Schultze, Quentin J(ames) 1952-

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SCHULTZE, Quentin J(ames) 1952-

PERSONAL: Born September 22, 1952, in Chicago, IL. Education: University of Illinois, B.S. (with honors), 1974, M.S., 1976, Ph.D. (communications), 1978.

ADDRESSES: Office—Deptartment of Communication Arts and Sciences, Calvin College, 3201 Burton St. SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4301; fax: 616-957-6601. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Educator, writer, and consultant. Drake University, Des Moines, IA, professor, 1978-82; Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI, professor of communication arts and sciences, 1982—. Gospel Films/Gospel Communications Network, Muskegon, MI, special coordinator, 1995.

MEMBER: Speech Communication Association, Religious Speech Communication Association (president, 1991-92), Phi Kappa Phi.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grants from Drake University, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, Lilly Endowment, 1988, Billy Graham Center Archives, 1992, and Calvin College Alumni Association, 1992; Cornerstone Award, and Religious Speech Communication Association Award, both 1991, both for "Televangelism and American Culture: The Business of Popular Religion"; Presidential Award for Exemplary Teaching, 2000; Louisville Institute Lilly Faculty Scholar, 2002-03; Religious Communication Association Award, 2002, for "Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age."

WRITINGS:

Television: Manna from Hollywood?, Zondervan (Grand Rapids, MI), 1986.

(Editor) American Evangelicals and the Mass Media: Perspectives on the Relationship between American Evangelicals and the Mass Media, Zondervan (Grand Rapids, MI), 1990.

Televangelism and American Culture: The Business of Popular Religion, Baker Books (Grand Rapids, MI), 1991.

(With others) Dancing in the Dark: Youth, Popular Culture, and the Electronic Media, W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (Grand Rapids, MI), 1991.

Redeeming Television: How TV Changes Christians—How Christians Can Change TV, InterVarsity Press (Downers Grove, IL), 1992.

Winning Your Kids Back from the Media, InterVarsity Press (Downers Grove, IL), 1994.

Internet for Christians: Everything You Need to Start Cruising the Net Today, Gospel Films (Muskegon, MI), 1995, revised edition, 1998.

Communicating for Life: Christian Stewardship in Community and Media, foreword by Martin E. Marty, Baker Books (Grand Rapids, MI), 2000.

Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age, Baker Books (Grand Rapids, MI), 2002.

Christianity and the Media in America: Toward a Democratic Accommodation, Michigan State University Press (Lansing, MI), 2003.

High-Tech Worship? Using Presentational Technologies Wisely, Baker Book House (Grand Rapids, MI), 2003.

Author, with Barbara Schultze, of The Best Family Videos: For the Discriminating Viewer, 1994; contributor of articles to periodicals, chapters to books, and entries to encyclopedias and dictionaries.

SIDELIGHTS: Quentin J. Shultze is a professor of communications and the author of a number of books that address how evangelical Christian life is affected by the media. His Television: Manna from Hollywood? is an examination of televison programming, the accuracy of stereotypes portrayed, and the romanticizing of violent behavior. John P. Ferre noted in Journalism Quarterly that Schultze challenges "the myths of good and evil in each formula with those of evangelicalism. He urges viewers to resist television's distorted values and its distractions from meaningful family life by watching television less often and more selectively and critically."

Schultze is editor of American Evangelicals and the Mass Media: Perspectives on the Relationship between American Evangelicals and the Mass Media, called a "groundbreaking collection" by Richard S. Watts in Library Journal. The book's sixteen essays discuss radio and television broadcasting, publishing, and popular music. Watts called the portion of the book devoted to televangelism "particularly thought-provoking."

Editor & Publisher's Hiley Ward noted that some groups, "in order to counter growing secularism and the wiles of the 'devil' at large, have long taken to using the 'wicked' vehicles of information for the glory of God. So there are many fundamentalist and evangelical offerings on radio and tv, including programs of the spectacular tv evangelists, some of whom particularly abused their privilege."

John J. G. Griffin wrote in the Quarterly Journal of Speech that "an especially provocative essay by Clifford Christians questions whether evangelicals have not focused too narrowly on the Great Commission at the expense of the other biblical mandates, notably those in Genesis which enjoin God's people to enhance the 'beauty and excellence' of creation (332). Christians finds the traditional thrust of evangelical broadcasting (winning souls to Christ) not only limiting, but potentially dangerous, in that it makes evangelicalism vulnerable to the worst instincts of 'media culture.'"

Schultze carries this discussion further in Televangelism and American Culture: The Business of Popular Religion. Lloyd J. Averill wrote in Christian Century that Schultze says that television ministries "are audience supported, personality-led, experientially validated, technologically sophisticated, entertainmentoriented and expansionary-minded." Averill noted that Schultze demonstrates how these characteristics "pander to American culture, which assumes that technology and progress (including spiritual progress) are synonymous; is preoccupied by the cult of personality; prefers individual validation over communal witness and immediacy over tradition; worships success; and assumes that bigger is better."

Choice reviewer P. G. Ashdown commented that Schultze argues that American televangelism, which Schultze terms "the religious cousin of the American commercial broadcasting system," is "largely heretical in terms of orthodox Christianity."

Schultze is coauthor, with five other teachers from the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, of Dancing in the Dark: Youth, Popular Culture, and the Electronic Media, a volume that focuses on the music, television programming, and films favored by teens. The authors agree that the role of adults as shapers of the younger generation has been assumed by the media, which continues to find ways to exploit the situation. It provides the values, identity, intimacy, and affirmation young people need, and in return, the media feeds off of the materialism is promotes. The authors do not see the necessary change coming through church youth groups, ministries, and Christian rock music. They see parents as too tired or too preoccupied to take on the responsibilities that are theirs, and yet they emphasize that this is the only way in which real change will occur.

The essays "balance a respect for youth and its culture with a Calvinist concern for moral guidance," wrote Jeffrey H. Mahan in Christian Century. Dan Morris noted in National Catholic Reporter that the book "proffers no simplistic antidotes. In a nutshell, the authors are saying: Become involved, or be co-opted. They underscore an open-minded, nonjudgmental approach, not unlike the only one they adopt themselves toward rock 'n' roll (don't become over-concerned about the often lurid lyrics, which the kids typically don't hear or understand)."

B. Lee Cooper reviewed the volume in Journal of Popular Culture, calling it "a remarkable study" that "explores the contention that the decline of self-discipline, formal learning, and social ethics among young people is directly related to the triumph of materialism and technology, the pursuit of the 'good life' by many parents, the emergence of electronic media as 'educator by default' and the commercialization of contemporary style, psyche, and change." The authors spell out specific activities that could bring renewal to intergenerational relationships. Quotations and vignettes are used liberally throughout the book, and through chapters on rock 'n' roll, such as "The Landscape of a Musical Style" and "The Music Television Revolution," they concentrate on the theme of consumer capitalism. Cooper praised the bibliography as "bursting" with scholarly works on music, television, art, film, and popular culture.

In Redeeming Television: How TV Changes Christians—How Christians Can Change TV Schultze takes the middle ground in showing how television can promote God's word and work, and in Communicating for Life: Christian Stewardship in Community and Media he addresses how the media should be seen as a gift of communication. Schultze doesn't hold back on his criticism of the media, but he does stress the importance of media literacy to bringing shalom, or God's presence, to the world.

No stranger to the world of technology, Schultze is a founder of the Gospel Communications Web site, maintains his own extensive site, and wrote Internet for Christians: Everything You Need to Start Cruising the Net Today, which he revised several times. In his Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age he cites discernment, moderation, wisdom, humility, authenticity, diversity, community, and the sojourn as requiring "organic community life" rather than the virtual community to be found on the Internet. Schultze contends that "we need to restore a society where meaning is more than measurement, intimacy is valued over observation and deep moral wisdom is esteemed above superficial knowledge," wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer who called the book "a study that is long overdue."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, December, 1991, P. G. Ashdown, review of Televangelism and American Culture: The Business of Popular Religion, pp. 586-587.

Christian Century, September 4, 1991, Lloyd J. Averill, review of Televangelism and American Culture, pp. 816-818; October 16, 1991, Jeffrey H. Mahan, review of Dancing in the Dark: Youth, Popular Culture, and the Electronic Media, pp. 943, 945; August 15, 2001, Joseph B. W. Smith, review of Communicating for Life: Christian Stewardship in Community and Media, p. 33.

Christianity Today, September 4, 1987, Larry Sibley, review of Television: Manna from Hollywood?, p. 38; October 7, 1991, Steve Rabey, review of Televangelism and American Culture and American Evangelicals and the Mass Media: Perspectives on the Relationship between American Evangelicals and the Mass Media, p. 31; February 8, 1993, Robert Bittner, review of Redeeming Television: How TV Changes Christians—How Christians Can Change TV, p. 68.

Editor & Publisher, January 11, 1992, Hiley Ward, review of American Evangelicals and the Mass Media, p. 22.

Journalism Quarterly, winter, 1988, John P. Ferre, review of Television, pp. 1036-1037.

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, winter, 1992, Flo Leibowitz, review of Dancing in the Dark, pp. 80-81.

Journal of Popular Culture, summer, 1992, B. Lee Cooper, review of Dancing in the Dark, pp. 173-174.

Library Journal, September 15, 1990, Richard S. Watts, review of American Evangelicals and the Mass Media, p. 81.

National Catholic Reporter, February 1, 1991, Dan Morris, review of Dancing in the Dark, p. 28.

Publishers Weekly, July 19, 1991, William Griffin, review of Televangelism and American Culture, p. 32; July 15, 2002, review of Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age, p. 70.

Quarterly Journal of Speech, August, 1992, Charles J. G. Griffin, review of American Evangelicals and the Mass Media, pp. 387-389.

Religious Studies Review, April, 1994, Phillip Charles Lucas, review of Televangelism and American Culture, p. 164.