Experiencing Religion: Post-Colonial Views for Religious Education

Framed within religious historicism, the present study reviews, through historical and empirical insights, the lessons that Philippine RE can learn from the liberating function of religion and liberated religious undercurrents parallel to institutional religion in the Philippines. The liberating function of religion is often overlooked in post-colonial discourses while religious undercurrent views seem neglected due to pre-occupations with untangling power imbalances submerged in the voices of institutional religion in post-colonial analysis. Hence, in this presentation, I give particular attention to the liberating role of contemporary religion in contrast to the post-colonial thrust to rid institutional religion of power and control and secondly, the liberated religious views of young Filipino audiences from empirical findings I found from my previous studies. For religious undercurrents, I limit myself to current unorthodox religious interpretations of young Filipino audiences departing from conventional assumptions of religion and culture. My analysis of liberating religion and liberated religious views from empirical findings show epistemological shifts from the Christian interpretation in a post-colonial context. These shifts point to de-institutionalized but theocentric religious ideas inspired by moral and communal considerations, which form the basis of RE content.

Mary Linwood of Leicester's Pious Address of Violent Times

This article explores the role that contemporary religion and politics played in the subject matter of Mary Linwood's needlework paintings. Linwood was one of Britain's pioneering needlewomen of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Her approach to depicting famous narrative paintings in stitch has been largely overlooked by historians of art. The article is underpinned by use of primary source material, and draws on the most recent scholarship in the field of textile history, notably the work of Heidi Strobel and Rosika Desnoyers. Mary Linwood was an evangelical and a woman interested in the politics of the period. Her use of needlework was a means of both the expression of her piety and of the representation of her political views – especially attitudes to the brutality of the Napoleonic wars. The article also indicates that Linwood's views and medium were of remarkable interest to the wider public during the period.

Religion and belief in university practices

This chapter assesses religion and belief in university practices. In many ways, universities continue to reflect their Christian medieval roots (directly or by pastiche), hanging on to the gowns and hoods, titles, and roles of a Christian age. This legacy is deep in the contemporary higher education landscape. A crucial challenge is how to work out a place for education — in universities, as for schools — which emerges out of a Christian past, and to some extent present, while at the same time taking fully and authentically on board the contemporary religion and belief landscape, which is Christian, secular, plural, and non-religious all at once. The problem is that universities tend to pick up where schools leave off, continuing the confusion with a subtextual replaying in both teaching and operations of old binaries and tropes about science versus religion, secular versus sacred, private versus public, and resource versus risk. These are all built deeply into the epistemologies of disciplines, as well as reflected in the day-to-day operations of institutions.

Religion og medier i et religionsvidenskabeligt perspektiv

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The religion and media field has grown strongly as an academic subject in recent years, especially regarding studies of religion in contemporary mass media, TV, film, internet, social media etc., and in relation to popular culture. Scholars of religion have also begun to pay attention to the important role that media, mediation, and mediatization have played in the history of religions. It is this growing awareness that we wish to examine here. Our focus is not intended to signal the abandonment of interest in contemporary religion, media and popular culture; rather we wish to place this development in the deep and broad perspective of the study of religion. Media, mediation, and the more recent phenomenon of mediatization, are processes that are inseparable from the ways in which religion functions and is passed on from generation to generation. Thus, from a general study of religion perspective, we promote the argument that media and mediation processes are central aspects of how all religions function because all communication, including religious communication, can be seen as mediated. In this article, we reflect on and discuss the roles that media have played in the deep history of religions and continue to play in the present by bringing religion and media studies in conversation with cultural evolution and cognitive perspectives. DANSK RESUMÉ: Religion og medier er blomstret stærkt op som emnefelt i de seneste år, særligt med fokus på religion i samtidens massemedier, tv, film, internet, sociale medier m.m. og i relation til populærkultur. Samtidigt er religionsforskere blevet opmærksomme på at medier og mediering har spillet vigtige roller for religionshistorien og det er dén udvikling vi her vil gribe fat i. Dermed ønsker vi ikke på nogen måde at signalere en opgiven af interessen for religion, medier og populærkultur i samtiden, men snarere at vi ønsker at indsætte denne udvikling i et langt og bredt religionsvidenskabeligt perspektiv. Medier og mediering er uadskilleligt fra hvordan religion fungerer og videreføres fra generation til generation. Derfor anlægger vi det overordnede perspektiv her, at medier og mediering udgør centrale aspekter af hvordan alle religioner fungerer, da al kommunikation, inklusiv religiøs kommunikation, kan anskues som medieret. I denne artikel reflekterer vi over og diskuterer den rolle medier, mediering og medialisering har spillet i religionshistorien og i samtiden bl.a. med inddragelse af kulturevolutionære og kognitive perspektiver.

Navigating through Space Butterflies

This article seeks to query the typical way research in novel fields are expressed in academic writing. The high structured presentation assumes a high structured field, which is often conceived of as necessary for new sites to assert their academic validity. However, many times, as is the situation for the case study presented here, what is considered new and novel is simply a new medium through which already properly understood concepts thrive. This misunderstanding often leaves scholars in new fields defending their field site more than analysing it, and a higher scrutiny is placed on these locations. This article hopes to demonstrate just one example of this, the fan convention, and demonstrate how this field site is not as new as typically considered, and arguing, therefore, for a more open representation of the improvised and fluid conception of research on contemporary religion.

The Mediatized Conditions of Contemporary Religion: Critical Status and Future Directions

During the last decade the framework of mediatization theory has been introduced in the field of media, religion and culture as a parallel perspective to the “mediation of religion” approach, allowing new questions to be posed that align with religious change within Europe. This article provides a critical review of existing research applying mediatization of religion theory, focusing on key issues raised by its critics as well as how the theory have moved the research field forward. These issues concern the concept of religion, institution and social change, religious authority, and the application of mediatization theory outside the North-Western European context where it originated. The article argues that an institutional approach to mediatization is a relevant tool for analyzing change as a dynamic process in which the logics of particular forms of media influence practices, values and relations within particular manifestations of religion across various levels of analysis.

You need ‘help for the journey’: Freedom and regulation in a ‘market-friendly’ megachurch

One of the dominant trends in contemporary religion is a focus on individual freedom, choice and autonomy, all central tenets of mainstream consumer society. Rather than indicating a lack of religious regulation, we show how they can be the means through which regulation operates. Drawing on the theory of governmentality, which focuses on how power operates in discourse, we present a case study of a highly successful megachurch and global leader in Christian music – Hillsong – and show how this religious producer constructs a subject position for the consumer that promotes freedom and choice but nevertheless has regulatory implications by limiting what is thinkable and possible. Our findings show how Hillsong uses music and offers a worship experience that encourages continued reliance on the Church supported by its selective interpretation of the Pentecostal tradition. We trace how Hillsong claims knowledge of the religious consumer, identifying its central logic and contradictions. In doing so we show how religious regulation is taking new forms in contexts that may appear to be unregulated. We highlight the potential of this Foucauldian theory to not only enhance the understanding of current trends in religion but also to widen the repertoire used by critical marketing scholars to analyse how marketing discourse and practices are mobilized in specific contexts and with what effects.