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126 Reception of religion and media

and that the relatively autonomous practices of individuals are today more
important than the prerogatives of institutions and structures.
We’ve also reviewed some of the outlines of the landscape, relying particu-
larly on the work of Wade Clark Roof and Robert Wuthnow. The emergent
religious/spiritual practice of “seeking” defines a good deal of the momentum
in contemporary religion, in their view, while not ignoring the fact that, for
many, “seeking” is less important than “dwelling.” Roof has helpfully
provided a taxonomy of “Baby Boom” religion (discussed in Chapter 3). We
will now begin to use this more explicitly in our analysis. The next two cases
I’ll introduce occupy two separate “poles” of the contemporary religious
Zeitgeist, and the ways they relate to the media provide some compelling
insights into the questions we are concerned with here.

A traditionalist?
Judy Cruz is a 38-year-old single mother living with her son, David, aged
15. Judy is Latina. David’s father, from whom she is divorced, was Latino.
They live in a two-bedroom apartment in a low-income housing develop-
ment in the near suburbs of a major city. Though Judy did not finish high
school, she has attended community college, with the goal of working as a
school para-professional. Having hurt her back, she is now on disability
income. David is a sophomore in an alternative high school. Their family
income is in the $15–25,000 range. 15
Judy is an interesting case in light of Roof’s taxonomy of religion. From
her income and education, we might predict that Judy would be more
traditional in religious terms, fitting into either Roof’s “mainstream
believer” or his “dogmatist” category. However, she’s more complicated
than that. Judy was raised Catholic, and considers herself Catholic today,
but has done quite a bit of moving around, denominationally.

I’ve tried other religions . . . Christian, Baptist... but I always go
back to my own religion because I feel comfortable and because the
Catholic religion there’s not too much of it shown as far as TV or
radio. That’s more or less just an out of the home religion.

It is interesting that Judy feels that religions can be classified by this way.
She is a regular viewer of a number of programs for their religious content,
but sees this “in-home” religion and the “out-of-home” religion of
Catholicism as complementary. Interestingly, the kinds of religious and
spiritual material she weaves together into her own religious identity is
broader than Catholicism or even Christianity.

Interviewer: Do you seek out anything in the media in terms of your spiri-
tuality or religiosity? You mentioned the show Miracles [the actual