General Electric’s NBC Cannot Silence God’s Message Of Extravagant Welcome

What a weird world we live in. ABC will run advertisements for the Religious Right political group Focus on the Family – whose founder has made defeating democrats a primary task of his organization – but the network and others (now including some NBC-owned cable stations) will not air a television spot promoting the United Church of Christ. ABC says they won’t air religious commercials but the hypocrisy is apparent whenever they have aired Focus on the Family spots. NBC won’t air the UCC spots because our denomination promotes a message that God doesn’t turn anyone away. For the peacock network – a media conglomerate owned by General Electric – the Gospel message of extravagant welcome is one that should be silenced. General Electric, which gives millions of dollars to conservative political campaigns, clearly has a stake in silencing any prophetic message that challenges society to follow Jesus’ ministry – a ministry that spoke of tolerance, love, justice, and God’s gift of grace. Those are not always corporate values. Will the effort on the part of the media corporations to silence the voice of the United Church of Christ work? No. God is still speaking. Even GE isn’t powerful enough to keep that voice quiet.