What does the presence of Christian theology in the media mean for Christianity in modernity?

Elaine Graham's chapter, "What we make of the world" explores the complex and delicate relationship between religion and popular culture. She accounts the differences, and in some cases binarism, between the Christian Church and its representation in the media to the modern experience of secularisation, individualisation and religious pluralism. Graham's primary concern is whether this relationship makes Christian dogma and social practice more accessible and relevant, or whether it is commercialised and destabilised by its interaction with media in all its resources (2007: 65).

Advertising Poster by Frid'rick for 'Le Bible Amusante' an 1890 French publication by Leo Taxil.

Photograph published by Emile Levy, 14 November 2012, from WikiMedia Commons, 14 March 2013. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_Bible_amusante.jpg

The primary motivation of theology's "turn" to popular media might be to make more accessible an engagement with the sources and norms of religious tradition (Graham, 2007: 66). In what is likely a conceptual stretch at best, Graham argues that culture "may be viewed as the entirety of human creative activity" (66). In this sense, culture both produces, and contextualizes, human meaning making and creating. Any "turn" by theology to popular culture therefore represents the encultration of religious doctrine, and the mingling of that theology with the everyday, lived experience. By defining culture in these terms, Graham commits the argumental  fallacy of affirming the consequent. If culture is the lived experience then theology's relationship with culture simply represents its relationship with the human lived experience. The rest of her argument, namely that the presence of theology in the popular culture medium makes it more accessible and relevant, is weakened by this rhetorical error.

In saying this, her position on culture as the entirety of human creative experience (intuitively at least) places religion and culture on the same conceptual terrain. This a helpful and accessible way of assessing how religion is viewed in modernity, namely, as part of an individual spiritual life rather than within the boundaries of doctrine and institution. Religion, like culture, might be read as the domain for meaning-making and self-actualisation, which speaks to the core principles of Christianity.

Whether the doctrine and dogma of traditional Christian theology is commercialised by its interaction with popular media is considered only in application to very specific examples. The example used in the article of the "Jerry Springer" satire serves more to demonstrate the difference between programs of a religious nature in the popular media and the popular media referencing religion as as source of satire. This, in itself, is not particularly helpful to the question at hand. All it does is demonstrate that the satirization of religious principles will destabilise the boundaries of meaning and belief within a religion if the audience is receptive to that satirization. That is to say, making fun of Christian dogma is only damaging to that dogma if the audience believes that humour is warranted. This is a matter of taste, audience and context more than it is of popular culture as a whole. In saying that, if the boundaries between the discourse of popular media and the discourse of Christianity are collapsed, each domain loses some of its autonomy. This creates an environment where there is little room for critical space, of both the media as a mode of representation and of the substance of theological claims. While, for the discerning viewer, this should not pose any serious threat to the stability of their own belief set, the slipperiness and subjectivity of representation and meaning in media discourse should be taken with a grain of salt.

References

Graham, E. 2007. "What We Make of the World: The Turn to 'Culture' in Theology and Study of Religion'. In Between Sacred and Profane: Researching Religion and Popular Culture. New York: IB Taurus & Co. Ltd. Ebook.