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70 Media and religion in transition

religion,” Dayan and Katz conceive of these as denatured variations,
evoking their original, but lacking their essence. Nick Couldry, in his work
on media ritual (also to be discussed in more detail in Chapter 9), also
carries this sense of religion’s formal “presence by absence.” 94
A more systematic recent example of a formal analysis is Günter
Thomas’s work on media ritual in the context of television. In a scholarly
inquiry that combines a formal analysis with a kind of “transforma-
tionism,” Thomas seeks to find a standpoint in analysis of media and
religion that addresses both the scholarly and public-discursive contexts.
Rooted in Luhmann’s complex ideas about the nature of contemporary
social systems, Thomas’s approach begins with the assumption that tele-
vision is one of society’s “functional sub-systems,” and its analysis is
central to understanding contemporary culture. Taking the “anthropo-
logical” approach of looking within the forms of television for practices
that evoke, relate to, or function as religious or quasi-religious, he
concludes that, “within the stream of television, forms of communication
emerge that bear a striking resemblance to well-known religious
forms.” 95
Essentialism. In an ironic twist, several of these notions of media and
religion share in common the idea of essentialism. That is, they assume
that it is possible or desirable to think of there being a category of
symbols, artifacts, or practices that we can characterize as essentially
“religious,” “spiritual,” or “sacred.” The formalist, transformationist,
and archetypal projects discussed above, for example – in keeping with
the dualist assumption just discussed – assume that it is important to be
able to separate things in the cultural realm that are legitimately religious
from things which are not. This serves different purposes for different
critics. For religious or academic authorities, it allows for a position of
critique of media in terms of the success or failure of media to authenti-
cally convey or serve religion. For media studies scholars who wish to
steer clear of the complexities and interstices of religion, it allows reli-
gion to be defined “outside” the realm of that which is under study. It
can be held to the side, where it will not unnecessarily complicate things,
or it can be thought of as beyond the bounds of legitimate scholarly
inquiry.

Media and the “new religion scholarship”

The fundamental problem that each of the foregoing approaches share is
that they fail to contemplate the convergence of religion and the media in
the spaces of social practice. As we’ve seen, it is no longer as relevant to
think of the media in large, “mass,” or totalizing terms. The media are
changing, becoming more diverse, atomized, specialized, targeted, and
interactive. This raises serious questions about notions that assume a kind