New Series, Vol. 2, No. 6
This article started with a content analysis of the 1996-2020 religious programming on the History Channel, a cable television channel widely available in the United States. The History Channel has been one of the 15 most-watched cable TV channels in the U.S. for more than 15 years, averaging more than 800,000 nightly viewers in 2021.
Religion is one of the channel’s five most frequent subjects, and 44% of this study’s History Channel programs (n = 408) prioritized violence (i.e., violence was emphasized in 36% of programs about Christianity and 63% of programs about other religions). The authors conducted an ideological critique of 17 selected episodes, following the content analysis.
The authors argue that history is written through a lens of imagined objectivity, meaning that history is presented as if there is just one true or real version, but that selecting only one historical interpretation among multiple is inherently political. The History Channel had already been analyzed by scholars, to mixed reviews. Some scholars have appreciated the Channel for offering quality educational opportunities and as a benefit that television provides for typical citizens interested in learning history, while others have criticized it for simply masquerading as objective fact even while it sometimes has validated conspiracy theories.
The authors argue,
“Christianity is often given more value and legitimacy than other religions in the United States because of the assertion that the United States is a Christian nation. This powerful political myth known as Christian nationalism asserts that Christianity and American identity are ‘inextricably bound together,’ implying that normal Americans are theists and civilized religious practices should look like Christian practices.”
Controlling historical narratives has long been a key strategy, around the world, for gaining and maintaining social dominance in the public sphere. So, in this case, the strategy helps to legitimize white supremacy (and, in some cases, Christian nationalist violence) and has specifically vilified Arabs and Muslims, overlapping but far from identical groups (the authors caution that they do not mean to imply that all Christian Americans are white supremacists).
For their content analysis, the researchers broadly defined “religion,” but excluded many programs for various reasons. For example, a program on the history of Christmas was excluded for its commercial, not religious, focus; programs on Egyptian pharaohs were included if they concerned Egyptians beliefs and not archeology, and most programs on the Holocaust were excluded because they did not focus on Jewish religious beliefs. For every program about Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism, there were 24, 31, 71 and 284 programs about Christianity, respectively.
Programs about religion could be divided into only three ideological themes: violence (i.e. blood sacrifice, war, disasters), adventure (travel, exploration), or science (testing theories using technology and the scientific method). Again, 44% (176) of all programs were about violence, and the researchers chose 17 of them for closer analysis, intentionally including programs about Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Voodoo for balance, and programs about Mormonism, Catholicism, and Protestantism, not only pre-Reformation Christianity. Nineteen hours of content viewing resulted in 165 pages of notes. What emerged was “non-Christian violence is portrayed as inherent to the uncivilized religiopolitical contexts of non-white people groups while Christian violence is portrayed as justified, heroic, and exceptional.” In many cases, the only episode about a non-Christian religion focused only on violence; of nine programs on Hinduism, seven were about violence. Cambodia’s Angkor Wat temple complex, for example, was contextualized as historically (and until relatively recently) being in a violent area. Some episodes superficially questioned the violent reputations of religious groups but, in doing so, perpetuated those reputations. The authors observed that viewers of one Islam program “could easily conclude that Muslim theologians, philosophers, and practitioners routinely discuss how much violence to use when converting people.” Of 12 programs about Judaism since the advent of Christianity, 10 prioritized violence.
The researchers concluded that religion-themed History Channel programs showed the U.S. “as a peaceful safe haven where people can go to escape such sectarian bloodshed and practice any religion they choose.” When Christian past violence was shown, it “tends to be the violence of fringe or persecuted versions of Christianity”: Branch Davidians at Waco, early Mormon violence, Biblical figures reimagined as military experts, Knights Templar (Catholic), and violence in Christian texts.
Finally, Schnabel and Pippert found that a “surprising amount” of History Channel content imagines a future in which ordinary Christians (especially white men) will be required to be violent. In particular, a six-part series, Countdown to Apocalypse (2012) takes literally biblical predictions of plagues, earthquakes, transcendent battles between good and evil, and annihilations of entire populations, although Christians do not agree on the “End Times.” Strangely, the first part included Native American Hopi prophecies about a “final cataclysmic purification of our world,” though they are not biblical and no Hope people are shown.
Communication Currents Discussion Questions
- Not only are History Channel programs on religion disproportionately focused on violence, the History Channel overall is skewed toward violence: hours and hours of programs every day about wars. This suggests that content decisions are driven largely by commercial considerations (maximizing ratings), not only historical facts and ideologies that interpret them. Comment on the need for history to be profitable in modern media entertainment.
- Members of non-Christian religions may complain about being under-represented, and therefore marginalized, in History Channel programming about religion. However, this study suggests that increased programming covering non-Christian religions would contain important harmful misrepresentations of these religions and cultures. Discuss why mere representation is not always positive and how mainstream media can avoid harmful misrepresentations of marginalized groups.
- Americans often chafe at required history courses in K-12 education, rarely major in history in college anymore, and don’t voluntarily read history books widely. But Americans also watch a lot of History Channel (and history programs on other channels and networks), visit historical sites in great numbers, and research their family trees. So are Americans interested in history or not?
For additional suggestions about how to use this and other Communication Currents in the classroom, see: https://www.natcom.org/publications/communication-currents/integrating-communication-currents-classroom
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Elaine S. Schnabel is an assistant professor of communication, Weber State University. Courtlyn Pippert is an assistant professor of communication, Coker University.
This essay, by Dane S. Claussen, translates the scholarly journal article, Elaine S. Schnabel and Courtlyn Pippert (2024). Countdown to the apocalypse: The legitimation of white Christian violence in religious programing on the History Channel. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 21(4), 413-429. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2024.2410153.
The full copyright and private policy link is available at natcom.org/privacy-policy/
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