Man, these North Americans work fast while we Aussies are tucked in our beds! Here’s David Morgan’s top 5-10 essential readings. I really should have included David’s Visual Piety in my list. Not only is it a seminal work on how visual imagery evangelises, theologises and culturalises, but it is also a great piece of writing. Many of us read David to learn how to write better.

Well, in addition to everything I’ve written, you mean?If so, I’d list them this way, though not in order of rank. Obviously, I write as an American historian…

Communication and Change in American Religious History, ed. Leonard Sweet. Eerdmans, 1993.

David Paul Nord, Faith in Print. Oxford Univ Press, 2004.

John Durham Peters, Speaking into the Air: The History of the Idea of Communication. Univ of Chicago Press, 1999.

Harry Stout, “Religion, Communication, and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.” William and Mary Quarterly 34, no. 4 (October 1977): 510-41.

Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere, ed. Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors. Indiana Univ Press, 2006.

Hoover, Clark, and Alters, Media, Home, and Family. Routledge, 2004.

Anthropology and Media, eds. Faye Ginsburg, et al.

Practicing Religion in the Media Age, ed. Hoover & Clark. Columbia Univ Press, 2002.

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, rev. ed., Verso, 1991.

Christopher Pinney, Photos of the Gods: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India. Reaktion Books, 2004.

Brilliant, thanks David. If you’re reading this, it’s your turn to “tag” one or two others – either by getting them to email you their top 5-10 favourites or to post them on their blog.