scholarly journals Exploring the mediatization of organizational communication by religious communities in digital media

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (66) ◽  
pp. 101-121
Author(s):  
Gry Høngsmark Knudsen ◽  
Marie Vejrup Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Evangelical Lutheran Church ◽  
Digital Spaces ◽  
The Way

This article presents an exploratory study of some of the ways in which religious communities communicate as organizations in digital spaces. Based on previous research, the article examines the extent to which processes of mediatization are visible in the digital spaces utilized by religious communities in Denmark today.The study is based on data from websites and Facebook groups from ten Christian churches: five ELCD (Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark) parishes and five free churches. Data was collected using methods particularly designed for collecting digital data, with due consideration of the ethical implications of researching religious identity online. The data collection represents a follow-up study to the research project Religion in Aarhus 2013. Based on our findings, we suggest that mediatization processes progress more slowly in institutional religious communication because of the way in which they are organized. Furthermore, we demonstrate that there are some patterns in the way Christian communities express themselves online, and that these patterns to some extent depend on whether an ELCD parish or a free church is involved.

Broken Bodies of God: The Christian Eucharist as a Locus for Ecological Reflection

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Slow Food ◽  
Ecological Awareness ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Christian Theologian ◽  
Ecosystem Changes

AbstractThe recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report attests to the reality of a warming global climate and describes potential ecosystem changes that may be devastating to communities—both human and non-human—across the globe. I contend that the Christian practice of sharing the Eucharist meal provides an opportune moment for Christians to engage in ecological reflection. To defend this claim I draw upon Christian theologian Sallie McFague's metaphorical understanding of the world as God's body in order to connect environmental plight to the Eucharist meal and to show why that plight should be a concern for Christian communities. Next, I turn to the work of anthropologist Claude Fischler in order to make a connection between sharing the Eucharist and communal and individual identity formation. Finally, I draw upon the Slow Food movement in order to provide specific suggestions for adapting the Eucharist to make it more conducive to ecological reflection. I also briefly discuss the growing green sisters movement and suggest that this movement provides a model of ecological-awareness and practice for other religious communities, and for North American Christian churches in particular.

The Church of the East Until the Eighth Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 429-450
Author(s):  
Stefan R. Hauser
Keyword(s):  
Eighth Century ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Church Of The East ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Christian Population

For a long time, the development of Christian communities within the Sasanian and early Islamic Empires was either neglected or described in terms of a history of persecution and antagonism within a Zoroastrian or Islamic state. Only recently has the perception of the extent of Christianization, the interaction of religious communities, and the importance of Christians within these societies and their upper echelons changed dramatically. The narrative of permanent conflict and oppression of Christian faith has given way to the acknowledgment of a predominant Christian population in the territory of modern Iraq and western Iran in the fifth through seventh centuries. One argument in this context is the growing body of material evidence for Christian churches and images as well as burials, which are expressions of respected and self-assured Christian communities.

Saving Comrade Stalin’s Soul (1949–1958)

2019 ◽  
pp. 187-211
Author(s):  
Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
True Jesus Church ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
Christian Leaders ◽  
Party State ◽  
Discursive Patterns

During the 1950s, the universal ideology of Chinese Christian churches such as the True Jesus Church clashed with the universal ideology of the Maoist party–state. Christian communities’ relative ideological autonomy hindered the party–state’s ambitions for control. Christians, especially Christian leaders, experienced intense pressure to adopt the new code of Maoist speech during this era. Documents from archives in Shanghai, Nanjing, and Wuhan and oral history interviews with members of the True Jesus Church in South China show how between 1949 and 1958, top church leaders bowed to this pressure, replacing biblical rhetoric and discursive patterns with Maoist rhetoric and discursive patterns. The contest between religious communities and the state to control the terms of public moral discourse demonstrates the significance of such discourse in demarcating and legitimating community authority.

Congregation(s) in Digital Culture

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-264
Author(s):  
Jeffrey H. Mahan
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
American West ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Media Change ◽  
The Way

Abstract This essay draws on a particular example of Christian community in the urban American West to ask how digital culture is shifting the way religious identity, community, and leadership are being performed in cultures shaped by digital communication. It suggests more attention is needed to the complexity of organized religion and to the ways religious communities respond to media change. Further, that scholars of media, religion, and culture can help practitioners better understand their media-context and strategize within it.

Recognition of Minority Denominations in Denmark: Negotiations in Religion, Identity and Judicial Process

Numen ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 62 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 336-362
Author(s):  
Armin W. Geertz
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Expert Committee ◽  
Judicial Process ◽  
Royal Decree ◽  
Lutheran Church ◽  
Conservative Government ◽  
Evangelical Lutheran Church ◽  
Pragmatic Aspects ◽  
The Church

The Constitution of Denmark of 1849 establishes the Evangelical Lutheran Church as the Church of Denmark, which “shall as such be supported by the State.” A handful of other denominations enjoyed recognition by royal decree until this practice was ended in 1970 with the new Marriage Act which allowed church weddings with civil validity to take place not only in the Church of Denmark but also in recognized denominations and other religious communities that obtain authorization from the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs. In 1998 an expert committee was established to advise the Minister on applications for denominational recognition. The committee consisted of myself, a historian of religions and chairman, sociologist of religion Ole Riis, later replaced by Margit Warburg, Church historian Jørgen Stenbæk, later replaced by Per Ingesman and professor of law Eva Smith, later replaced by Jens Elo Rytter. In the fall of 2007, a cabinet reorganization in the Liberal-Conservative Government led to a reorganization of the legal body responsible for the recognition of minority denominations. Thus the judicial process, including the expert committee, was transferred to the Department of Justice under the Section of Family Affairs. Since 2014, jurisdiction is under the Ministry of Child, Equality, Integration and Social Affairs, Permanent Under-Secretarial Department, Office of Family Affairs. This paper will describe the judicial and pragmatic aspects of our deliberations. Furthermore, a few key cases will be described which demonstrate how the recognition process sometimes influences the negotiation of religious identity among applicant denominations.

FBI and Religion

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Orientation ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Academic Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interdisciplinary Assessment ◽  
Civic Religion ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

This volume is an interdisciplinary assessment of the relationship between religion and the FBI. We recount the history of the FBI’s engagement with multiple religious communities and with aspects of public or “civic” religion such as morality and respectability. The book presents new research to explain roughly the history of the FBI’s interaction with religion over approximately one century, from the pre-Hoover period to the post-9/11 era. Along the way, the book explores vexed issues that go beyond the particulars of the FBI’s history—the juxtaposition of “religion” and “cult,” the ways in which race can shape the public’s perceptions of religion (and vica versa), the challenges of mediating between a religious orientation and a secular one, and the role and limits of academic scholarship as a way of addressing the differing worldviews of the FBI and some of the religious communities it encounters.

The Earliest Christian Communities in Southeast and Northeast Asia: An Outline of the Evidence Available in Seven Countries before A.D. 1500

1991 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. England
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Eastern Christianity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Central South

The history of Eastern Christianity in central, south, and east Asia prior to A.D. 1500 is rich and extensive, yet has been largely ignored. Material evidence now available from southeast and northeast Asia shows that Christian communities were present in seven countries for different periods between the sixth and fifteenth centuries. Often termed “Nestorian,” or “Jacobite,” these communities have left a diversity of remains—epigraphical, architectural, sculptural, documentary—which testify to their presence, as far northeast as Japan and southeast as far as Indonesia. The glimpses of Christian churches in medieval Asia afforded by the evidence from these and other regions of Asia offer alternatives to Westernized patterns of mission, and question many assumptions concerning the history and character of Christian presence in the region.

scholarly journals Mobile bystanders and rubbernecks, disaster tourists, and helpers. Towards a theoretical framework for critically studying action possibilities at accident sites

2021 ◽  
pp. 205015792098482
Author(s):  
Linus Andersson ◽  
Ebba Sundin
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Mobile Media ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
Media Practices

This article addresses the phenomenon of mobile bystanders who use their smartphones to film or take photographs at accident scenes, instead of offering their help to people in need or to assist medical units. This phenomenon has been extensively discussed in Swedish news media in recent years since it has been described as a growing problem for first responders, such as paramedics, police, and firefighters. This article aims to identify theoretical perspectives that are relevant for analyzing mobile media practices and discuss the ethical implications of these perspectives. Our purpose is twofold: we want to develop a theoretical framework for critically approaching mobile media practices, and we want to contribute to discussions concerning well-being in a time marked by mediatization and digitalization. In this pursuit, we combine theory from social psychology about how people behave at traumatic scenes with discussions about witnessing in and through media, as developed in media and communication studies. Both perspectives offer various implications for normative inquiry, and in our discussion, we argue that mobile bystanders must be considered simultaneously as transgressors of social norms and as emphatic witnesses behaving in accordance with the digital media age. The article ends with a discussion regarding the implications for further research.

scholarly journals Orthodox Christian Bulgarians Coping with Natural Disasters in the Pre-Modern Ottoman Balkans

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 367
Author(s):  
Raymond Detrez
Keyword(s):  
Natural Disasters ◽  
World View ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Secondary Importance ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Ottoman Balkans

Premodern Ottoman society consisted of four major religious communities—Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Armenian Christians, and Jews; the Muslim and Christian communities also included various ethnic groups, as did Muslim Arabs and Turks, Orthodox Christian Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs who identified, in the first place, with their religious community and considered ethnic identity of secondary importance. Having lived together, albeit segregated within the borders of the Ottoman Empire, for centuries, Bulgarians and Turks to a large extent shared the same world view and moral value system and tended to react in a like manner to various events. The Bulgarian attitudes to natural disasters, on which this contribution focuses, apparently did not differ essentially from that of their Turkish neighbors. Both proceeded from the basic idea of God’s providence lying behind these disasters. In spite of the (overwhelmingly Western) perception of Muslims being passive and fatalistic, the problem whether it was permitted to attempt to escape “God’s wrath” was coped with in a similar way as well. However, in addition to a comparable religious mental make-up, social circumstances and administrative measures determining equally the life conditions of both religious communities seem to provide a more plausible explanation for these similarities than cross-cultural influences.

scholarly journals The Distinct Wrong of Deepfakes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne de Ruiter
Keyword(s):  
Digital Data ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Digital Representations ◽  
Distinctive Aspect ◽  
Moral Dimensions ◽  
Audio Files ◽  
Potential Use ◽  
Identity Protection

AbstractDeepfake technology presents significant ethical challenges. The ability to produce realistic looking and sounding video or audio files of people doing or saying things they did not do or say brings with it unprecedented opportunities for deception. The literature that addresses the ethical implications of deepfakes raises concerns about their potential use for blackmail, intimidation, and sabotage, ideological influencing, and incitement to violence as well as broader implications for trust and accountability. While this literature importantly identifies and signals the potentially far-reaching consequences, less attention is paid to the moral dimensions of deepfake technology and deepfakes themselves. This article will help fill this gap by analysing whether deepfake technology and deepfakes are intrinsically morally wrong, and if so, why. The main argument is that deepfake technology and deepfakes are morally suspect, but not inherently morally wrong. Three factors are central to determining whether a deepfake is morally problematic: (i) whether the deepfaked person(s) would object to the way in which they are represented; (ii) whether the deepfake deceives viewers; and (iii) the intent with which the deepfake was created. The most distinctive aspect that renders deepfakes morally wrong is when they use digital data representing the image and/or voice of persons to portray them in ways in which they would be unwilling to be portrayed. Since our image and voice are closely linked to our identity, protection against the manipulation of hyper-realistic digital representations of our image and voice should be considered a fundamental moral right in the age of deepfakes.

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