Page 21 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

10 What this book could be about

“traditional” religion is interested in, at least, and are surely profound
functions for the media to assume, creating at least a condition or context
within which religion must find its place.
A more nuanced view of the media is that they function as a kind of
mirror of the culture, or even a “cultural forum” through which important
relations in the culture are aired, debated, articulated, and negotiated. 21
This latter view stands in some obvious contrast to much of what I
discussed above. Readers who are familiar with the history of mass
communication and media theory will recognize the earlier set of issues are
consistent with the so-called “dominant” paradigms, the ones that stress
media “effects” rather than their relationship to, or embedment in, culture.
The idea of the media serving as a “cultural forum” represents a major
alternative view in the field of media theory, seeing the media as part of
culture, even constituting culture, rather than as somehow separate from
it. Such a role for the media would obviously condition the prospects and
practices of religion. Religious leaders, institutions, practitioners, symbols,
values, practices, and ideas would all find themselves involved in this
ongoing discourse, rather than separate from it.
There is also a large and growing body of thought focused on genera-
tional differences in media use, significance, and functions. The largest
part of this work has been focused on children and the behavioral and
value implications of media, including film, television, the Internet, and
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video games. A substantial body of work has followed a different direc-
tion, seeking to understand how media function, are used, and are
integrated into the lives of children and particularly adolescents. 23
Important recent work has addressed directly the questions of religion that
follow from such a direction. If the media are such a significant source of
socialization and acculturation for children, how should religion, which
aspires to be directly involved in those processes, respond? Important
work on adolescent media use has shown something more profound than
such “direct effects” – that media serve to orient and articulate much of
teen culture. What are the prospects for religion? How is it adapting or
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must it adapt to such a situation?
The media have been claimed to be at the center of social and cultural
ritual in contemporary life. Some of this is almost commonsensical and
taken for granted. We all know and experience the role that the media play
in conveying and articulating public events, social conflicts and crises. A
more substantive scholarly literature has developed, however, which argues
that these processes are articulated, in a fundamental way, into the warp
and woof of contemporary common life. In the post-9/11 era, it has even
25
been argued that the media assumed, around that event, a role that can
best be described as a “new civil religion of commemoration and
mourning.” 26 The implications of such a situation for “traditional” and
“non-civil” religion are fascinating. Formal religion has always had to