Tue 21 Aug 2007
After all the fellows made us up to date with their research projects, two of the fellowship committee gave us a sneak at their current work.
In the centre of this group of strapping males is Stewart Hoover, professor at the University of Boulder in Colorado. Stewart is a prolific writer on media, culture and religion. Stewart edited the first book I ever read on the subject, back in my BTheol days. He offered the group, including the academic board of our host university, some background theses into why research into media, religion and culture is becoming increasingly important. Here are some notes taken:
1. Media are changing in ways that make religion more likely to appear in it. Increasing diversity in media channels is coupled with both an increased diversity in religions and an increased suspicion of insitutionalised religion and interest in personal religion leads to the use of media for the personal consumption of religions goods. Young people, being more and more media literate, are likely to view media as sites for authentic religion to be.
2. New media are allowing for more reciprocal flows of religious goods and services between the global north and south. Where many may see evangelicalism as a new form of colonialism from USA and Europe to Asia, Africa and South America, recent research has highlighted that the flow of religion for consumption is directed in both ways. The global south imports religious celebrities and resources to help educate, while the north imports speakers, music and rituals for “raw” or “authentic” religious experiences and spectacles. New media, as well as television and radio, are allowing for globalised ethnicities to also form, where, for example, Kenyan nationals or Korean evangelicals can preserve and enhance their specific ethnic brands/forms of religion around the world through ongoing direct connection to a homeland source.
3. Media are dictating the shape and authority of religious institutions. Thanks to news media, there are no more private conversations within the cloistered halls of religion. Media have made all conversations not only public to the religious laity, but to the entire media market. Institutions also can no longer claim ownership of religious symbols (e.g. Prince and Madonna have taken the crucifix and given it new meanings). Thirdly, on the rise there is the new “media religion” – where people are engaging in media practices in similar ways as religious practices (e.g. televised civil rituals after 9-11).
David Morgan, pictured behind the lappy here, wrote (among other books) Visual Piety which was the first nonfiction books that I read in one sitting. I was rapt by his insight, poetry and humour. One day over coffee he told me he was a little preoccupied with the presentation he was about to give us and I told him “Dude, you’re David Morgan”. Sure enough, we were treated to a riveting and bloody funny presentation about something that could otherwise be quite serious and boring – a history of the use of images for popular devotion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We were taken through a series of changes of popular images that I was brought up with in my Catholic childhood (parts of which I could never really understand as a kid), and how people like my grandparents used these images to connect with God.
