Page 76 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

Community 59

the world was treated to a systematic demonization of Islam through the
media. Through the same media, Muslim communities have bonded together
to ensure their own survival and for the preservation of the holy things they
hold dear. The public expression of religion such as church attendance may
be declining in the West but on television, on radio, and on the Internet,
it is now possible for Christian communities to access religious resources
for daily consumption. The media play important roles in the formation of
religious identity, and its resources are used “to proclaim the truth, mobilize
the masses, protect the faithful and lay down the gauntlet to non-believers”
(Thomas 2005: 4). The deep and innate human desire to link up with, or
even feel touched by, a meta-empirical reality has led to the reinvention of
religion in many ways, including the formation of new communities, and the
media are being used to great effect for religious purposes. Several African
pastors of independent churches now text daily words of inspiration to the
mobile phones of their members. And “religious broadcasting constitutes a
religious activity that is produced and viewed by people who share common
symbols, values, and a ‘moral culture’ they celebrate” (Hoover 1988: 21).
That is the essence of community: to produce a sense of identity, belonging,
and comfort—virtues that are not discontinuous with the aims of religion.

Religious quest: Individual and communal

Modern media democratize access to the sacred, the quest for religious
fulfillment and salvation or whatever “rewards” expected from encounters
with transcendent realities. Particularly in the West, this contributes to what
Stewart Hoover refers to as “personal autonomy” wherein increasingly
religion is seen as “a project of the autonomous, reflexive self” (Hoover
2003: 11). In the West, religion has thereby moved “away from situations
in which religious institutions and histories are definitive to situations in
which individual questing and practice have become more definitive”
(Hoover 2003: 12). This trend is heightened by three main developments:
the religions-under-siege mentality, religious pluralism, and the intrusive
and overbearing nature of modern media. The media in all its forms has
developed as a “midwife” between the world of transcendence and the world
of humans. Thus, an insightful foreword to Hoover’s Mass Media Religion
notes how television religious broadcasts, for example, “can ‘strengthen’ and
deepen the faith of viewers by providing them with instruction, exhortation,
inspiration, hope, encouragement, entertainment, example and opportunity
for service” (Martin, in Hoover 1988: 11).
In The Sacred Gaze, Morgan also serves us well by recognizing “images and
visual pieties” as vital parts of religious practices that put beliefs to work in
the experiences of both the individual and community. More often than not,