Horsfield, Peter, Mary E. Hess, and
Adán M. Medrano,
eds. London: Ashgate, 2004. xxiv + 243 pp., $
84.95 (USD). ISBN: 0 7546 3830 8 (cloth).
[1] Belief in the Media is an intriguing journey into
the realm of religion and the media (both broadly construed). The
edited volume developed from the International Study Commission
on Media, Religion, and Culture, and all but one contributor,
Jin Kyu Park, were core members of this seven-year commission. The
contributors hoped that this volume would provide a new perspective
on the study of religion and the media, which would challenge
the existing paradigm that focuses on how institutional religion
deploys media technology. Rather, the contributors seek
to move from an institutional frame to a frame that embraces
cultural studies, the importance of lived praxis, and an emphasis
on individuals. The work, however, primarily focuses
on Christian traditions and their relationships with media. Moreover,
the contributors represent a wide array of experience with
media and religion from theologians to producers to art historians
to former journalists. Thus, the essays sometimes feel
a bit uneven in their coverage of the subject matter. The
volume is broken down into four parts: the cultural perspective,
mediated Christianity, media culture and Christian institutions,
and an overview of the field of religion and media.
[2] In his introduction to the volume, editor Peter Horsfield
explores the importance of media in religious and social changes
beginning with the importance of printing for the Reformation. More
importantly, Horsfield examines the desire for the re-enchantment
of the world in the twentieth (and now twenty-first) centuries. Media
have been essential to the desire for re-enchantment. Horsfield
writes, “Media have become the practical marketplace
where individuals gather, converse, gain information, communalize
their concerns, and build identity and worldviews” (xix). Additionally,
Horsfield lays out the issues that concerned the commission:
how have media replaced religion? What is the relationship
between religious authority and symbolic practice? What
constitutes the relationship between religion and media? Do
new understandings of this relationship require new epistemology? What
is abundantly clear from Horsfield’s introduction and
the following essays is the need to move away from institutional
understandings of the media as a tool. Media should be
understood more culturally than institutionally.
[3] The first part of the volume, “The Cultural
Perspective,” provides the theoretical framework to move
beyond institutional models. This cultural frame focuses
on meaning-making in media and in religion and emphasizes practice. In
her “Reconceptualizing Religion and Media in a Post-National,
Postmodern World,” Lynn Schofield Clark provides a thorough
and useful introduction to the study of religion and media
and the challenges scholars face today. The other articles
in the section from Horsfield, Robert S. Goizueta, and Juan
Carlos Henríquez reflect on the importance of media
and their relationship to theology. In “Because
God is Near, God is Real,” Goizueta explores the use
of media in both medieval Christianity and Latino Catholicism
in which media become loci of religious revelation. In
the second part of the volume, “Mediated Christianity,” the
contributors present case studies of religion and media, including J.
Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu’s work on Pentecostals in Sub-Saharan
Africa, Germán Rey’s examination of Latin American telenovas,
David Morgan’s study of icons and images in Ethiopian
Protestantism, Jolyon Mitchell’s discussion of horror
films in West Africa, and Stewart M. Hoover and Jin Kyu Park’s
research on religion and the internet. This is the strongest
section of the work because it demonstrates the interplay of
religion and media the most clearly. Each of the case
studies is a compelling testament to the cultural studies approach
that the volume prefers. For instance, Jolyon Mitchell
explores the popularity of horror films in West Africa, showing
that the horror films are actually morality tales that bolster
Christianity while degrading indigenous African religions. Additionally,
David Morgan explores the ambivalence toward icons in Ethiopian
Protestantism by demonstrating that certain icons might be
unwelcome but others are embraced.
[4] The third part, “Media Culture and Christian
Institutions,” explores the impact of media on Christian
institutions. This part, of course, drives home the message
that institutions can no longer view media as simply tools
for institutional messages; rather, the fluidity of media must
be taken into account. Mary Hess examines the importance
of popular culture and how Christian institutions might adapt
to it. Both Adán Medrano and Siriwan Santisakultarm
reflect on the use of media in their religious backgrounds,
Latino and Thai Catholicism, respectively. Medrano’s “Making
Religious Media” demonstrates the difficulty of creating
religious television programming, which resonates both with
the institutional message and the lives of adherents. In “Changes
in the Thai Catholic Way of Life,” Santisakultarm traces
the changing media that dominated Thai Catholic life from oral
culture to the purported loss of religious communication with
modernization. The final essay in this part explores
the U.S. Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal, and Frances
Forde Plude suggests that, with this scandal, it becomes clear
that the Church and the news media have different and often
contrasting views of media. She, like Hess, argues that
religious institutions should adapt to these new understandings
of media and begin to accept the importance of media as communication. This
section might be best put to use by religious practitioners
hoping to adapt their institutions to our global media culture.
[5] The final part is an overview of the study of religion,
media and culture. Robert A. White emphasizes the basic theme
of the work: studies of religion and media need to move away
from institutional emphases to a more cultural framework. White’s
essay is the clearest articulation of the importance of the
cultural framework to present the importance of social actors
who are affected by historical forces but also create cultural
meaning. White describes how media are often used by
individuals to create religious identity, and how media foster
religious systems, and how important the popular media are,
among other themes. Moreover, White believes that this
book
would argue that the religious and the popular are sites
where we are building our cultures, including our religious
cultures. We need to ask what kind of culture we are
creating in these experiences, whether these are the kinds
of cultures we want to create, and who is involved in the
creation process.”(215)
White’s essay is a good introduction to the study of
media, religion, and culture for those who are unfamiliar with
the topic. Overall, I think this volume is an interesting
introduction to the interaction between religion and media. It
is applicable to religious historians, theologians, and religious
practitioners. The coverage of the subject matter is
a bit uneven, blending articles that are primarily descriptive
with others that not only demonstrate qualitative research
but which also argue for the importance of this research. As
I noted above, the third part seemed to be the most useful
for religious historians, but the entire volume could have
been structured a bit differently. In his introduction,
Horsfield suggests a variety of ways of reading the text, suggesting
reading Clark’s essay and then White’s overview. The
book would have been easier to comprehend if White’s
overview had been included in the first part. Nonetheless,
this volume is a useful addition to scholarly studies of religion
and media, and could prove to be a worthwhile textbook for
introductory courses on this topic.
Kelly J. Baker
Florida State University
kellyjbaker@gmail.com
