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68 Media and religion in transition

influence audiences, institutions, values, or other sectors of the culture, of
which religion is a central one. In the classic study of late-century social
life, Habits of the Heart, the authors attribute just this sort of influence to
the media and popular culture. 80
Over against instrumentalism stands James Carey’s influential essay in
which he argues against the instrumentalist “transmission” view of media
and for a more culturally articulated “ritual” view. In contrast to an
instrumentalist concern with extension across space and time, Carey
argued, the ritual view is concerned with communication that “draws
persons together in fellowship and commonality.” 81
Totalism/Universalism. A related sensibility looks at media as universals
rather than as particulars. Consistent with the received view of the media
from the last century, this approach assumes that the media need to be
seen not only in terms of their influences, but also as more or less universal
in appeal, approach, and effect. This is, of course, consistent with the
“mass media” era’s understandings of media as large, general, and consen-
sual, rather than the more contemporary view of the media as more
diverse, partial, and particular. This is, of course, a case of modernist vs
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postmodernist cultural understandings. Postmodernism derives a good deal
of its interpretive force from its critique of modernism’s assumptions
regarding cultural universals. It is thought to make little sense today to
83
consider culture in such large terms, when so much of the cultural and
interpretive action seems to be taking place in specific communities, by
specific cultural and demographic groups and in specific contexts.
Transformationism. The school of thought we called “medium theory”
in the first chapter, that associated with McLuhan and the “Toronto
School,” shares with some other significant observers of the media age the
idea that there is within media technology a set of implications for the way
we see, hear, and make meanings. McLuhan most famously suggested that
the technologies of the media themselves have fundamentally changed the
way consciousness is formed by changing the nature of perception. 84
Jacques Ellul saw the media – along with other modern technologies –
assuming central, definitive roles in society through a process whereby
they have come to regulate the nature of social experience, a view he
shares with many modern social critics. Walter Ong connects electronic
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media with fundamental changes in the way “the word” is understood and
shared in modernity. 86
An impressive and substantive recent collection edited by Hent deVries
and Samuel Weber places itself among a number of these perspectives,
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but most directly in relation to transformationist ideas. While carefully
and rightly critiquing some of McLuhan-based “medium theory,” the
purpose of the collection nonetheless focuses on an assumed central chal-
lenge of the media to religion: their role in redefining or transforming the
nature of transcendent knowledge. In his introduction, for example,