In his 2007 article, 'Studying religion and popular culture', scholar David Morgan points to an ever expanding interest in mediated processes and programs in scholarly circles. This growing interest links consumerism, mass culture, and community dispositions within the framework of religion.
Morgan stresses that the study of religion, media and popular culture intersects across disciplines and engages with the everyday, in a way reminiscent of the concept of everyday lived religion (Ammerman 2006; McGuire 2008). But he sees the trend towards interdisciplinarity may clash with the current silo-ised structure of academia and professional associations. These narrow confines limit a stronger and essential engagement across disciplines that may either eschew religion in the academy in the belief that universities are and should remain secular, or see no relationship between their field of endeavour and aspects of religion, the sacred and the divine. (There are however changes afoot in various academic arenas including ecology, geography and science).
Morgan validates the extension of disciplinary borders, adding that transdisciplinary approaches to religion and media understanding are 'better able to respond to the fluidity and transcience of popular culture, which is driven by markets, consumption, daily ritual, and all manner of human exchange' (2007:26).
Religion and religious organisations are also playing in this mediated commoditised world as they produce, package and disseminate their message via the spectrum of pop culture processes.
However, Elaine Graham (2007) views these changes though a sceptical lens, surmising that the spread of studies in religion, media and pop culture may be related to the 'search for 'relevance' on the part of academics and churches alike' (66). While students (in Australia perhaps) may be less religion literate these days, she suggests that the inclusion of pop culture into academic courses and religious organisations themselves (specifically referencing Christianity), adds a seductive edge to studies in religion and theology. In particular, it can spur the youth audience and their interest.
Broadening the discussion is Jeremy Stolow's (2005) significant piece, 'Religion and/as media'. Stolow perceives that the overlapping descriptor 'religion and media' is less relevant than the expression of 'religion as media', arguing that ''religion' can only be manifested through some process of mediation' (125, author italics). He stresses that religious institutions have 'always' done this. He points out that 'communities of faith' have consistently enacted 'the sacred' though mediated formats and structures, whether written text, material culture, ritual practice, architecture, music and stimuli to engage the senses and emotions. These procedures and cross culture-media spaces and forms have in the past, and are still continuing to be adopted by the spectrum of religions, now on a global scale.
Going forward, Morgan (2013) updates perspectives from Graham and others, also highlighting the longevity of religions' connections with, and transmissions of mediated products, both oral and written. As a scholar who often focuses on the artistic, aesthetic and visual, Morgan enlarges this recent 'turn' to studies within the intersection of religion and media by elevating the sensory and embodied practice of religious enagement. In the process of advancing embodiment, he redefines the core of religion as shifting from the realm of beliefs to which adherents aspire, to a more practical and interlaced definition involving relationality - the connection between, and influence of, the spiritual, the sensual and the community in relationship with the sacred. He states:
'Religion has come to be widely understood as embodied practices that cultivate relations among people, places, and non-human forces-nature, spirits, ancestors, saints, gods -- resulting in communities and sensibilities that shape those who participate (Morgan 2013:247).
Morgan's focus is the body and its relationship in religion to the body politic and the public sphere, a point reminding us of the foundational work of Foucault and Habermas. In a somewhat complex argument, he observes that the relationship between media and religion may not only have aided the promotion and spread of religious ideas and ideals, it has also promoted religious violence and the role of religion in 'social unrest' (352). In this case, the body can be displaced (through ethnic cleansing and the impact of conflict) and dismembered by the adversity of the body politic.
But often the media fails to analyse the complexity of religious violence, its history, politics and rationale, preferring instead to gloss over the background with images of drama and destruction. In other words', Morgan says (reviewing the commentary of Nick Couldrey, 2003) 'we stand to learn more about how people actually map their worlds by means of media practices than we do from their emotional evocation of a mythic social center' (353).
This view extends the often upbeat emphasis in religion and pop culture analyes to the critical role of the way the mainline media frames its coverage of religion-related stories, including its effect on religious violence, and in Australia at the moment, on the plight of refugees.
Another scholar engaged in the field of religion and media is Matthew Engelke (2010). His article, 'Religion and the media turn' reviews a series of current texts directed to further explaining the intersection between the two monoliths, religion and media. Filled with a bulk of references and an array of discourses, Engelke takes the notion of a rise in privatised religion to task. He maintains that the interconnection of religion with media has been and is definitely public.
Similar to Morgan, Engelke suggests a revised definition of religion as a result of the religion and media 'turn'. He states that in much of the discussion on religion as mediation, the term '“religion” is often understood as the set of practices, objects, and ideas that manifest the relationship between the known and visible world of humans and the unknown and invisible world of spirits and the divine' (374).
While this definition tends towards anthropocentrism (ignoring the ecocentric reconstruction of religious parameters), he illustrates how it overlooks the role of material culture and mediated channels of distribution. For Engelke, McLuhan's 'the medium is the message' is enlarged to include material and embodied processes, as well as the power and ideological relations that surround both mediums and messages, and the audience who receives and engages with 'the stuff of religion'.
To ground this perspective, Engelke turns to Klassen (in Morgan 2008) who states:
'In the case of religion and media, the concept of practice has facilitated a shift from focusing purely on the message of a text, image, or sound to considering the medium in its many dimensions: how it works and who controls it, to what range of human senses a particular medium appeals, what people do with both messages and the media that transmit them, and how ritual, theologies, and religious dispositions are constituted and transformed by different kinds of media. [p. 138]'
Let's go back to the academy and to the conception that its narrow discipline structure limits the transdisciplinarity necessary to engage effectively with the religion and media turn. Engelke seems to suggest a deeper scrutiny of media and other discourses is needed to avoid, what I consider to be, an over-emphasis of optimism and descriptive elements during the birth of the field. This stresses the macro dimension - society, culture, community, and to a lesser extent, the subculture (especially in online research), whereas more recent research has incorporated the relationship between religion, media and popular culture, and the individual (who is actively involved in reception of and engagement with a variety of media and mediated religious forms and spaces).
The religion and media turn needs interdisciplined approaches by researchers, where, to cite Birgit Meyer (in Morgan 2013:353), 'religious mediation' should not exist 'as a discrete field of inquiry, but as a fundamental aspect of the religious worlds they study.'
Sources:
Ammerman N. 2006. Everyday religion. Observing modern religious lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Graham E. 2007. "What we make of the world". The turn to 'culture' in theology and the study of religion. In G. Lynch, ed., Between the sacred and profane: researching religion and popular culture, 64-81, London: I.B. Taurus.
Klassen P. 2008. Practice. In D. Morgan, ed., Key words in religion, media, and culture. London: Routledge.
McGuire M. 2008. Lived religion: faith and practice in everyday life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Meyer B. 2012. Mediation and the genesis of presence: towards a material approach to religion. Utrecht: Universiteit Utrecht.
Morgan D. 2007. Studying religion and popular culture. Prospects, presuppositions and procedures. In G. Lynch, ed., Between the sacred and profane: researching religion and popular culture. London: I.B. Taurus.
Morgan D. 2013. Religion and media: A critical review of recent developments. Critical Research on Religion 1: 347-356.
Stolow J. 2005. Religion and/as media. Theory, Culture & Society 22: 119-143.
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Chihuly, Chihuly glass: http://pixabay.com/en/chihuly-chihuly-glass-sculpture-art-223256/
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