kissed by the Elvis-like singer everyone was losing their minds over. Misunderstood by her family, the way I already suspected I was, at exactly the age when a kid starts making meaning out of everything and nobody hands you the instructions. Looking back now, it was a genuinely brilliant film — capturing a real cultural shift, the whole country adjusting to what rock and roll was doing to families like mine. But none of that mattered to me at the time. I wasn't watching a cultural moment. I was watching a girl I wanted to become.

I was not her in real life. I was a chubby, blonde, green-eyed kid, and I already knew — the way children just know — that I wasn't going to be told I was pretty the way she was pretty. That knowledge didn't come from the movie. It came from home, long before that night — chubby girls were not pretty girls in my family. But the movie is where it first found a shape, a face, a name to reach for.

Nobody asked me what the film meant, or what it had put into me. The only question afterward was did you have a good time — which was a fine question, an easy one, and I probably said yes. But something else had started that night, something nobody was tracking. The dark room, the enormous screen, a girl I wanted to become, and no one beside me asking what I was actually absorbing while I sat there wanting to disappear into someone else's face.

That was the first time. It would not be the last.

This is one reason I can affirm this call to shape a ministry I've named Digital Discipleship Matters — media literacy as spiritual care for you and your families. Media's influence on our lives in this digital culture is profound, and more advanced than ever before in human history. I told you about one movie that kicked off years of wounded and wrong thinking — pretty is fine, but it is not beauty. I was vulnerable to the power of the message that beautiful teen-age Ann Margaret was projecting: pretty, attractive to all the boys, and in line to make the news (in the movie narrative)! Scripture, on the other hand, has always known where beauty and truth find their footing: “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). No one was clued into the internal story I caught in the film rather than the scripture. This story is repeatable in today's culture.

We believe in the God of all creation, who holds the common good at the heart of all creation and all living. We also know there are commercial and cultural forces — with no stake in a child's formation except the call to consumerism. Much of media targeting kids works against everything we claim in faith and in the common good. When it comes to media content — what we intentionally consume, what we create ourselves, and what we simply encounter—it's important to remember that while not all media is bad, it is rarely neutral. Media as a tool of communication is a gift and a blessing. But in the hands of greed and motives short of the common good, there is much to be cautious about.

If, as a woman, you—like me—saw a screen and imagined a life different from the one you had because a role model exerted a strong pull, media literacy as spiritual care is for you. It doesn't mean that role model was something you shouldn't have seen — but the spiritual care of knowing who you are in the gaze of God's grace cannot be excluded from the expectations you hold for yourself. That work involves intentionally faith-based conversations and coaching for the good of your spirit and soul through media literacy.

If you are a mother who sees her children involved in more than imaginative play around a role model from a film, TV show, or YouTube channel, media literacy as spiritual care is for you. It's fun to play dress-up as a princess, but some little girls won't go to school without their tiaras firmly in place. Some little boys will only wear the action-hero t-shirt — no plain tees or plaid button-downs for them. Your kids can be guided toward wisdom so that the tiaras and action heroes land in the play area, not the whole of their lives.

Media literacy as part of the faith formation of your family is real, and the time is now. I would love to come to your church group and talk about it, through The Listening Compass™, the framework I use to guide these conversations. At Commission on the Role and Status of Women (COSROW), we all want the very best for all of us, including how our daughters and mothers see themselves in a digital culture that is eager to define and disciple them away from their God-blessed truth, beauty, and leadership.

Get in touch for this important ministry as you plan your fall, winter, and spring season. You can reach me at robin@robinblair.com. Let's talk about your spiritual health and relationship with media for you and your faithful family for "love begins with listening".

Peace with grace and thanks,

Rev. Dr. Robin Blair

Chair, Commission on the Role & Status of Women Upper New York Annual Conference