Reading the Times Quotes

“As Augustine advises, “All people should be loved equally. But you cannot do good to all people equally, so you should take particular thought for those who, as if by lot, happen to be particularly close to you in terms of place, time, or any other circumstances.”
― Jeffrey Bilbro, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry Into the News

“By imagining ourselves as rational beings, we welcome vulnerable to malformed affections and habits. When we deny the reality of our social modes of reasoning, we become caught up in mindless swarms: trying to become a community of rational thinkers, we become a swarm of atomized, emoters.”
― Jeffrey Bilbro, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News

“Don't get your news from the TV; its financial incentives are such that is almost impossible for a TV station to be anything but a frenetic peek-a-boo show.”
― Jeffrey Bilbro, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News

“We respond to events primarily based on prejudices and hunches--feelings formed in large part by the communities we imagine ourselves belonging to. In this way, the news primes are affective responses, shaping the intuitive heuristics we rely on to judge the affairs of our day. It is these almost instinctual, gut feelings that lead us to respond to a story with protests, praise, prayer, or lament and to act on this response by volunteering, by rallying around a need in our community, by writing a legislator, or by attending a city council meeting. In short, if we want to think well about the events of our day, we will first need to belong well to the body of Christ into the neighbors with whom we share our places.”
― Jeffrey Bilbro, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News

“As consumers of news, we are in danger of developing a greater sense of camaraderie with those who laugh at Peter Segal's jokes or get their news from Anderson Cooper than with members of our church who happened to vote for the wrong political party.”
― Jeffrey Bilbro, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News

“When we belong less profoundly to our families, our places, and our religious traditions, we're more susceptible to being caught up in the secular, metatopical, market-driven communities of the public sphere. Yet such forms of belonging are in inadequate substitutes for thick, sustaining communities; they are better described as swarms of atomized individuals.”
― Jeffrey Bilbro, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News

“Instead of looking to the news to create better communities, we should be looking to strengthen communities so that they can create better news.”
― Jeffrey Bilbro, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News

“News-as-spectacle, whether a political scandal, a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, or almost any story is rendered by television, shapes those who consume it to be passive spectators”
― Jeffrey Bilbro, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News

“If we want to exercise more responsibility regarding what ideas we entertain, we will need to develop the attention and vocabulary required to relate truthfully to a complex world. Or, as (Wendell) Berry puts it, "We must speak, and teach our children to speak, a language, precise and articulate and lively enough to tell the truth about the world as we know it." And we won't learn this language if our minds have become passive thoroughfares for advertising jingles, political slogans, and hashtags.”
― Jeffrey Bilbro, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News

“Reading the news well requires a good, theological understanding of the news, but that theology also needs to be instantiated in healthy habits.”
― Jeffrey Bilbro, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry Into the News