Page 19 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

technologies of transmission? What issues are at stake when believers are ad-
dressed as audiences and consumers, and what does this mean with regard to
questions of religious authority?
Such processes of recon¤guration have obvious implications for studying the
popular appeal of cassette sermons in Egypt, where, as Charles Hirschkind
points out in chapter 1 of this volume, the Islamic revival movement has re-
de¤ned notions of public piety with cassettes playing an important role in the
transmission of popular sermons. Grounded in a long tradition of Islamic prac-
tice and scholarship, contemporary sermons are put to new uses and are made to
speak to the demands engendered by political modernization and the threat of
the erosion of the Islamic character of society. Having become increasingly in-
dependent of the performances in the mosques, which they set out to reproduce,
cassette sermons now circulate transnationally throughout the Arab world, of-
fering comments on a range of topics from ethical standards to politics. They
are listened to in public spaces, in the streets, in buses and taxis, in workplaces,
as well as at home, engaging friends and strangers in debate. Popularizing the
public use of a particular mode of reasoning and ethical speech, cassette ser-
mons are meant to invoke in listeners particular, shared dispositions leading to
the ability to change the self and to embrace correct modes of conduct. Thus
the adoption of a new medium like cassettes indeed transforms existing prac-
tices of mediation in that it popularizes a particular articulation of personal
and political virtues addressing contemporary concerns. This adoption takes
place within a tradition of Islamic discourse, which points to the existence of
a complicated relationship between the new and old media. As a counterpublic,
the Islamic revival movement claims its own public space precisely by contesting
liberal notions of publicity and the public sphere, and cannot be located within
a dichotomy of tradition and modernity with Islam and the state at both sides
of the opposition. These categories may play a role in the politics of governance
adopted by the state, yet they cannot offer the framework from which to under-
stand the tensions between the state and the Islamic reform movement.
If Hirschkind emphasizes how Islam becomes omnipresent in the public
sphere through sound, Patricia Birman, in chapter 2, points out that the Uni-
versal Church of the Kingdom of God in Rio (Brazil) asserts its presence and
power through a strong emphasis on visibility. Also in Brazilian society it ap-
pears increasingly dif¤cult to maintain a compartmentalized order, with neat
boundaries between the spheres of politics, religion, and the economy that char-
acterizes modernist, liberal visions of society. The increasing public articula-
tion of Evangelical religion occurred in conjunction with the weakening of the
power of Catholicism to feature as the hegemonic religion of the nation. Openly
denouncing the Catholic Church for its tolerance vis-à-vis other religions (such
as candomblé and other Africa-oriented cults), syncretism, and idolatry, the
Universal Church initially met much resistance. Yet by running its own TV sta-
tion, newspapers, and magazines, the Universal Church successfully produces
itself as an icon of modern media technology, ¤ercely asserting its public pres-
ence and offering an alternative image of the Brazilian nation. Adopting a mode

8 Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors