Page 77 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

60 J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu

the experiences of the individual are meaningful in terms of shared religious
experiences of the community. Thus, the community is an “important site for
visual culture” (Morgan 2005: 54). Morgan’s basic argument is that religious
images are better appreciated as integral parts of visual practice, explained
in terms of “a visual mediation of relations among a particular group of
humans and the forces that help to organize their world.” His explanation
that images and objects can operate very powerfully in religious practice “by
organizing the spaces of worship and devotion, delineating certain places
as sacred, such as pilgrimage sites, temples, domestic spaces, and public
religious festivals” may be illustrated by the following practice (Morgan
2005: 55). In the reinvention of the Wesleyan camp meeting tradition in my
native Ghana, I have often been struck by the innovative transformation of
secular spaces into sacred ones by the installation of a cross. Camp meetings
among Ghanaian Methodists take place in public parks. To set that space
apart from its previous profane uses, a giant wooden cross is erected in the
center of the park to signify that space as temporary sacred space.
The cross usually remains there for the entire duration of the camp meeting
as the focus of community and ritual. The worshipping community believes
in the newly acquired status of these usually grassless parks and would often
collect the sand used to mount the cross for whatever therapeutic purposes
they can serve after the camp meeting. The image, Morgan states,

declares by virtue of its signage or its iconic presence or its incursion into
otherwise profane space or its complete isolation from everyday traffic
that something significant is happening, or once did, that the devout
should pay special heed.
(Morgan 2005: 56)

The enthronement of the holy book in Sikhism, as cited by Morgan, and
the presence of images in worship such as the cross in African Methodist
camp meeting traditions and on local and international pilgrimage sites such
as Mecca and Lourdes thoroughly vindicate his exposition. And among the
import of images to religious communities, Morgan refers to how they have
been employed as media of communication with the “unseen, mysterious,
and potentially uncontrollable forces that are understood to govern life”
(Morgan 2005: 59).

Religious pluralism, media, and community

All the empirical data point to the fact that modern media, particularly in
its electronic forms, have been at the center of the resurgence of religious
consciousness since the middle of the twentieth century. Evangelically