Page 317 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

306 Notes

55 For a thorough discussion of this history, see Hoover (1988).
56 Moore (1995), Winston (2000), Morgan (1996), Nord (2004), Underwood (2002).
57 Borden (forthcoming).
58 Nord (2004).
59 Blake (2004).
60 Borden (forthcoming).
61 Ali (2001).
62 Hendershot (2004), p. 209.
63 Christianity Today Magazine Rates and Data
(www.christianitytoday.com/help/advertising/print/ct.html) [accessed 3 August
2005].
64 Which folded in 1993.
65 Alsdurf (forthcoming).
66 Hoover (1988).
67 Hoover et al. (2004), Chapter 3.
68 See Hoover (1988) for a discussion of this process with regard to religious broad-
casting, and Hendershot (2004) in relation to Evangelical and prophecy films. In
both cases, an impulse to make media that would move into the secular market-
place faces the problem of accommodating to the demands of that marketplace,
and, in both cases, the record is clear that it is a nearly insuperable challenge to
make such “crossing over” work. The same situation has been widely noted in
regard to the “crossover” potential of the Christian music industry.
69 Hendershot (2004), particularly the discussion of the film Left Behind,
pp. 200–9. Hendershot quotes a number of Evangelical informants asking,
“Why can’t Christians make better movies?”
70 Zerbisias (1997).
71 Zerbisias (1997).
72 Hendershot’s review of Christian marketing and contemporary Christian music
concludes that this kind of programming – generically “wholesome” – is under-
stood to be the successful approach for “crossing over” from the “other
direction” as well (Hendershot 2004, Chs 1–2 and p. 199).
73 No fewer than three scholarly volumes dealing with the film were announced
within weeks of its premier.
74 Apostolos-Cappadona (1997); see also Korp (1997).
75 Goethals (1982).
76 Morgan (1999).
77 For a discussion of realism in the Gibson Passion, see Morgan (2004).
78 Best and Kellner (1991).
79 Wildmon (1989); Medved (1992).
80 Bellah (1986), pp. 279–81.
81 Carey (1989), p. 18.
82 Culturalist media theory has long articulated a powerful critique of such total-
izing understandings of mass media. See, in particular, Moores (1993), pp. 1–10.
83 Harvey (1989).
84 McLuhan (1994).
85 Ellul (1967).
86 Ong (1986).
87 DeVries and Weber (2001).
88 I limit my criticism of deVries and Weber’s (2001) efforts because, in other
respects, many of the contributions to their volume are insightful, even
masterful, accounts of various aspects of the implications of the media age for
religion. Curiously lacking among their contributors (aside from some anthro-
pologists) are any social scientists whose work focuses on religion and media.