Page 25 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

14 What this book could be about

too. There has been much experimentation with digital media integration
into the sense of touch and smell, and while much of this is still on the
horizon, video gaming has already introduced digitally mediated tactile
and kinetic experience.
If we expand a bit the definition of “media” to include the publishing,
entertainment, marketing, tourism, and service industries, we see even
more evidence of the multi-sensory nature of modern communication. It is
now more common for us to travel to, and experience the wonders of,
places and peoples that we have heretofore only seen in the media. Media
industries are increasingly integrated with these other sectors, connecting
print and electronic publishing with such things as the “self-help” and
“twelve-step” movements through which a wide range of material culture,
both objects and experiences directed at the senses, can now be secured. It
will continue to be – and increasingly so – that that media we consume
will be oriented toward a compelling salience across a range of tactile,
kinetic, and sensual domains. This means that media materials are – at the
same time – compelling on their own terms as texts and objects, and
increasingly significant for interests in the culture that are also about
symbols, values, the body, experience, and a range of other modes of expe-
rience. The connection to religion is obvious and intriguing.
The purpose of this book is not to explore any – or any combination –
of the foregoing issues in and of themselves. It does not propose that the
implications of the media for religion are limited to any of these areas.
Rather, I want to get behind such questions by looking at the significance
of the media for religion in the context of media consumption or
reception. The question, rather than being “what is the significance of the
media age for religion?” is instead “where is that significance to be
found?” The difference is a subtle, yet profound one. In a way, the
“where” question is the question of an anthropologist who observes a
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phenomenon in culture, and sets about explaining or interpreting it. In my
case here, it is possible to see that the media exist and are ubiquitous, that
they traffic in symbolic and cultural material that is significant to what we
once thought of as “religion,” and that religious institutions and those
responsible for religious culture are concerned about this situation. The
“what” question presents itself, and it is time to ask “where?” within
which is subsumed the also interesting question, “for whom?”
Such an approach is, of course, paradigmatically distinct from much of
what has gone before in the way of inquiries into religion and the media.
The majority of work, particularly in the fields of mass communication
and media studies, seems to revolve around questions of ideology and the
influence of media and religion on one another. George Gerbner, who
famously declared television “the new state religion,” saw the question
being one of social and ideological power. Where once religion had played
a primary role in shaping and enforcing social values and ideas, and