Page 220 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

Modes of Binding, Moments of Bonding 205

Notes

1. One etymology of the Latin religio (first given by Lactantius [Divinae
Institutiones IV, 28] and made prominent by Augustinus) traces it to the verb
religare, to bind (again), to reconnect, referring to the bond (liga) between man
and God.
2. The notion of “bonding,” with its connotation of emotional and physical
attachment, seems particularly apt to both charismatic Pentecostal and African
traditional religiosity.
3. The term format, derived from the context of mass media as a relatively fixed
and reproducible set of formal and sequential features applied to organize
media content, is taken here to include the more or less fixed and repetitive
modes of formal organization of, in this case, religious practice and expression,
be they textual, visual, aural, or performative.
4. First Ofori-Atta lecture, quoted in Gifford 2004, 125.
5. The Living Word correspondence department files and answers about 400 let-
ters and e-mails a month, mainly from nonmembers.