Communication Media and Religion

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The media have come to play an ever more prominent role in

social and cultural life since the emergence of the so-called "mass media"
in the late nineteenth century. Before that time, even though the media
through which social and cultural knowledge were shared (oral
transmission, ritual performance, writing, visual representation, and
printing) were vital, they were more tacit and transparent to the processes
they enabled. Today, in a range of social and cultural contexts, the media
are foregrounded, even determinative.
The mass media emerged as the result of interacting technological
and social developments. Mechanized printing, which developed with the
industrial revolution and found its way into mass-market communication in
Britain in the 1870s, brought about major changes in production, in
reception, and in the political economy of media. Mass production allowed
media to be financially supported by advertising instead of direct sales of
newspapers or magazines. The resultant economic logic saw readers as
audiences and sought to maximize their numbers. This coincided with the
increasing concentration of populations in urban settings, removed from
the social and cultural supports of the village and town. These audiences
began to be thought of as "mass" audiences, and the content of media
began to reflect more generalized class tastes.
A debate has raged ever since over how the resulting relationship
between the mass audience and the mass media is to be seen. To some
observers, the media ideologically dominate the audience. To others, the
media act as a kind of cultural canvas on which is inscribed the more or
less common themes, ideas, and discourses of the culture. To still others,
the media are important as palliatives, replacing the lost connectedness of
pre-industrial village life. For most, the class and taste orientation of mass
media necessarily has meant that they are at least not the preferred
communicational context for the authentic business of the culture.
These structural realities and social assumptions have come to
condition the way the media function in relation to culture, and therefore,
religion. The media are connected with generalized "mass" tastes. They
are industrial and technical and thus are seen as artificial and their abilities
to authentically articulate cultural and social artifacts, symbols, and values
are suspect. They are commercial, and thus necessarily traffic in
commodified culture and cultural experience. At the same time, though,
they are intrinsically articulated into the fabric of modernity in
ever-deepening ways. Thus, while social and cultural structures and
institutions might wish to exist outside the boundaries of media culture, it is
increasingly difficult for them to do so. These realities define the role that
media play in the evolution of modern and late-modern religious
institutions and practices.
The role of the media is not only social-structural, it is also
geographic and semiotic/aesthetic. And, as the scholarly study of the
interaction between religion and media has developed in recent years, it
has become obvious that these three aspects of mediatization interact in
interesting ways in the formation of the religious-media landscape. A
phenomenology of media and religion in the twenty-first century would
see media and religion in a number of different relationships.
 Religion and Media: Three Responses
What can we say about the use of mass media for religious ends?
There are multiple replies, but here are at least three.
First, Malcom Muggeridge, a veteran English communicator with a
long career in the world of radio and television, thought that one should do
without television because it is a medium that traffics in fantasy, that
creates images and ideas that are not true and does not have and cannot
have any relationship with truth. For him, the medium is an autonomous
element capable of creating its own dynamic and, therefore, its own
communication structure. Yet faith can be lived, received and shared
outside society's structure and, so, the media are not only unnecessary but
harmful. Muggeridge saw using mass media as a "fourth temptation" which
Jesus would have rejected because in reality "this medium, because of its
very nature, does not lend itself to constructive purposes." On the contrary,
media "are giving to Christian society something which is dangerously
destructive."
This position is based on a conception of faiths considered as
timeless in order to maintain its purity and integrity. Without overlooking
the manipulative and deceptive purposes of the mass media, it should not
be forgotten that this same atemporal concept is used by those who make
use of the fantasy of the media to communicate very effectively the fantasy
of their own "gospel".
Second, according to Neil Postman, any religious celebration in
the media requires an environment invested with a certain sacrality. To do
this certain rules of behaviour are needed which are denied by the
circumstances in which a religious programme is watched. People eat or
talk or distract themselves with other activities and the way of behaving
required by the religious celebration is lacking. But there is more - for
Postman, the screen is saturated with profane happenings, associated with
the world of commercialism and entertainment. In a way it supposes that
religion can be successful on television only if it offers what people want,
which presumes the trivialisation and emptying out of content. In this
respect, we should accept a certain kind of warning against mass media
because their manipulative intentions are more obvious. But this complex
reality must not lead us to believe that a retreat to more traditional forms
will simply provide us with the possibility of avoiding all contamination in
communication. Has the Christian community always been unpolluted?
Since when have only angels preached from pulpits?
Third, Giorgio Giradet, an Italian Waldensian pastor, believes that
one can find an alternative to extreme positions like the total rejection of
Muggeridge, or the marked optimism he finds in the "electronic church"
and in Pope John Paul 11. For him, that alternative has to take five things
into account: (a) the importance of the media in a context that includes
technical, financial, political and cultural aspects; (b) that using an
electronic medium, like it or not, is a political act; (c) doing everything
possible not to isolate the medium from reality; (d) preventing technical
questions from alienating the medium from reality (problems of quality,
montage, etc.); (e) encouraging public participation, forestalling passivity.
He concludes: "The struggle for and insistence on possible and sensible
use of the media of mass communication centres in the end on reflection
about the church." We have to accept that in our world today mass media
are more and more becoming the most important source of information
and entertainment for us. We also need to recognise that they can play a
significant role in encouraging participation in the search for a more just
and peaceful world.
We live in a pluralist society in which the relationship of people to
organised religion has been weakened. And yet spiritual needs appear
more evident. Is it possible and desirable to use the media as new
channels for manifestations of the spirit? No simple answer can be given to
this question. Many different considerations have to be taken into account:
media ownership, legislation, professional rivalry, economic interests,
social and cultural mores, the media as supermarket of religion, guidelines
for commercial advertising as a communication criterion and many more.
What must not be forgotten is that communication is not offered to mass
audiences. People receive, select and interpret the messages sent to them
from their own social and cultural viewpoints and, on the basis of that
interpretation, draw their own conclusions. For this reason, a genuine
encounter between media and religion carries with it an attitude of respect
for the dignity of people.

Media Using Religion

Traditionally, the media have been most involved in the
presentation of religion through journalism. The mass media era began
with the development of a mass press, and in addition to the development
of new audiences and new economies, it also developed new content.
Before the mass press, most press in Europe and North America were
partisan in one way or another, beholden to political, clerical, even
corporate authority. The new economy of mass publication meant that the
press could be freed from patronage, and that new readers and audiences
would be coming to the press for a wider range of material than in the past.
The result was the notion of newspapers and magazines as public records,
presumably speaking from positions outside the narrow perspectives of
special interests. This kind of journalism needed to find its voice, and new
models of journalism and new roles for journalism in public and political
life emerged.
In the case of North America, religion has not necessarily been
part of that mix. For most of the twentieth century, religion was seen by
journalism to be a story of religious institutions and their practices and
prerogatives. At the same time, these institutions were treated with
deference, when treated at all. There was much evidence that religious
institutions, at least, were of fading importance as the century progressed,
and journalism generally assumed that secularization was moving ahead
apace. It was not until late in the century that religion came to be seen as
"hard" news, largely as the result of news events such as the Islamic
Revolution in Iran in 1979, the rise of traditionalist religious movements
worldwide, and the emergence of Evangelicalism as a political force in
North America. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on New York,
Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, put religion much more squarely on
the "news agenda," with increasing coverage of religion per se among
European and North American journalism.

Religion and Media Converge

The entertainment media have had an independent relationship to

religion and religious content. There has been a tendency for these media
to see the relationship in dualistic terms, evidenced by such things as the
separate best-seller lists maintained for religious and non-religious book
titles. The religious "market" for commercialized religious films, magazines,
and books is now a multi-million-dollar industry worldwide, but is still
thought of as a separate field from the dominant, and larger, "secular"
market.
In that secular market, there are important examples in most
major media and across most of the century. Early in the century, the
so-called "Biblical Epics" such as The Ten Commandments and The
Robe became major breakthrough films, attracting large numbers of
conservative Christians and Jews to theaters for the first time. Later in the
century, an explosion of book and magazine publishing devoted to
spirituality, therapy, and self-help became one of the major trends in that
industry.
In entertainment television, a range of new programs and series
began to appear in the 1990s, featuring both explicitly and implicitly
religious themes. Globally syndicated U.S. programs such as Touched by
an Angel, The X-Files, Buffy: Vampire Slayer, The Simpsons, and Northern
Exposure integrated a wide range of religious sensibilities, from traditional,
to spiritual, to New Age, to Pagan and Wiccan. The situation became even
more diverse in the digital media of the internet.
These trends resulted from changes in both religion and the
media. For the media, rapid change in the structure and regulation of the
electronic and digital media led to an exponential increase in the ubiquity
and number of such channels fed into homes worldwide. A simultaneous
increase in the differentiation of printed media into smaller and smaller
"niche" markets meant that the media were both motivated to seek out new
content and audiences, and to become increasingly able to provide
material suiting specialized tastes. At the same time, religion was also
undergoing great change, described in the case of North America as a
"restructuring" that de-emphasized the traditional religious institutions. At
the same time, religion increasingly became focused in the religious
practices and meaning quests of individuals.
This new, more autonomous religious individualism, called
"seeking" or "questing" by sociologists, naturally articulates with a
mediated culture that can and does increasingly provide resources related
to that project. Thus, a market for commodified religious symbols, rituals,
and other resources arises, made possible by emerging attitudes oriented
to religious and spiritual issues, and by a media system that can provide
for increasingly specialized and focused tastes. The result is the gradual
erosion of whatever bright line might have once existed between the
"sacred" world of legitimate religious media and a "profane" world of
secular media. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, that division is
less and less obvious. It has become, for all practical purposes, one media
culture.
There are important antecedents to this convergence of religion
and media. In the case of North America, which largely led these
developments, Protestantism has long tolerated, even encouraged, the
development of religious commodities, religious markets, and religious
spectacles. American Christianity has thus long had a nascent culture of
mediated religious commodities and has cultivated in succeeding
generations tastes and interests in such approaches to faith and spirituality.

Religion and Media Interact

The evolving relationship between media and religion, then, is

best seen as an interaction between them rather than an effect or influence
one may have on the other. Increasingly, scholars of religion and media
are describing this interaction in its reception and the experiences of
individuals and groups as they encounter media culture and work to
inhabit religious lives in relation to it. This can be seen on both radically
local and radically global levels. On the local level, in a wide range of
contexts, the interaction between media culture and religious culture
comes alive in the ways individuals and groups use the various cultural
resources available to them to make meaning in their lives. This is seen
most readily in the field context, where observers encounter evidence of
negotiated relations between the lived local and the mediated non-local.

Media Effects on Religion

Given this discussion, there remain a number of ways that the

media affect religious institutions and practices. First, the media
increasingly set the context for religion and spirituality, and help define
their terms in contemporary life. The 2004 film The Passion of the Christ,
for example, both invoked a public debate about contemporary religious
faith and presented a new set of images and symbols through which that
aspect of the Christians' story will be understood for years to come. The
performer Madonna, through songs and music videos, presented
influential interpretations and juxtapositions of important Catholic symbols
and artifacts. Because of their position in the culture, the media are now the
context within which the most widely-held discourses in national and
global culture take place, and religion and religious discourses must find
their way within that larger context.
A second effect of media on religion is in the area of
commodification. Contemporary social and cultural experience is
becoming increasingly commodified, and the media sphere plays a major
role in this trend. Religion is not immune to commodification, and indeed,
there is a long and deep history of it in some traditions. In the mass media
age, it makes sense to think of culture as a marketplace of symbols and
ideas. Cultural commodities of all kinds, including religious ones, are
valued and exchanged in that marketplace.
The third effect of media on religion is in the consumption and
reception of religious symbols and discourses. The secular media define
the terms of access for religious and spiritual material as it enters the
public sphere. In the field of contemporary Christian music, for example,
the ability of religiously motivated musicians to "cross over" into the
mainstream, a desire by some, is constrained by a set of expectations
established by the conditions under which the public, secular, mass media
operate. The primary one is the expectation that to be public, such material
must appeal to general as opposed to narrower, sectarian tastes. In both
popular music and book publishing, separate "lists" continue to be
maintained.
The fourth effect, then, is that in this and many other ways,
religions can no longer control their own stories if they wish to be present
in the public sphere and in public discourse. The terms of reference, the
language, the visual and linguistic symbols, and the conditions under
which religion becomes public are all matters determined by media
practice. It is possible for religious groups and individuals to remain
separate from this process, but they then surrender opportunities to be
part of the public culture. Even groups that aspire to separation, such as
the Amish, find it increasingly difficult to do so.
This relates to a fifth effect, that it is no longer possible for
religions to retain zones of privacy around themselves. Increasingly, and
as a result of the reflexivity of late-modern consciousness, individuals
today expect a level of openness from public institutions. As religious
groups and movements interact with the commercial and governmental
spheres, they begin taking on the attributes of publicness and are thus
seen to be subject to media scrutiny, journalistic and otherwise. Both
the Roman Catholic Church, in its struggles over scandals and vocations
crises, and the Anglican Communion (and other Protestant bodies) as they
face the question of gay rights, have found that the conversation is not and
cannot be a private one any more.
A sixth effect is that, as was noted earlier, the media bring
individuals the religious and spiritual "other." In the context of
globalization/glocalization, this is felt in the increasing cross-national and
cross-cultural exchange of information, symbols, images, and ideas,
circulated through journalism, through popular culture, and through the
personal media of the digital age. In the context of the increasing
international flow of persons, both through travel and through immigration,
the media have become active in providing information about the "others"
who are now arriving next door or in the next town. The media are now
becoming the authoritative context for interreligious contact and dialog. At
the same time, they can and do provide information about some traditions
that other traditions find to be scandalous.
A seventh effect of media has been discussed in some detail
already. That is that the media are today a major source of religious and
spiritual resources to the "seeking" and "questing" sensibilities that
increasingly define religion in the developed West. This is related to an
eighth effect, that it has been suggested that the media have the potential
to support the development of "new" or "alternative" religions. This has
been thought by some to be a particular potential of the new digital media.
The Internet provides opportunities for interactive relations among focused
networks of like-minded people. Thus they might well be a context where
those networks could develop into religious movements of their own. This
of course remains to be seen.
Finally, an effect of media on religion is the central role that the
media play in national and global rituals around major public events.
Beginning with the Kennedy assassination and continuing through royal
weddings and funerals, crises such as the Challenger, Columbia, and
Columbine tragedies, the death of the Diana, Princess of Wales, and of
course the September 11 attacks, the media have come to accept a central
role in a new civil religion of commemoration and mourning.
The relationship between media and religion is a profound,
complex, and subtle one. While the media have grown in cultural
importance over the past century, and religious institutions and
movements have contemplated how to respond and experimented with
ways of accommodating to this new reality, a relationship has developed
that now determines, in important ways, the prospects and prerogatives of
religion into the twenty-first century.
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