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Conclusion: what is produced? 289

Our interviewees seem very much to live on the same kind of map of
domestic practice described by other research in the fields of media studies
and cultural studies. They live in a post-Enlightenment, secularized (using
a conditional definition of that term, of course), late-modern world,
defined by personal autonomy, the self, and rational and reflexive modes
of cultural practice. At the same time, though, they can be said to be
involved in a process of “re-naturing” the religiosity or spirituality of these
practices, building religion and spirituality into things through their redis-
covered interest in invigorating social and cultural experience with these
dimensions. This most probably does not constitute a “re-enchantment” of
the world in an age of “magical media.” It could be described, however, as
a social and cultural development rooted in negotiative meaning practice
in the media age.
The evolution of the media has brought about major changes in
social and cultural life. There is good historical evidence that the media
and religion have evolved together. This is particularly the case in the
periods following the development of printing and the subsequent devel-
opment of the mass media. This co-evolution has not been smooth and
mutually beneficial. In the context of everyday experience, we still
struggle to integrate media into our lives in ways that satisfy our values
and senses of self. We are suspicious of their influence. They seem objec-
tively to convey values and ideas that we find troubling. In the broader
contexts of schooling, public and civic life, and politics, there are similar
senses of disquiet. Much of this disquiet continues to be articulated with
and around ideas derived from religion. Even as Europe and North
America continue to secularize (in the sense that religious authority, at
least, is in decline in both contexts ), religion continues to play a role in
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discourses about normative values. Thus, “religion,” and “the media,”
contend with one another and will continue to do so well into the
future.
On another level, the relationship is defined by the fact that the media are
now the context through which social and cultural relations occur and repre-
sentations are made. Religion, both formal and informal, explicit and implicit,
is now fully subject to this fact. As religion increasingly contends with politics
and seeks to find a role in civil society, it will be under the conditions of medi-
ation that it will do so. Beyond these issues, there is the tendency for religion
and media to interact in important ways. Media exposure serves as a kind of
accelerant to religious discourse, providing the “oxygen of publicity” to ideas
and movements that may not have been able to achieve prominence before.
Religion also acts as a kind of accelerant to media, acting as something
outside the realm of normal media discourse that exists, intervenes, and
contradicts that discourse with a kind of portentous possibility.
These relations are unlikely to change markedly in the future. What
we know after our inquiries here, though, are some things about how