Slides from day 1 of my teaching on media at Bible & Culture 2015. This session considers the importance of stories for human beings and outlines seven major themes in the stories we tell, which resonate powerfully with the grand story of the Bible.

1. Engaging with Media

2. ‘‘The most important thing about the
communications we live among is . .
. that with all their lives, skews, and
shallow pleasures, they saturate our
way of life with a promise of feeling.
Todd Gitlin
Media Unlimited (2002)

3. No single piece of our
mental world is to be
hermetically sealed off
from the rest, and there
is not a square inch in
the whole domain of our
human existence over
which Christ, who is
Sovereign over all, does
not cry: ‘Mine!’
Abraham Kuyper

4. The Stories We
Tell

5. Film as dream, film as
music. No art passes
our conscience in the
way film does, and
goes directly to our
feelings, deep down
into the dark rooms
of our souls.
Ingmar Bergman

6. Why Stories
Matter

7. After nourishment,
shelter and
companionship,
stories are the thing
we need most in the
world
Philip Pullman

8. Stories – individual
stories, family stories,
national stories – are
what stitch together
the disparate
elements of human
existence into a
coherent whole. We
are story animals.
Yann Martel
Beatrice and Virgil

9. A people are as
healthy and confident
as the stories they tell
themselves. Sick
storytellers can make
nations sick. Without
stories we would go
mad. . . .
© Metsavend, used under a
Creative Commons licence

10. . . . Life would lose
it’s moorings or
orientation. Stories
can conquer fear, you
know. They can make
the heart larger.
Ben Okri
© Metsavend, used under a
Creative Commons licence

11. What are some of the prominent stories
in British society at the moment?
What impact do you think they are
having on the health of our society?

12. Perhaps it is how we
are made; perhaps
words of truth reach
us best through the
heart, and stories and
songs are the
language of the heart.
Stephen Lawhead
Merlin

13. All stories teach,
whether the story-
teller intends them to
or not. They teach the
world we create. They
teach the morality we
live by. They teach it
much more effectively
than moral precepts
and instructions.
Philip Pullman

14. ‘‘Stories make us more alive, more
human, more courageous, more
loving. Why does anybody tell a
story? It does indeed have some-
thing to do with faith. Faith that the
universe has meaning, that our little
human lives are not irrelevant, that
what we choose or say or do
matters, matters cosmically.
Madeleine L’Engle

15. ‘‘Our action emerges from how
we imagine the world. What we do
is driven by who we are, by the kind
of person we have become. And
that shaping of our character is, to a
great extent, the effect of stories that
have captivated us, that have sunk
into our bones-stories that ‘picture’
what we think life is about, what
constitutes ‘the good life.’ . . .

16. ‘‘. . . We live into the stories we've
absorbed; we become characters in
the drama that has captivated us.
James K.A. Smith
Imagining the Kingdom

17. Seven Major
Themes

18. 1. Paradise Lost

19. 2. Breaking Free

20. 3. Remaking the World

21. 4. Defeating Oppressors

22. 5. Overcoming Brokenness

23. 6. Finding True Love

24. 7. Coming Home

25. In a world where
there are no longer
books we have
almost all read, the
movies we have
almost all seen are
perhaps the richest
cultural bond we
have. . . .

26. The best of them
remind us of human
truths that would not
seem as true without
them. They help to
remind us that we are
all of us humans
together.
Frederick Buechner

27. Stories can change
the world.
N.T. Wright
©JordanCooper,usedunderaCreativ

28. www.tonywatkins.uk