The growing connections between media, culture, and religion are increasingly evident in our society today but have rarely been linked theoretically until now. Beginning with the decline of religious institutions during the latter part of this century, Rethinking Media, Religion, and Culture focuses on issues such as the increasing autonomy and individualized practice of religion, the surge of media and media-based icons that are often imbued with religious qualities, and the ensuing effect on cultural practices. Editors Stewart M. Hoover and Knut Lundby examine each of these issues and the implications of major recent findings of religious, media, and cultural studies as they pertain to one another. In a primary effort, the leading class of contributors to this work effectively triangulate these three separate areas into a coherent whole. The book explores phenomena like rallies, rituals, and resistance as they are distinct expressions of religion often transmogrified into different mediated or cultural expressions. This collection should benefit the work of scholars and researchers in communication, media, cultural, and religious studies who seek a broader understanding of the two-sided relationships between religion and media, media and culture, and culture and religion.

This book links the growing connections between media, culture and religion into a coherent theoretical whole. It examines, amongst others, the effect on cultural practices and the increasing autonomy and individualized practice of religion.

Much speculation was raised in the 1990s, during the first decade of internet research, about the extent to which online platforms and digital culture might challenge traditional understandings of authority, especially in religious contexts. Digital Creatives and the Rethinking of Religious Authority explores the ways in which religiously-inspired digital media experts and influencers online challenge established religious leaders and those who seek to maintain institutional structures in a world where online and offline religious spaces are increasingly intertwined. In the twenty-first century, the question of how digital culture may be reshaping notions of whom or what constitutes authority is incredibly important. Questions asked include: Who truly holds religious power and influence in an age of digital media? Is it recognized religious leaders and institutions? Or religious digital innovators? Or digital media users? What sources, processes and/or structures can and should be considered authoritative online, and offline? Who or what is really in control of religious technological innovation? This book reflects on how digital media simultaneously challenges and empowers new and traditional forms of religious authority. It is a gripping read for those with an interest in communication, culture studies, media studies, religion/religious studies, sociology of religion, computer-mediated communication, and internet/digital culture studies.

This book is an ambitious attempt to develop a cognitive approach to religion. Focusing particularly on ritual action, it borrows analytical methods from linguistics and other cognitive sciences. The authors, a philosopher of science and a scholar of comparative religion, provide a lucid critical review of established approaches to religion, and make a strong plea for the combination of interpretation and explanation. Often represented as competitive approaches, they are rather, complementary, equally vital to the study of symbolic systems.

In recent years, the role of religion in the study and conduct of international affairs has become increasingly important. The essays in this volume seek to question and remedy the problematic neglect of religion in extant scholarship, grappling with puzzles, issues, and questions concerning religion and world affairs in six major areas. Contributors critically revisit the "secularization thesis," which proclaimed the steady erosion of religion's public presence as an effect of modernization; explore the relationship between religion, democracy, and the juridico-political discourse of human rights; assess the role of religion in fomenting, ameliorating, and redressing violent conflict; and consider the value of religious beliefs, actors, and institutions to the delivery of humanitarian aid and the fostering of socio-economic development. Finally, the volume addresses the representation of religion in the expanding global media landscape, the unique place of religion in American foreign policy, and the dilemmas it presents. Drawing on the work of leading scholars as well as policy makers and analysts, Rethinking Religion and World Affairs is the first comprehensive and authoritative guide to the interconnections of religion and global politics.

The historical interface between science and religion was depicted as an unbridgeable conflict in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Starting in the 1970s, such a conception was too simplistic and not at all accurate when considering the totality of that relationship. This volume evaluates the utility of the “complexity principle” in past, present, and future scholarship. First put forward by historian John Brooke over twenty-five years ago, the complexity principle rejects the idea of a single thesis of conflict or harmony, or integration or separation, between science and religion. Rethinking History, Science, and Religion brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars at the forefront of their fields to consider whether new approaches to the study of science and culture—such as recent developments in research on science and the history of publishing, the global history of science, the geographical examination of space and place, and science and media—have cast doubt on the complexity thesis, or if it remains a serviceable historiographical model.

As the availability and use of media platforms continue to expand, the cultural visibility of religion is on the rise, leading to questions about religious authority: Where does it come from? How is it established? What might be changing it? The contributors to The Media and Religious Authority examine the ways in which new centers of power and influence are emerging as religions seek to “brand” themselves in the media age. Putting their in-depth, incisive studies of particular instances of media production and reception in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and North America into conversation with one another, the volume explores how evolving mediations of religion in various places affect the prospects, aspirations, and durability of religious authority across the globe. An insightful combination of theoretical groundwork and individual case studies, The Media and Religious Authority invites us to rethink the relationships among the media, religion, and culture. The contributors are Karina Kosicki Bellotti, Alexandra Boutros, Pauline Hope Cheong, Peter Horsfield, Christine Hoff Kraemer, Joonseong Lee, Alf Linderman, Bahíyyah Maroon, Montré Aza Missouri, and Emily Zeamer, with an afterword by Lynn Schofield Clark.