Page 75 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

58 J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu

media means the boundaries of religious community are being constantly
redefined. In Africa, Pentecostal-charismatic communions now influence the
dominant modes of representation, that is, the formats, styles, and ways
of framing in the public sphere leading to a gradual “Pentecostalization”
of that sphere. One way in which this has been achieved is through the
film industry, wherein worldviews of mystical causality are sustained. This
ever-popular African film industry is dominated by story lines that privilege
Pentecostal Christianity over traditional religions by demonizing the latter
as the domain of the devil.
Birgit Meyer writes that “collective rituals are prime examples of sensational
forms, in that they address and involve participants in a specific manner
and induce particular feelings” (Meyer 2006: 9). Her observation recalls the
Muslim practice of praying at set times facing a particular direction, wherever
one may be around the globe. It also brings to mind the Pentecostal religious
practice of the “prayer chain.” Here, individual members of the community
are charged to pray on particular topics, during particular hours, and for the
same length of time. During that period, people may be praying individually
but, in fact, they do so as participants in “community” separated only by
distance and space. They remain one in spirit and in the Spirit. Similarly,
the world of media has seismically altered the way in which sacred realities
are encountered. Members and nonmembers of religious communities
have become consumers of mediated religion, making the mass media
leading players in the field of religious belief and practice. Defining religion
within the context of visual practice, for example, David Morgan refers to
“configurations in social relatedness and cultural ordering that appeal to
powers that assist humans in organizing their collective and individual lives.”
Further, religion is a way of controlling events or experience for the purpose
of living better, longer, more meaningfully, or with less hazard (Morgan
2005: 52). For many, then, particularly in non-Western primal cultures,
religion is a survival strategy and usually something that involves the entire
community.
However, religion as expressed in the modern West can also be a highly
intellectualized activity. The very conscious and sometimes aggressive attempt
to keep religion private and to restrain it from encroaching on public space
has led partly to the innovative “mediatizations” of the sacred we find in the
modern world. Community-based religions such as Christianity and Islam
feel under siege. One Internet web site is named “Indians against Christian
Aggression”: www.christreview.org. The two religions have reacted in
different ways, including the creation of virtual religious communities that
access religious resources through the media. A sense of shared belief and
purpose and of mutual support, for instance, helps televangelism’s viewers
to face threats to their faith (Alexander 19994: 85). In the aftermath of 9/11,