Page 84 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

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therefore served as extensions of church-based informal education programs
and other religious services. They are greatly improved now and, with the
increase in the rate of literacy, a number now combine the vernacular and
foreign languages as the mediums of expression. The use of the vernacular
in these media ensures a sense of affinity and ownership between the media
and grassroots communities. The Roman Catholic Church is a leader in the
provision of religious services through community media, and it explains in
part why that church continues to have a strong presence in Africa in the
face of the challenges from Pentecostal/charismatic communions and Islam.

Conclusion

We have noted that there are two core ingredients of religion: the world
of transcendence and that of the community of worshippers. The survival
and identity of any religion depends on its community of believers and how
they express faith in the worshipped. The media play an important role in
identity formation. Moreover, religions and new religious movements use
media not only to proclaim the faith but to redefine and extend community,
often understanding community as a form of mediation. The “evangelical
imperative” is strongest in new religious movements because of the need
to offer innovative menus that have the ability to draw from existing
communities, and the media is used to great effect in the pursuit of that
agenda. The essence of religious communication is to motivate audiences
to join the actual community. This guarantees the need for effective media
evangelism and the effective instrumental use of media to recruit members
of the listening audience into becoming active in the services of the church.
The main challenge of any media-enabled religious community, then, is to
develop technique and content which in effect motivates the audience to
participate in the activities of the actual community.
The global Christian media ministry is dominated by the evangelical
stream encapsulating the Pentecostal-charismatic varieties with their
strong orientation toward experiential religion. The attractions of this
type of religion under the heat of Western secularization and non-Western
sacralizations of life are obvious. In the Western world, people are searching
for alternative ways of meaning beyond materialism and, in non-Western
contexts, people look for religion that connects with traditional spirituality
with its emphases on experience and existential salvation. In both worlds,
the media have become the frontier and location within which identity and
meaning are sought. Thus, whether we are talking about Western societies
or non-Western, media have become important for community formation
and identity, both virtual and real. The alluring effects of media religion
have proven too much to resist; the religious menu offered through the