Page 35 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

20 Birgit Meyer

domains of society. A similar argument can be made, I believe, with regard
to other “world religions” that spread by virtue of developing portable sen-
sational forms, which can be transposed on a global scale (see also Csordas
2007). Processes of reaching out by incorporating new media, and the
formats and styles that go along with them, challenge our understanding
of religion “as we know it” in high modernity. This concerns not only the
collapse of boundaries between a secular, public realm and the private
sphere, but also the paradoxes with regard to the making of communities
which arise with religious transformations.
The central paradox discerned in our research concerns the logic of
expansion into the public sphere by incorporating new media and modes
of representation, as mentioned earlier. As I explained in the previous sec-
tion, the new possibilities for public exposure may be found to threaten
longstanding modes of binding participants, as in the case of the afore-
mentioned Mae Stella who fiercely opposes the public representation of
forms and elements derived from Candomblé, and insists on keeping what
really matters out of the limelight of cameras. As van de Port shows
(Chapter 1), Mae Stella’s dismissal of the migration of Candomblé’s expres-
sive forms into folkloristic entertainment exemplifies a politics of bound-
ary maintenance. Interestingly, however, this does not draw Candomblé
into full seclusion, as the very act of drawing such boundaries is itself a
media performance: claiming difference occurs in public, and is part and
parcel of a project of asserting the importance of Candomblé, certainly at
a time at which Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity is on the rise.
While for Candomblé, as for Afrikania, public outreach is problematic,
this is central to Pentecostal proselytization, which entails its own ambiva-
lences and paradoxes. As Martijn Oosterbaan shows, encroachment upon
the public realm is haunted by the danger of polluting the message.
Churches such as the Brazilian neo-Pentecostal Igreja Universal run their
own media studies with high-tech church services, talk shows and soaps,
news and politics, and as the world is regarded as a theatre for the struggle
between God and the Devil, they also launch and support Pentecostal
candidates in elections. They seek to create a Pentecostal sphere that is dif-
ferent from “the world,” yet by necessity depends on the use of media and

techniques of representation that also operate outside of Pentecostalism.
Spreading out thus paradoxically not only implies an encroachment upon
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“the world,” but also its incorporation (see also Spyer 2008). For these
media-savvy Pentecostals, it hence becomes ever more difficult to draw a
boundary between being in the world, but not of the world. The more the
born-again community spreads out and takes in, the more it faces the chal-
lenge to stay apart by drawing boundaries that are always already destabi-
lized by its drive to expand. Similarly, as Marleen de Witte (Chapter 8)