The Real Deal

                            Picture credit: www.onehundredpercent-nofakeshere-justsquintabit.com

What do you think of this picture I bought online? The real deal, right? It’s not signed or anything, like they always bang on about on the Antiques Roadshow, but I really, really believe it’s a rare, bona fide photograph of Jesus. Possibly the only one in existence. I got it off a reliable website, so that clinched it for me. It’s real, and I don’t want to hear any arguments.

In recent years, fake is a word we’ve seen used more and more. Fake news is so prevalent that a whole industry has sprung up to ‘fact check’ the news and issue corrections. Perhaps you can think of a couple of world leaders who frequently dismiss tricky questions from journalists by labelling the issue under discussion as ‘fake news’. Deep-fake photographs appear online that could fool anyone, and social media is awash with lies and unreliable AI-generated content. This makes me think... how much fake information have I consumed this week without even noticing?

Earlier this year, The Bible Society, a highly respected organisation (at least within Christian circles), released a report about a ‘quiet revival,’ among the Gen Z age group in which they claim, “gen Z leads an exciting turnaround in church attendance, as the decades-long decline in churchgoing in England and Wales is over.” The report got widely celebrated at this year’s leading Christian conferences and festivals, but Humanists UK immediately challenged the findings, asserting the conclusions were based on a selective use of data. The Bible Society’s not a dodgy setup peddling counterfeit goods, so would they do such a thing? What’s the truth?

If you heard about the report, what did you think? Did you immediately accept it as ‘truth’? If you saw the response from Humanists UK, did that make you think again? Christian-based social media sites applauded the report, but in an era of short-attention scrolling, many followers probably read little beyond the headline before hitting the ‘like’ button. Equally, on the same sites, I saw people instantly reject the critics’ response with comments such as ‘well they would say that, wouldn’t they?’. One person’s truth is another’s fake news.

It can take courage to go against the flow, so I was interested to see a well-known figure from the evangelical community do just that. It was even more notable because he’s a regular keynote speaker at the very events that promoted and celebrated the amazing news. He didn’t trash the report or reject it out of hand, but his contribution to the debate was to contain his excitement, ask questions and offer his own observations from his extensive knowledge of the UK church scene.

In my previous occupation, academics and ‘think-tanks’ regularly approached me with requests to work with them on an ‘exciting’ research project or to provide them with privileged access to data for them to analyse. These included universities and political or faith-based organisations of all persuasions. With universities purporting to be independent, my first question was always to establish who was footing the bill. I needed to know whether they had a funder or sponsor to please, and often, they did. Regardless of the researcher’s credentials, I knew they could interpret the data any way they wanted, and there would be an unspoken pressure for their findings to align with whatever their funder or organisation already stood for. He who pays the piper calls the tune, you might say. When the research gave them what they wanted, buffet receptions would get laid on and press launches rolled out, but if the findings didn’t align with their hopes, everything would go quiet and my requests to see a copy of the findings would be met with silence or vague excuses.

Just for clarity, I’m not saying I don’t believe The Bible Society’s report about revival; I am just highlighting that one side says this, whilst the other says that, and I’m wary of just accepting what I read as truth because it aligns with my hopes or because it got a big cheer at a conference. Of course, as a Christian, I want it to be the truth because it’s a joyful prospect, but I also think it’s okay to step back and ask questions.

So, to end... a couple of questions. First, are you seeing a revival where you live? Second, what do you do to protect yourself from the scourge of fake news?