Television
Give Sunday a Break
By PETER FORSTER
HAVING watched with rapt and reverend attention the last two editions of ABC's religious programme for teen- agers, The Sunday Break, I feel less than ever inclined to N ON accept the protest made on its behalf in our corres- pondence columns recently by its Programme Adviser, Mr. Penry Jones, who said he would not normally reply to criticism but none the less permitted himself a lengthy enough bash. Nor do I apologise for returning to the subject: there is a sense in which The Sunday Break is far the most important programme on television. It poses almost all the issues of public interest which the medium involves: power to influence, spiritual propaganda, idioms of education and entertainment. It is certainly noteworthy that a commercial company should be taking its responsibilities so seriously in a field where some speakers in the House of Lords still seem to think the BBC has A monopoly.
We were, the setting suggested, in a teen- agers' club. A pert, pretty and wonderfully self-possessed girl greeted us, the viewers, and introduced us to a dance band musician who explained his hobby of compiling weather charts. We then met the Rev. Robin Barber, lecturer on the New Testament at Edinburgh, who was quickly quizzed concerning, the Church of Scotland's resolution criticising Government policy in Nyasaland. Has the Church a right to interfere? asked one lad, but before he could be answered we were off across the room to meet pop singer Ruby Murray and her husband; they happened to have a musical arrangement with them, so were able to sing together, and mention was made of Ruby's latest record. Twenty minutes had passed, and now the discussion with the Rev. Barber was resumed. Several of the teenagers gave their views on the conflict
between Church and State in a discussion of much muddle and sincerity, at the end of which the Rev. •Barber summed up unexceptionably by attacking pride and hypocrisy. 'I don't think we've said really very much that'll help, but perhaps it'll get us thinking about it,' were his closing words. This spot had lasted ten minutes. Another musical spot, then the group clustered round Bernard Braden, who read two stories that had won prizes in a competition. The programme ended with everybody jiving. Serious content, ten minutes, coated by thirty-five of sugar.
The following Sunday, a guitarist sang and played a folk song. Then a Youth Employment Officer answered some questions about jobs: 'There are no such things, I always say, as dead-end jobs, only dead-end people.' Then the Hedley Ward Trio sang 'Does the chewing gum lose its flavour on the bedstead overnight?' After which there was a brief discussion on racial discrimination, which the team was against; more guitar-playing; more Hedley Ward Trio ; a discussion on school-leaving problems, from which it emerged that money was not everything, supervised and summed up by a pleasant, sympathetic, youngish clergyman, Canon Patey; exeunt dancing. This was an altogether more spirited pro- gramme than the former, and there is the testimony of Mr. Jones's letter that on occasion the intellectual tone has been pitched much higher than in either of these.
Sarcasm is not my purpose. Anyone can see the ideas behind this programme, and cer- tainly it is a most tricky and complex problem to provide (as television must) some religious programmes, without succumbing to the dangers and temptations of denominational warfare. But when all is said and done, here is the most fascinating, vital, thrilling subject ever to tax the mind of man, here the most sky-ranging and yet the most practical of all issues, here is what has been the inspiration
or an immense treasure-house of literature, rt, music, building—and what, when it omes to instructing our teenagers about eligion, do we offer them ? Skiffle and piffle. o they won't go to church: here is the medium hat is the teacher's dream for showing them he great houses of religion, for taking them ut of themselves to meet people and places hey might never know. Instead there are erely inconclusive little arguments between he pert and the prissy, and when it comes to he tremendous points of principle and octrine, which eminent men are sometimes rought along to elucidate, these have to be andwiched in for five minutes between a jam ession and a coffee break. When I think of he richness and variety of CBS's religious rogrammes in New York, Mr. Jones's smug, uffy protestations seem thin indeed.
Moreover, there is this underlying .1.a
ssumption that religion is a matter of demo- racy, something proved by debate and a jority vote. What honestly does anyone hink these pocket forums achieve? That some eenagers still ask, as some always have and ill, the great questions? It is not to be oubted; but faith is a matter of revelation and nstruction ; answers are the need here, not questions, and though words may be made simple, it is a false instruction to water down what they stand for too often here one sensed an almost apologetic idiom attuned to Philip Guedalla's old joke about any stigma to beat a dogma. Or is it, as Canon Patey hinted, thought useful for viewers to be shown, say, that teenagers worry about other things than cash? In which case, what audience is aimed at ?
It may be that teenagers won't go to church, that they don't dig the message; that is no reason for altering the message. Perhaps their capacity for serious discussion must be stimulated by constant interruptions for guitar-playing and jive; Dean Inge once compared preaching to filling milk bottles at a distance with a thin hose, but I cannot feel much gets into the bottles under the con- ditions of The Sunday Break. And I still fear that this way of presenting religion is the thin end of a wedge at whose thick end is Liberace singing Ave Maria with a girl dressed as a nun beside the candelabra. The Sunday Break means well, dreadfully well, but its sponsors must not get too incensed if a critic insists upon some of the dangers, and points out that it was not the road to heaven which was paved with good intentions.
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