Page 272 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

Public religious culture post-09/11/01 261

those cases, there is a salience, even attraction, to such media, including
things that are thought of as “guilty pleasures.” Thus, it might not
particularly matter to our born-again believers what a Robertson or
Falwell thinks or says. In fact, it was common among our interviewees to
regard televangelism with some derision. Religious authority seemed to
yield to a range of mediated sources that people use and integrate. This
tends to extend to clerical authority in general. Few of our interviewees
wanted to leave it even to their own pastor or priest or rabbi or imam or
shaman to decide these things for them.
Ultimately, it is, as we assumed in our earlier chapters, the “self” that is
the place where things are authoritatively brought together. It is up to the
individual, our interviewees believe, to make sense of the world, to draw
on resources of memory, tradition, belief, family, school, place-of-worship,
and media culture to craft a sense of themselves that works and functions
in contemporary life. We saw very little in our interviews that would
suggest the kind of ideologically determining role implicit in some of the
concerns and criticisms we’ve heard and seen. The linkage between media,
belief, and behavior (political or otherwise) is not as direct and instru-
mental as we might fear, at least based on our inquiries here.
What we may be seeing is a situation much closer to the normative one
called for by Joe Loconte. At least in terms of their intentions and ideal
selves, our interviewees do not see necessary linkages between religion and
authority in either the social or political spheres. They lead complicated
lives, where a variety of pressures, influences, sources of insight, values,
and symbols come into play on a daily basis. The world around them
changes and they must find ways to evolve with it. They do not think of
themselves as “blank slates” onto which religious or political discourses
are written. Instead, they are consumers and users of such discourses,
contending with the competing claims of various contexts and voices.
An example of the complex negotiation between belief, politics, media,
culture, and values that ensues comes from our interview with Doreen
Richards. The issue of gay marriage (and gay rights more generally) came
to rival abortion as the fundamental-values issue in the 2004 election.
Most observers and commentators, looking at the big picture, would
assume a rather easy and facile connection between conservative religiosity
and attitudes about gay rights, which would be reflected, or even influ-
enced, by media reception. Doreen showed us that things are not nearly so
simple. She is a 55-year-old who lives in the suburbs of a major
midwestern rust-belt city with her husband, Marvin, and the last of their
five adopted children. She describes herself as a devout and traditional
Catholic. 66
During the interview, Doreen revealed that, while she does not generally
like reality shows, she has seen a number of them, and she and the
Interviewer engaged in a discussion of the genre. The one reality program