Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells
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Christian Metz, to argue that the structure and content of film narratives positioned their audiences to think and feel in particular ways (see Turner, 2003, pp.85–9). Against this, other scholars in media and cultural studies argued that such a view tends to depict audiences as passive recipients of the ideological content of film, and fails to recognize that audience research demonstrates that people retain considerable freedom in interpreting and making use of film in ways quite different from those intended by its producers or implied in the text of the film itself. These wider debates about how we think about and study media and popular culture remain important in setting the scene for how scholars of religion approach their work in this area.
The emergence of the study of religion, media and cultures of everyday life
The earliest academic literature exploring the relationship between religion, media and popular culture began to be published in the early 1970s (see, e.g. Butler, 1969; Cooper and Skrade, 1970; Hurley, 1970), and typically focused on how religion was represented in popular film or how film engaged with theological questions about the meaning and purpose of life (both issues which remain important in the current film and religion literature). This literature began to broaden in the 1980s as some writers started to think about other forms of media and popular culture, and the phenomenon of televangelism attracted particular interest in how religious groups were using media (see, e.g. Hoover, 1988). But it was not until the 1990s, that academic interest in this field consolidated and began to increase both in quantity and quality. In the early 1990s, the American Academy of Religion agreed to establish Religion and Popular Culture and Religion, Film and Visual Culture groups at its major annual meeting, which were later followed by the formation of a Religion, Media and Culture group. Work undertaken through these groups led both to a special issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion in 1996 on religion and American popular culture, and later to an influential edited book, Religion and Popular Culture in America (Forbes and Mahan, 2000). During the same period, a collaboration between Scandinavian and North American media scholars led to the first international media, religion and culture conference being held in Uppsala in 1993. This subsequently evolved into a bi-ennial international conference that, along with regular seminars run by the International Study Commission for Media, Religion and Culture, became the leading network through which scholars in this field met and discussed their ideas (Hoover and Lundby, 1997; Hoover and Schofield Clark, 2002; Mitchell and Marriage, 2003). Since the mid-1990s there has been a significant increase in the numbers of edited and authored books exploring issues of religion, media and popular culture (see Schofield Clark, 2007), with this literature now sufficiently well-developed for a second wave of publications to begin to reflect on what this academic literature has and has not achieved (Johnston, 2007; Lynch, 2007). This has also been supported by the emergence of specialist journals such as the online journals of Religion and Film and Religion and Popular Culture, as well as the more recent journal, Material Religion.
Within this growing literature, two relatively distinct bodies of work has emerged. The first of these is concerned with studying media and popular culture from the disciplines of biblical studies and theology. Much of this work has focused specifically on film. Biblical scholars have been particularly interested in the ways in which biblical characters and narratives have been represented in film (see, e.g. Baugh, 1997; Stern et al., 1999). But they have also explored how particular biblical texts might help critical reflection on theological
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themes addressed in specific films (e.g. Jewett, 1993), how sensitivity to film texts might assist processes of biblical interpretatation (Kreitzer, 2002), how films form part of the reception history of biblical texts (Christianson, 2007), and how film theory might help us to analyse how characters are constructed in both film and biblical narratives (Exum, 1996). Theologians have also been interested in treating films as resources for theological reflection, although there has been some debate as to whether popular film can really be a suitable focus for serious theological work (see Jasper, 1997). Given that film narratives deal with themes such as suffering, violence, evil, meaning and redemption, a number of theologians have argued that they can stimulate theological discussion of these themes as effectively as any other piece of high art or literature (Marsh and Ortiz, 1997; Deacy, 2001; Deacy and Ortiz, 2007). The popularity of film amongst students has also made it an attractive method for raising theological questions in the classroom which can then be explored in more depth through other academic theological texts (Marsh, 2007). Another branch of theological interest in media and popular culture seeks to move beyond this kind of textual study to analyse the nature and structure of contemporary society. This missiological or practical theological work uses cultural analysis to diagnose the conditions of contemporary life in order to reflect on how best the Church might respond to these. A seminal text of this kind has been Tom Beaudoin’s (1998) Virtual Faith, which considered missiological implications of the idea that young adults, increasingly alienated from institutional religion, were instead turning to media and popular culture as resources to construct their own personalized theologies around principles of authenticity, flexibility and creativity. Beaudoin (2008) has since refined this work further, developing a more reflexive approach to thinking about why theologians come to study popular culture, and how this academic activity can both disclose insights about the cultural contexts in which theologians work and serve as a form of therapy on the theologian’s own sense of self.
This missiological branch of theological study shares more in common with the second main body of work to have emerged on religion, media and popular culture, which is primarily interested in theorizing and investigating lived religion. Important contributions have been made to this work by scholars in religious studies who have explored how concepts used elsewhere in this field might be used to analyse media and popular culture. Religious scholars have therefore discussed how film can be understood as a form of cultural myth (Martin and Ostwalt, 1995), sports events as a form of ritual (Price, 2005), dieting as a form of religious practice on the body (Lelwica, 2005), and the construction of consumer products such as Coca-Cola as a form of religious fetish (Chidester, 1996). Related to this work is the use of functionalist definitions of religion to examine whether particular forms of media and popular culture serve purposes typically associated with religion such as generating community, meaning, providing ritual and sacred space, and producing religious experiences. Robin Sylvan (2002) has, for example, argued that certain genres of popular music can be understood as religious in this functionalist sense in that they provide particular theologies, offer experiences of shared community at gigs and through fan networks, and generate experiences of transcendence through practices of listening and dancing. Whilst this functionalist approach has been a useful stimulus for thinking about the religious and sacred uses of media and popular culture, it also has significant limitations (see Lynch, 2006). Emphasizing the ways in which forms of culture operate in religion-like ways risks focusing our attention on particular issues (e.g. how culture produces community, meaning or ecstatic experience) and may turn our attention away from aspects of people’s cultural lives that are in reality far more important for them, such as using a clubbing night out to meet friends or
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to find sexual partners. Similarly, functionalist definitions of religion can import theological assumptions into what appears to be social scientific analysis (see Lynch, 2009b). A good example of this is the idea that popular culture can be a source of religious experience, when what constitutes an authentic religious experience is essentially a matter of theological judgment. This means that when Robin Sylvan (2005) writes about the post-rave dance scene as a site of religious experience, he is not so much a neutral observer of the scene, as someone implicitly attempting to develop a theology of club culture which values particular clubbing experiences as having a sacred or transcendent significance.
Contributions to the study of media, popular culture and lived religion have also been made by writers from other disciplines. Sociologists of religion have been interested in how media and popular culture serve as mechanisms for the transmission and development of religious ideologies and identities (Partridge, 2005; Lovheim, 2007). Scholars in media studies have been interested in the religious uses that audiences make of popular media (e.g. Schofield Clark, 2005), the production and use of media to different religious ends (e.g. Hendershot, 2004), and the ways in which media act as a public space for the construction and discussion of particular religious questions and concerns (Lundby, 2006). The work of some anthropologists of religion has been influenced by the wider turn in anthropology to understanding the significance of media and popular culture for the everyday life-worlds of people in economically-developed societies (see, e.g. Miller, 1998, 2008). This has led anthropologists of religion to examine the ways in which people produce and consume religious media, as well as how the sensory engagement with media and popular culture forms part of religious subjectivities and shapes religious adherents’ sense of public space and wider society (Meyer and Moors, 2005). Finally, scholars working in art history, and the study of visual and material culture, have also undertaken important work in studying the role that images and objects play in everyday, lived religion (McDannell, 1995; Morgan, 2005). Turning away from the traditional religious pre-occupations of art historians with the analysis of high religious art, these scholars have focused their attention on how people use religious images or objects that art historians have tended to think of as worthless kitsch. For example, Warner Sallman’s portrait of Christ, one of the most re-reproduced images of the twentieth century, falls below the aesthetic standards demanded by the attention of traditional art history, but nevertheless has had a significant role in people’s religious lives as a focus for devotion, source of personal and family memories, and gift given at important moments of struggle and change (Morgan, 1998). Scholars of visual and material culture have therefore drawn attention to the religious significance of everyday objects – pictures, clothing, family bibles – which form the stuff of lived religion yet have often been invisible to analyses of religion which focus narrowly on statements of belief and formal ritual.
From this brief overview of issues explored in this second body of work, it is clear that there is a considerable overlap of interests between scholars in these disciplines in understanding the place of media and popular culture in lived religion. Whilst these different disciplinary backgrounds mean that these scholars sometimes draw on different traditions of theory, or different methodological approaches, to pursue their interests, there is also considerable common ground that makes this an essentially multi-disciplinary field of study. At the micro level of individual’s religious life-worlds, these scholars are interested in exploring the role of media and popular culture in the construction of religious identities and subjectivities – how they make religious life-worlds possible. This can involve thinking about how media and popular culture feature in the ways in which people imagine and negotiate their relations with other people within and beyond the boundaries of their family, friends, and broader
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social, religious and political communities. At a macro, social level, these scholars are also interested in the ways in which media and popular culture are implicated in wider patterns of religious change, framing the ways in which different religious and secular ideas and activities interact, and are bound up with the structures and processes of late capitalism, globalization and new forms of religious trans-national networks.
Key questions for the future study of religion, media and cultures of everyday life
As this work on lived religion, media and popular culture has developed and consolidated, a number of important questions have emerged which are still to be resolved. First, in what ways are particular forms of media and popular culture implicated in transforming contemporary religion? Discussion of this question has focused increasingly on the theory of the mediatization of religion, which has been explored in most detail by a network of Scandinavian media and religion scholars (see, e.g. Lundby, 2009). The wider theory of mediatization suggests that as particular social forms became increasingly dependent on the media in the twentieth century, both in terms of the ways in which they are practised and the ways in which the public is aware of them, so those social forms become increasingly shaped by the particular logics of those media. A good example of this is contemporary party politics, in which politicians’ engagement with their public audiences is now so dependent on broadcast and print media that politicians’ ideas are increasingly constructed as soundbites tailored to the delivery formats of those media. Theories about the mediatization of religion thus consider how the increasing importance of media both in the lives of religious communities, and for public awareness of religion, changes the nature of lived religion itself. The presence of religious resources, rituals and networks from across the world on the internet could therefore play a role in undermining traditional religious authorities, weaken people’s ties to local religious communities, create more opportunities for people to engage with alternative spiritual practices such as Wicca, and strengthen networks of people with similar religious views across wide geographical areas. The availability of a wide range of fatwas and Qur’anic reasoning online can, for example, expose Muslims to much broader resources of Islamic thought than would normally have been accessible to them simply in their local community or mosque, which can not only open up new ways of thinking but also require new practices of religious discernment in judging which online sources to follow (Echchaibi, 2008). Similarly the role of the internet in making it possible for people with similar views to come together across continents has not only energized new religious networks such as trans-national atheism, but also consolidated networks of progressives and conservatives that accelerate tensions within religious institutions (for example, over issues of gay sexuality in the Anglican Communion). Whilst there are some interesting examples of the ways in which media may be transforming religious practices and institutions, theories of the mediatization of religion also need to be treated with some caution. The idea that media transform religion suggests a linear process in which media act on religion, but religion does not act on media. This is clearly too simplistic, however. The role of media in lived religion is not determined simply by the nature of the media itself, but is also shaped by prior religious assumptions and practices. The development of a kosher mobile phone network for ultraorthodox Jews in Israel is a good example of how media use is in this instance shaped by prior religious convictions about purity and the demands of the Torah (Campbell, 2007). Rather than demonstrating a one-way flow of influence, media and lived religion exist in a complex
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web of patterns of influence in which religious life-worlds both act upon, and are acted upon by, different forms of media (Schofield Clark, 2009). A further area for debate with theories of the mediatization of religion concerns the suggestion that the media transformation of religion is a modern phenomenon. Lived religion has always been a mediated phenomenon, though, in the sense that religious adherents’ relations with each other and their sacred figures are made possible only through particular images or objects, whether texts, images, music, food or even the medium of bodily experience. In this sense, clear distinctions between what is ‘religion’ and what is ‘media’ can become somewhat problematic. But recognizing that religion always has been mediated raises the possibility that the influence of media on lived religion may not simply be a modern phenomenon but one that can also be traced in other periods of history – such as the importance of mass-produced, printed books in shaping the cultural and intellectual conditions for the Protestant Reformation. Whilst theories of the mediatization of religion are unlikely to be accepted wholesale by scholars of lived religion, understanding the ways in which these theories do and do not work will help us to think more clearly about the complex place of media in lived religion.
A second important area of study that is opening up concerns the role of the senses and aesthetics for the uses of media and popular culture in lived religion. Much of the early literature on religion, media and popular culture tended to treat media and popular culture as texts which contained meanings that people engaged with in different ways. What was often missing from this was the recognition that people’s involvement with media and other cultural practices does not take the form of a disembodied encounter with information, but embodied processes of sensory and aesthetic engagement with images, sounds, objects, spaces, smells and tastes (see Morgan, in press). The study of religious visual culture is not therefore simply the analysis of religious images, but of the religious practices of seeing, through which these images become a part of people’s everyday religious worlds (Morgan, 2005). Films of Hindu myth, for example, do not simply convey information to Hindu viewers, but may for some become a means of practising darshan, the experience of divine encounter through gazing on the image of the god (Dwyer, 2005). Anthropologists, religious historians and scholars of visual and material culture have played a leading role in raising questions about how the religious uses of media and popular culture are bound up with sensory and aesthetic regimes that people learn in particular religious contexts (Schmidt, 2002; Meyer, 2008). Their work has suggested that religious groups are therefore important not only (or even necessarily) in providing intellectual formation in relation to their particular beliefs and dogma, but in informally teaching new adherents how to see, feel or hear the divine through particular images, objects and sounds. The experience of feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit through the Gospel music of a black Pentecostal worship service is thus dependent on having learned how to recognize and experience the movement of the Spirit through particular changes in the music’s timing, pitch and volume. This attention to the sensory and aesthetic regimes through which religious adherents make use of media and popular culture thus offers the potential for us to move beyond thinking about how people use these resources to construct conscious, narrated religious identities, to thinking about the place of media and popular culture in religious subjectivities based not only on thinking, but feeling, sensing and experiencing.
A third area of work requiring further study is that which examines media and popular culture in terms of the whole circuit of cultural production and consumption. The notion of the circuit of culture was first proposed by Richard Johnson (1986/7), a leading figure in the CCCS, who argued that research in cultural studies sometimes lacked a broader sense