Page 34 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

Introduction 17

process of marketing belief, and as a social operation of mediation, in which
religion is not simply here or there, invested in the traditional hardware of
altar or holy site, but diffused in virtually ubiquitous media artifacts and the
practices of consuming them. This state of affairs urges analysts to recognize
the importance of understanding practice as the center of gravity of religion,
and that is what Pamela Klassen does in her chapter on practice. By reviewing
the recent history of theoretical reflection on practice among sociologists,
anthropologists, and historians, Klassen shows the importance of the idea
for the study of religion as mediation.
To date, many scholars of religion and media have operated with
only an implicit notion of culture in mind. This tends to produce under-
theorized accounts that stress the dominance of institutions and trendsetting
individuals that take the place of more subtle perceptions of the cultural
processes of mediation. A more robust account of culture in the study of
media and religion will highlight the dynamics of constructing narratives,
the performance of ritual practices, the mediation of religious belief, and the
role of consumption in crafting communities and social identities. Angela
Zito, therefore, conducts her discussion of culture as a history of how major
thinkers over the last several decades have successively framed the study of
media and religion in different approaches to culture. She argues that culture
is more than the static reservoir of meanings and artifacts and the enduring
hierarchy of authority that certain groups wish it to be. Culture is also the
creative, countervailing, evolving, ever-transient, and always historically
constructed range of activities that order and value human experience,
forever building worlds up and tearing them down. Culture consists of the
practices and epistemologies of embodiment and mediation that endow
human experience with its meanings. Religions are prevailing forms of
such ordering at work in institutions, markets, individual and collective
rituals, various mediated publics and audiences, and the shifting shape of
communities that each of these produces.

Notes

1 Major work on the history of the book and religious print that appeared in the
1970s and 1980s includes that of Stout 1977; Hatch 1983; Hall 1989; and Nord
1984. Important work on religion and popular culture at this time includes Real
1977; Williams 1980; and Goethals 1981.
2 The winter 1985 issue of the Journal of Communication ran as a special
feature entitled “The Mediated Ministry,” consisting of six articles by scholars
who examined the use of mass media for religious purposes, Journal of
Communication 35 (1): 89–156. The following studies also register the interest
of scholars occasioned by the new circumstances of religious communication