Max Weber was one of the most significant religion and social theorists of the 20th century. His writings on society were prolific and his theories on status, bureaucracy and 'The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism' (1995) are foundational texts within Sociology and Studies in Religion programs.
Weber's theories have been utilised more recently by George Ritzer (2004), who illustrated Weber's theory through an emphasis on the 'McDonaldsization of society' globally, and by John Drane (2000) who adopted Weber's theory for the Christian Church, in his book 'The McDonaldization of the Church: Consumer culture and the Church's future'. But does consumer culture of the Christian Church apply to other denominations and religions? And what happens in a most modern world where observers of religious change see the blending of the sacred and profane both within religious institutions themselves as they become more responsive to and more expressive of popular culture, and from popular culture, as religious themes are impregnated consciously and unconsciously into movies, pop songs and TV series?
These questions are analysed by a solid range of religion theorists, particularly Gordon Lynch (2012), whose book 'The sacred in the modern world' unravels the essential Durkheimian split between the sacred and the profane. Lynch explains that religion, and its vital element, the sacred, was explicated without the understanding of contingent political, historical and cultural positionings.
At the same time, Lynch's standpoint, while incorporating valid post-structuralist criticisms, overlooks the notion of the sacred as emergent - that sense of the sacred outlined by Eliade. Eliade's view is that the sacred shows or manifests itself as something entirely or 'wholly' different from the profane as hierophany - where the sacred reveals itself. While Lynch might argue that this perspective is also situated within culture and liquid spatiality, things are sacred because they are. Eliade explains:
'For many human beings, the sacred can be manifested in stones or trees, for example... what is involved is not a veneration of the stone in itself, a cult of the tree in itself. The sacred tree, the sacred stone are not adored as stone or tree; they are worshiped precisely because they are hierophanies, because they show something that is no longer stone or tree but the sacred, the ganz andere.' (Eliade 1957:10).
In Eliade's frame, stones, trees and other profane objects become sacred and 'saturated with power'. His view differs from Durkheim's over the fundamental issue of human and social functionality. For Durkheim, things are made sacred through human intervention and relationship, e.g. through rituals honouring the sacred and the special or precious, or through consecrating everyday things as sacred (See Durkheim's The elementary forms of the religious life 1995[1912]).
According to Durham (2001): 'In Durkheim's view the sacred is far from being synonymous with the divine. Not only may gods and spirits be sacred, but also things like rocks, trees, pieces of wood, in fact anything. For what makes something sacred is not that it is somehow connected to the divine but that it is the subject of a prohibition that sets it radically apart from something else, which is itself thereby made profane.'
Lynch unravels these theorists' various understandings in more depth commenting:
'While Eliade saw the sacred mode of being as more common in pre-modern times, he was also sceptical of the ability of the modern person fully to free him or herself from this religious past. Rather than embracing fully a post-religious existence, contemporary life is run through with ‘camouflaged myths and degenerated rituals’, both at the level of the attempts to inject meaning into personal life and of wider social and political movements organized around collective ritual and myth.'
This brings us back to the concept of religion, media, consumption and the sacred. Again Lynch's work serves as a link between these themes through the concept of mediatization. He points out that in the modern world, the sacred, through connection with, and perhaps influence from, various media, has become 'mediatized'. This view contrasts to Eliade's notion of 'degenerated rituals' and 'camouflaged myths'. For Lynch, the media has become the prime source of the community's engagement with the sacred. Specifically he maintains that while the media produces sacred forms, the audience reproduces those same forms through thought (thinking), emotion (feelings) and action (acting).
The interplay between media and audience is global and for audiences, increasingly time consuming as both groups - public media and media consumers - 'present a continually updated flow of images and stories from across the world' (Lynch 2012). The same process is going on with religion and religious organisations as they too use mediated practices to disseminate stories, images and actions - and in the process blur the boundaries between sacred and profane. Marketing, branding, consumption of sacred objects, sacred music (from the classics to hiphop and rock) and media depicting sacred stories and images are now grist to the mill for religious organisations.
Commodification can benefit both religion and congregation but in the process, what may be occurring through Eliade's desacralisation in the modern world, might be a dilution of meaning and dissolution of the traditional religious values of altruism, care and compassion. Whether you think religion may be diluted in a world of capitalistic commodified spirit or the reverse, a re-enchantment of religion but now in multiple forms, may depend on one's socialisation in and experience of faith and, as Lynch (2012) reminds us, on the political, historical and cultural positioning.
Different expressions of religion, rituals and worship services, Ward (2007) remarks, become performances which utilise popular marketing techniques and pop culture memes to engage congregations (audiences?) in thinking, feeling and acting (Lynch 2012). For example, in an earlier text edited by Lynch (2007), Between sacred and profane, Pete Ward portrays the intersection between the Eucharist and the congregation. Examining the Eucharist ritual of the Baptist Church, Ward observes that:
'...Baptist identity may be shaped by the way the ritual is performed and the way the ritual has developed through theological debate. Baptist congregations also produce and represent. They produce as they participate in the performance of the Eucharist. Production therefore relates to the way they identify themselves with the Eucharistic act in performance. Participation in performance however can be read as a form of representation. Congregations mediate Baptist Eucharistic identity.' (Ward 2007:90; my italics).
Ward argues that the dynamic interplay between religion, ritual, production and reproduction is a product of socialisation within the religious tradition and doctrine, the performance of the congregation and 'the lived culture of faith' (Ward, 93). To this he adds a third vital element, that of consumption. These shifts in religion into the intersection of religion, media and consumption, as well as the resacralisation of the profane, are summed by the enigmatic rapper, the late Tupac Shakur who stated: 'It's all about emotion; it's all about life' (cited in Pinn 2007:146).
The views on the distinction between the sacred and profane from Durkheim and Eliade are interlinked within Ward's, Lynch's and Shakur's perceptions. Rituals and myths are not, as Eliade suggested, being degenerated, camouflaged or desacralised in the modern world, but are continually sacralised and resacralised, enchanted and re-enchanted through ritual performance, everyday expressions of religious faith within a world of pop culture and mediatization.
References
Drane J. 2000. The McDonaldization of the Church. London: Darton,Longman & Todd Ltd.
Durham J.C. 2001. Durkheim on the sacred. http://www.bytrentsacred.co.uk/index.php/durkheim-on-religion/durkheim-on-the-sacred
Durkheim E. 1995[1912]. The elementary forms of religious life. Trans. K.E. Fields. New York: Free Press.
Lynch G. Ed. 2007. Between sacred and profane. Researching religion and popular culture. New York, London: IB Taurus.
Lynch G. 2012. The sacred in the modern world: a cultural sociological approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pinn A.P. 2007. On a mission from God. In G Lynch, Ed., Between sacred and profane. Researching religion and popular culture, 143-196. New York, London: IB Taurus.
Ritzer G. 2004. The McDonaldization of society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
Ward P. 2007. The Eucharist and the turn to culture. In G Lynch, Ed., Between sacred and profane. Researching religion and popular culture, 82-93. New York, London: IB Taurus.
Weber M. 1995. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Trans. T. Parsons. London, New York: Routledge.
Image:
Pixabay: gyeong ju south korea lanterns pagoda temple faith
http://pixabay.com/en/gyeong-ju-south-korea-lanterns-200069/
No comments:
Post a Comment