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Implications of the Sacred in (Post)Modern Media

Johanna Sumiala-Seppänen, Knut Lundby, Raimo Salokangas (eds.)

Göteborg: Nordicom (2006), 274 pp.

"The news media report global conflicts related to religion. New expressions of religiosity and spirituality appear in popular media culture. The relationship between media and the sacred has become an inevitable topic. This book offers new and fresh perspectives on the media, the sacred and religio ... more

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Mediating Religion and Film in a Post-Secular World

Stephen Hughes, Birgit Meyer (eds.)

Postscripts, volume 1, issue 2-3 (2005), pp. 149-374

"This special issue seeks to explore the common ground shared by practices of filmmaking and religious institutions located within postcolonial settings and increasingly linked in global infrastructures. The articles presented here converge in combining theoretical reflections about the interface of ... film and religion with specific examples or historical and ethnographic cases. Written by authors with backgrounds in film studies, religious studies, and anthropology, the contributions to this multidisciplinary issue are based on two common, more or less explicit, points of departure. One concerns the realization that the actual entanglement of religion and film highlights the limitations of a modernist view proclaiming the retreat of religion from the public sphere as an inevitable consequence of the processes of modernization and secularization. In our perspective, the interface of film and religion can more fruitfully be addressed from a postsecularist perspective, which seeks to overcome the unproductive, teleological, and normative understanding that religion should be confined to the private sphere. As the contributions to this issue show, in contexts as diverse as India, Ghana, Nigeria, Brazil, and postsocialist Poland, the accessibility of modern mass media in conjunction with the politics of neo-liberalism actually facilitate the proliferation of religion in the public sphere. This implies not only that religions may assume a strong public presence, but also that religion and entertainment are increasingly difficult to distinguish from each other. For example, as Maria José de Abreu shows, the Catholic Charismatic priest, pop-singer, and film actor Marcello Rossi embodies this convergence. Not only has film become a prime medium of religious expression, films also often address a religious audience which in turn is seen to authorize audiovisual representations of the transcendent or divine as truthful and authentic. Ravi Vasudevan argues here how Hindu devotional films represented their own religious spectators as a kind of selfauthenticating redefinition of the social with the divine. Whether this authorization actually occurs, as the articles by Birgit Meyer on Ghanaian pentecostally-oriented video-films and by Matthias Krings on Hausa videos in Northern Nigeria show, is a matter of an intense politics and aesthetics of persuasion that may or may not be successful. While in our era of globalizing media the condition of the possibility for religion to assume a public role appears to depend on the successful accommodation of filmic media, the incorporation of such media also threatens to transform religious practice into a form of mass entertainment. The fear of being made subject to superficial visual regimes, as the articles by Mattijs van de Port and Marleen de Witte highlight, may lead religious practitioners to be highly suspicious about the formats and styles that go along with audiovisual mass media. In addition to this postsecular stance, the articles presented in this special issue also share a commitment to moving beyond the assumption of an ontological difference between religion as a domain of the transcendent, on the one hand, and film as a domain of neutral technology, on the other. In this regard, we prefer the notion of mediation as a more open-ended, non-determinist solution for exploring the multiple relationships between religion and film. For example, once religion is understood as a practice of mediation, media appear not as alien to the realm of religion, but as an inalienable element on which any attempt to access and render present the transcendental ultimately depends. By using “mediation” we hope to shift our emphasis away from religion and film as abstract substantialized essences towards a non-dualist emphasis on the relational and contingent practices in which film and religion overlap and engage each other. Brent Plate, in his contribution to this issue, coins the term “religious cinematics” to stress explicitly this point where religion and film merge through the embodied practices of the human senses." (Guest Editors’ Preface, pages 150-151) more

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The Blackwell Guide to Theology and Popular Culture

Kelton Cobb

Malden, Mass.: Blackwell (2005), ix, 354 pp.

"The Blackwell Guide to Theology of Popular Culture outlines various general theories of popular culture, identifies theologians and theological concepts that are conducive to analyzing popular culture, and explores religious themes that are asserting themselves through popular movies, novels, music ... more

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Pop Culture Arab World! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle

Andrew Hammond

Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO (2005), xiv, 376 pp.

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Religion Online: Finding Faith on the Internet

L. Lorne Dawson, Douglas E. Cowan (eds.)

New York: Routledge (2004), 279 pp.

"Religion Online provides an accessible and comprehensive introduction to this burgeoning new religious reality, from cyberpilgrimages to neo-pagan chatroom communities. A substantial introduction by the editors presenting the main themes and issues is followed by sixteen chapters addressing core is ... more

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Practicing Religion in the Age of the Media: Explorations in Media, Religion, and Culture

Stewart M. Hoover, Lynn Schofield Clark (eds.)

New York: Columbia University Press (2002), 386 pp.

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Populäre Religion: Markt, Medien und die Popularisierung der Religion

Hubert Knoblauch

Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft, volume 8, issue 2 (2000), pp. 143-161

"Der Begriff der »populären Religion« spielt auf zwei Merkmale gegenwärtiger religiöser Entwicklungen an: erstens auf die Entwicklung, Ausbreitung und Globalisierung eines religiösen Marktes, auf dem die verschiedensten Inhalte der historisch gewachsenen Religionen angeboten werden-und der ent ... more

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Imágenes en acción: El uso de las imágenes religiosas en la religiosidad popular latinoamericana

Victorino Zecchetto

Quito: Abya-Yala (1999), 126 pp.

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Religion in the News: Faith and Journalism in American Public Discourse

Stewart M. Hoover

Thousand Oaks: Sage (1998), xi, 234 pp.

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No ar... uma rádio comunitária

Denise Maria Cogo

São Paulo: Paulinas (1998), 230 pp.

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Rethinking Media, Religion, and Culture

Stewart M. Hoover, Knut Lundby (eds.)

Thousand Oaks; London; New Delhi: Sage (1997), x, 332 pp.

"The growing connections between media, culture and religion are increasingly evident in contemporary society, but until now have rarely been theoretically linked. The contributors to this volume effectively combine these areas into a coherent whole. The issues they examine include: the decline of r ... more

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Religion and the Media: An Introductory Reader

Chris Arthur (ed.)

Cardiff: University of Wales Press; World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) (1993), xii, 302 pp.

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Handbook of Latin American Popular Culture

Harold E. Hinds Jr.;Tatum, Charles M.

Westport, Conn.; London: Greenwood Press (1985), xvi, 259 pp.

"Contributors discuss popular religion, popular music, comics, television, sports, photo-novels, film, festivals and carnivals, cartoons and newspapers. Most of the approaches are critical-methodological within the various disciplines of the writers, including literature, cultural anthropology, soci ... more

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Comunicação e classes subalternas

José Marques de Melo (coord.)

São Paulo: Cortez Editora (1980), 203 pp.