Page 20 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

What this book could be about 9

discourse at the scholarly margins has failed to find much interest nearer
the centers. Seen in the context of traditional ideas about secularization,
the dimension of religion – as an ideal or inductive category – was of
fading interest. In spite of the fact that some of this literature verged on
provocative themes and ideas of more central interest to media
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scholarship the fact that it was about, well – “religion” after all – meant
that it could be left at the side. It now emerges, though, that this work was
not just about “religion.”
It is the major argument of this book that media and religion have come
together in fundamental ways. They occupy the same spaces, serve many
of the same purposes, and invigorate the same practices in late modernity.
Today, it is probably better to think of them as related than to think of
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them as separate. To some readers, such an argument will seem to be a
tall order, and I will spend a number of chapters on it. For now, though,
let’s look at some of the other things this book might have been about. We
need to do this because there have been ways to think about religion and
media available to us all along, obvious to a project such as this, but less
obvious to a media-scholarly discourse that has marginalized religion. 14
This book, then, might have focused any of a number of questions
about media social scientists have addressed. Many of these have obvious
connections to religion, and beg asking. It has been suggested that the
primary significance of the media lies in their technological arrangements
and their ability to transcend space and time. If this is so, then social and
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cultural practices that are largely rooted in temporal and spatial
discourses, such as religious ones, must be implicated. It has been argued
that the media are today the most credible sources of social and cultural
information, setting the agenda and the context for much of what we think
and know about reality. 16 Religion, which addresses itself to such ques-
tions, must be expressed and experienced differently today as a result. A
number of studies have suggested a central role for the media in commu-
nity and social solidarity. This has been claimed particularly for youth and
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young adults. Religion and religious organizations have traditionally been
thought to fill this role. What is the implication if that task is now
assumed, particularly for younger generations, by the media?
Much has been made of media content and its putative cultural and
moral values. Much of this is a critique of media, lamenting the negative
and anti-social (even anti-religious) messages that are said to dominate
there. 18 What are the prospects for religion and religious values if the
dominant sector of public discourse – the media – consistently carries
contradictory and antagonistic views? Media have been claimed to be a
negative psychological force, deteriorating the quality of individual and
social life, tantamount to an addiction. 19 Media have been claimed to
structure the flow of daily life, determining when we eat, sleep, socialize,
even procreate. These are clear and taken-for-granted roles and functions
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