Religion in the Media Age
By Stewart M. Hoover
Looking at the everyday interaction of religion and media in our cultural lives, Religion in the Media Age is an exciting new assessment of the state of modern religiosity. Recent years have produced a marked turn away from institutionalized religions toward more autonomous, individual forms of the search for spiritual meaning. Film, television, the music industry, and the Internet are central to this process, cutting through the monolithic assertions of world religions and giving access to more diverse and fragmented ideals. While the volume and variety of information traveling through global media changes modes of religious thought and commitment, the human desire for spirituality also invigorates popular culture itself, recreating commodities – film blockbusters, world sport, popular music – as contexts for religious meaning.
Drawing on fascinating research into household media consumption Stewart M. Hoover charts the way in which media and religion intermingle and collide in the cultural experience of media audiences. The result will be essential reading for everyone interested in how today’s mass media relate to contemporary religious and spiritual life.