Page 168 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

Public 151

attempting to influence the the public and religious publics; and finally,
religious publics attempting to use the secular media to influence
themselves.
Religious groups have struggled with how to engage with those outside
their number; for all but those in monastic separation, there is a quest to be
1
in but not of the world. Phillip Hammond has argued that in the United
States, religions can be religious in public up until the point where their
actions impinge on the larger whole (Hammond 1999). If they wish to
be taken seriously in public debate, they must translate their beliefs into
claims that can be understood and argued apart from a specific, theological
framework. They can continue to speak their own language but should not
expect everyone else to learn the language to engage with them.
Religious publics have in the past succeeded to some extent in influencing
the the public without too much translation. Often this has been in
communities where a religious public is synonymous with the membership
of a nation’s citizens, for example, the Roman Catholic Church’s ability to
enforce the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in Ireland well into the 1960s.
To be Irish was almost always to be Catholic, so nihil obstat needed no
translation (the phrase denotes that a publication is in accordance with
Catholic teaching, so “nothing stands in the way” of reading it).
Even in a minority situation, a religious public may be able to exercise
its influence over the larger public vis-à-vis mass media. The Production
Code—largely influenced by the Catholic Legion of Decency—served as a
means of self-censorship for Hollywood producers. The 1930 Code restricted
language, nudity, sex, and violence in the name not just of the American but
the global public:

Motion picture producers recognize the high trust and confidence which
have been placed in them by the people of the world and which have
made motion pictures a universal form of entertainment…They know
that the motion picture within its own field of entertainment may be
directly responsible for spiritual or moral progress, for higher types of
social life, and for much correct thinking.
(Hayes 2007)

However, the age of the Index and the Code has passed, at least in the
North. It would be difficult to imagine the claim above eliciting anything but
guffaws in a contemporary movie theater.
The second type of interaction is driven from the media end of things:
pkroducers attempt to influence the public and religious publics, sometimes
for “good” but also for greedy reasons.