Page 89 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

78 Media and religion in transition

Roof provides a taxonomy of religious sensibilities he has identified
within the boomer generation, for example, and we might begin to
move to the next step in analysis by considering how these various cate-
gories might be positioned vis-à-vis religious history, religious practice,
religious and social experience, orientation toward religious tradition
and authority, and religion/spirituality in media culture. We will look at
each in turn.
Born-Again Christians. Roof found within the boom generation a
significant subset who identify themselves religiously primarily through
their having had an experience of personal salvation. This has long and
deep roots in American religious culture, of course, but the label “born
again” came to be significant as a reflexive label in the latter part of the
twentieth century, coinciding with the rise of Evangelicalism. As Roof
notes, this is a “highly personal” type of faith, and in that sense shares
much in common with the overall trend toward individualism in matters
of faith. For many “born agains,” membership or participation in conven-
tional churches is less important than their experience of faith. “Where” is
less important to them than “what.” This means that people who think of
themselves in this way might readily be members of even denominationally
related congregations.
As Roof notes, while this sensibility can be traced to old-line
Fundamentalism, it today shares much more in common with the “intro-
verted self” and reflexive “self-oriented” dynamic as articulated in the
broader American culture. They exhibit greater reflexivity than was the
case with conservative religion before the boom generation came along.
The “typical” churches of this group – the “seeker” or “apostolic”
churches – are more “dialogical” than was the case with Fundament-
alism. 113
What kind of relationship to media might we expect from this group? It
can be argued that, as a movement, Evangelicalism has historically been
more media-oriented than either Catholicism or Mainline Protestantism as
we have noted. For the Evangelical movement, this has derived from a
theology that focuses on the act of evangelism or “sharing the word” and
sees modern media of communication as logical tools for this process. 114
The neo-orthodox critique of media culture discussed earlier, as well as
establishment ideas in general, had traditionally recognized this tendency,
and has found it convenient to be able to conflate its ideas about the
immature and unsophisticated nature of popular culture with
Evangelicalism’s use of it. 115 For Evangelicals “in the pew” as it were, we
might expect there to be a greater affinity to mediated imagery as a result,
though with an important twist. Evangelicalism in general has been typi-
fied by sociologists for its rootedness in a kind of “strictness.” 116 As
Heather Hendershot and Lynn Schofield Clark have shown in their anal-
yses of Evangelicals and the media in the context of “quest” culture, a