United by an ocean, divided by religion?

Melbourne, Australia, is truly one of the world’s most pleasant and beautiful cities.  It is livable, lively, and a vibrant crossroads between the Pacific, Asia, the Global North and the Global South.  It has been a wonderful place to land near the end of an energetic year that featured extended stays in Ghana and Brazil for field research and teaching.  I’ve had wonderfully helpful conversations with colleagues here about my learnings from the year.

Australia was not to have been a research site for me.  I’ve mostly spend my time reading, talking, and reflecting on my year.  But, I haven’t been able to avoid noticing religion in the media here.  Australia presents as a secular and even irreligious country.  It shares much with the U.S. culturally and in its colonial history.  Anyone who’s made the twelve-to-fourteen-hour flight would be amused by the way this affinity is marked in a prominent museum display in Sydney:  “Australia and America: United by an Ocean.”  One thing they do not share, however, is religiosity.  There could be many reasons for this, not least the important colonial difference that Australia had no history of settlement by religious refugees.

Whatever the cause, Australia’s religiosity—or lack of it—is publicly expressed through religious skepticism seemingly at every turn.  At least historically. That history is changing, though.

Since I’ve been here, two explicitly religious issues (and one implicitly religious one) have dominated Australian news.  First, is the Catholic sexual-abuse scandal, which is sadly as present here as everywhere else we’ve been this year.  The second is the issue of Islam and what appears to be a vibrant (but not dominant) Islamophobia that can be seen explicitly and implicitly in a great deal of media discourse.

I’ve seen each of these in a wide range of programs, from news, to entertainment, to public affairs.  But each of these fit into a persistent Australian belief about the U.S.—that we are an irrationally religious culture, and that the sexual-abuse scandal and the threat of political Islam are evidence of how dangerous religion can be—and it logically follows that educated, sophisticated, and modern industrial nations such as the U.S. would be well to realize this fact abut religion.

This of course, is a stereotype of the Australian attitude on this matter.  But it is a stereotype that is reinforced by gestures such as the headline that appeared in today’s The Age, Melbourne’s leading non-Murdoch broadsheet. The story is about the Obama Administration’s surveillance program and the fact that Congress has been regularly briefed.  The story details how little confidence the public has in Congress.  Here is the headline:

In God They Trust, but Not Congress.

There is no mention of God, of religion, or of religious politics, in the story.  It could be in part a reference to the phrase “In God We Trust” on the U.S. currency.  But it is only really meaningful if it is also a reference to America’s religiosity glut.

A small matter, but also a gratuitous reinforcement of a stereotype—by what should be an example of Australia’s “quality press.”

Old Pope, New Pope: Strictness and Success in Public Religion

The Papal succession has revealed much about religious authority in the media age. A series of New York Times columns by Ross Douthat have provided much evidence. In my last post, I suggested that Douthat’s efforts are significant because he aspires to be a legitimator of Catholic authority in the media frame. I also noted that he seems remarkably naïve about the role that the media play in all of this.

Douthat sees things as a kind of global battle for religious success, even supremacy. In a column assessing Benedict’s legacy, he takes a starkly conservative point of view. By “conservative” I mean both that he stands on the “right” side of the Second Vatican Council, the sadly banal ligne de démarcation of contemporary Catholicism, and that his interest seems to be in conserving the authority of the faith.

This latter project of “conserving” goes right to the question of the media because it is the authority of the church in public culture and in politics that seems to focus Douthat’s mind. Part of the problem is that he may not realize that he’s actually raising a question of the place of religious authority in public culture. But that is the logical implication of his ruminations.

That he sees this as a matter of religious competition is clear from the following paragraph:

But for all of Catholicism’s problems, the Christian denominations that did not have a Ratzinger — those churches that persisted in the spirit of the 1970s and didn’t reassert a doctrinal core — have generally fared worse. There are millions of lapsed Catholics, but the church still has a higher retention rate by far than most mainline Protestant denominations. Indeed, it is difficult to pick out a major religious body where the progressive course urged by so many of Ratzinger’s critics has increased vitality and growth.

Let’s leave aside the overbroad implication that strictness is the key to contemporary religious success, a deeply flawed assumption. Let’s look instead at the evidence: attendance at mass. This is a fundamentally Catholic view, of course, one with clear doctrinal roots. But shouldn’t we ask whether, in a non-Catholic cultural context, this should be the measure? There is a deeper issue here, one close to the heart of an old survey researcher like me. The evidence he uses for “retention” is questionable evidence. His source is data on overall attendance. An equally plausible explanation to his (that Catholicism under Ratzinger was more successful at retaining members) is that Catholicism’s U.S. attendance figures have benefitted from immigration. We’d need to parse the numbers to know.

More to follow.

Conjuring with…and without…the media

In my last post, I reflected on a speech by outgoing Pope Benedict XVI in which he revealed some very profound understandings about the role of the media in relation to church authority. He noted that what he called “…the council of the media…” is “…accessible to all…more efficient…” and through these capacities was able to frame even the most determined efforts of the Catholic Church to tell its own story.

I am now turning to a series of opinion pieces in The New York Times by Ross Douthat, Douthat is Catholic and has become an articulate representative of a certain kind of Catholic view of contemporary culture, contemporary religion, and contemporary values. Like many other Catholics (and lapsed Catholics) in the media (in the case of the Times, Frank Bruni and Maureen Dowd for example), Douthat was moved by the unexpected Papal succession to reflect publicly on things Papal. Unlike many others he took a much more traditionally “Catholic” and pious view of the change. His burden, it seemed, was to represent a view much more supportive of the church, its structures, and its moral voice.

In his classic work on authority, Max Weber pointed out that even authority that possesses the power of violence and coercion still has the challenge to maintain its legitimacy or its plausibility. It has to enforce its views, but at the same time appear to be legitimate in doing so. A voice like Douthat’s, then, might be said to be a cultural enforcer of authority by seeking to establish this plausibility and legitimacy. Both what he says and how he says it important.

I have a series of reflections on Douthat’s work, but I’ll begin by pointing out a glaring lacuna in his view of the Church and its prospects. Unlike Benedict, he seems not to recognize the central role played by the media in establishing the conditions under which authority must function. Here is an example from an early column in the cycle, titled “The Ratzinger Legacy.”

Up to a point, the language of crisis is justified. To the trends weakening institutional faiths across the Western world — the rise of spiritual individualism, the influence of the so-called new atheism, the gap between traditional Christian sexual ethics and present-day realities — the Roman Catholic Church has added scandals, sclerosis and a communications strategy apparently designed to win the news cycles of 1848.

Each of these trends, in fact, has a base in modern media and mediation. And yet his only mention of media is with a banal and superficial reference to the Church’s abilities at news management. Benedict understood things much better.  These trends don’t exist in a vacuum.  Each has a powerful linkeage to modern means of communication.

Popes, the Media, and “the Church”

Much has been written about the different approaches to the media of the last two Popes.  John Paul II had been an actor at one point in his life.  He understood the camera.  Benedict had been a scholar.  He understood the camera in a different way and it showed.  In the end, though, Benedict gave us some insights that are worth serious critical reflection.

Benedict’s unprecedented retirement was notable in many ways.  Unlike his predecessors of many Centuries, this Pope had an opporunity for a sort of valedictory tour, a kind of “exit interview” with the church and the world. In it, he revealed much about his thinking, and perhaps about the way Catholic authority in general thinks about (and more importantly can think about) things at this moment of transition in its position and in its fortunes.

On February 14, Benedict addressed the clergy of Rome for the last time.  It is a long and fascinating reflection.  In it he reveals the view (shared perhaps by his predecessor?) that the Second Vatican Council was a watershed that got out  of hand.  And who and what is to blane for the chaos in its aftermath?

…there was also the Council of the media. It was almost a Council in and of itself, and the world perceived the Council through them, through the media. So the immediately efficient Council that got thorough to the people, was that of the media, not that of the Fathers…

And we know that this Council of the media was accessible to all. So, dominant, more efficient, this Council created many calamities, so many problems, so much misery, in reality: seminaries closed, convents closed, liturgy trivialized…

There is much to say here and much to comment on.  What I found fascinating, though, was how profoundly he does seem to recognize the crisis in authority the Church faces as the result of the modern media.  The first sentence of the second paragraph says it all.  The capacities of modern media and modern mediation to stand at the center of public culture have made irrelvant the aspirations of authority such as the Church’s.

A lot to think about….

Framing the Pope

I am currently in Brazil, where I have been watching the papal succession with great interest. While my Portuguese is still limited, I have been trying to follow some of the press coverage here (while watching CNNI and reading the New York Times as well).

So, I couldn’t help noticing this juxtaposition. Two images, both accompanying the story from February 2-3 regarding what the outgoing Pope might have known or not known about brewing Vatican Scandals. The first image is from Diario de Sao Paulo, one of the tabloid papers here. This is the image that accompanied Diario’s story. It sort of speaks for itself, furthering the storyline of the Pope’s age and seeming infirmity.

The next image is from the same day’s New York Times, illustrating the same story. Striking difference, isn’t it?

And, we might reflect on what the difference between these two inages means in relation to their countries of origin. The first image comes from a supposedly “Catholic” country. The second from a country that is not.

Why is one more deferential to the traditional iconography of the Holy Father, while the other one is clearly irreverent? As I agreed with a group of graduate students here, this could be the subject of a Master’s thesis!

Awakened by the Papal Change

Visual Blasphemies: Maybe it’s time for us the West to grow up?

Writing from London. I’ve been watching the ongoing controversy over the media framing of blasphemy and its reaction in the Middle East and in Europe.  In prior posts, I’ve suggested that what is needed is something we don’t have—a truly global discourse and context for that discourse in which the misunderstandings at the heart of this controversy might be aired.  It is a complex and layered problem.

Elite voices in the West, particularly in the media (and certainly here in the UK) have been a bit too quick to dismiss two of the layers as important. This not really about either “religion” or about “media” (the offensive video). It is about politics and history.  And that is true, but both media and religion play a role. This cannot be denied.

There have been good and helpful examples of the discourse I am calling for in these same media.  Work that moves to that larger level of understanding.  Here are examples from the New York Times, the Guardian, and the Independent.

But, the latest round—the recent cartoons in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, introduce a new factor.  Presenting as advocates of free speech, its editors—and their defenders—contend that somehow on some level, it is symbolically important to do this.

To me, it seems self-important, pompous, and gratuitous.  How many more times do we in the West need to satisfy ourselves that a direct and intentional offense directed at “their” prophet will result in this kind of reaction?  It’s a variation on Einstein’s definition of madness. Its doing the same thing again and again expecting the *same* result.  What more do we know each time?  Nothing.

It all seems pointless, and seems doubly gratuitous when we consider how carefully and intentionally offensive such efforts must be.  There are no globally-recognizable icons of Mohammed.  There is no equivalent of  the Christian “heads of Christ” that appear on everything from commercial products to black velvet.  No visual nomenclature of beard, flowing hair, pious, wooden expression.  In the case of Mohammed, one needs therefore to craft a stereotyped generic image of a medieval Arab man, and then say “…oh yes, I *intend* you to think that this is Mohammed….”  The self-consciousness of the intended offense is obvious and tendentious. And, unlike the countless artistic uses of Jesus or Buddha images, there is no articulation or parsimony in the representation. These are not—in my view—really art or expression, they are just fighting words.  So, what is the point?

The point may be some arch and sophomoric attempt to ritualize the Miltonian ideal of a free market of ideas and of expression.  It may be “flying the flag” for expression.  I can understand and of course support a rather absolutist view of the absolute value of expression.  But, what is the point here?  What is the new point that is made each time something like this—done in the West—is opportunistically used by forces in the Middle East to foment political protest against “the West?”  Unless the point is to actually start a—real or metaphoric—shootin’ war in the clash of civilizations.

tt seems irresponsible to me.  Unless it is—and this is probably the case—just about self-promotion?  And then, is the fallout, the damage, the deaths, the disruption “over there,” really worth it? I think it is time for us in the West to start doing the reasonable and mature thing here. Otherwise, our claim to hold the moral high ground in all of this is seriously eroded.

The Anti-Islam Youtube Video as Symbolic Struggle

Demonstrations continue across the middle East.  In my last post, I observed that this is a complex and layered story.

Most attention has been paid to two of these layers: the geopolitical/strategic questions of evolving relations between the region and the West; and the implications in the area of expression, specifically a perceived conflict between freedom of expression and the notion of blasphemy.

As I said last time, this whole story has deep roots in international relations in the region.  Many of these countries are just emerging from decades of repression, and newly-freed public spheres are being used to say something about the complicity of the West in that repression, and about long-standing feelings in the Muslim world that its voice has been muffled by dominant powers beyond.

One the level of geopolitics, then, this may not really be about a video clip or about religion per se.  But on another–let’s call it the “symbolic” level, it is very much about these things because it is about a symbolic struggle over symbols, and which are in ascendency and which are not and which are to be respected and which not and which are being shamed and which not.

This symbolic register is where religion and media come together.  Religion is all about symbols, and the media are the frame or context where “the symbolic” happens.  They are also the context where discourses about norms, values, ideas, and the sacred and profane are worked out.

The challenge is to find a context for discourse about this symbolic struggle/struggle over symbols (it is both). Two recent conversations on that turf caught my eye here in London.  In yesterday’s Guardian, a very thoughtful piece by Mona Eltahawy (who was a guest of our Center during our Conference on Islam and the Media) and today a very fine–and a bit disturbing–piece by Yasmin Alibahai-Brown in the Independent.

We can address other aspects of this situation using other means, but we’ll not make much progress in understanding until we can find a way to address the symbolic nature of this crisis.

Media, Religion, and Unrest in the Middle East

Writing from London, I’m following the events in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen.  Surely, there is much more to these events than an obscure Islamophobic video.  But, nonetheless, the existence of this cryptic attempt at incitement continues to figure in events.  I think it is important to note the dimensions of this situation that are rooted in interactions between the once separate spheres of “religion” and “the media.”  One simply can’t understand events like these without thinking about the ways that religions are mediated and the ways that the media are infused with religion today.

First, it is no longer possible to have a “private conversation.”  Religious discourse used to take place in relatively bounded contexts.  There could be conversations “inside” that were kept from those “outside.”  And conversations today transcend vast geographic spaces.  This was true of the so-called “cartoon controversy” six years ago.  The video fragment that keeps getting mentioned in discussions of today’s events might once have only been seen close to home.  Now it can be uploaded, subtitled, and circulated to precisely those places where it would cause the most offense.  In fact, that seems to have been the thinly-veiled intention all along.

This leads to a second point, that today’s digital technology has substantially lowered the barriers to production and distribution of visual material.  Something can be made on the very cheap and quickly circulated. 

Third, digital technology also means that anyone can be a producer or distributor.  What we in the West might think of as amateurish production values nonetheless can be coded as a “film” in commentary and reaction to it elsewhere.  Further, in the countries where these events are taking place, until recently no production, no matter how trivial, would have gotten made or distributed without governmental approval or involvement. So this video can achieve the status of “film” (even though there is apparently only a “trailer” available) and people in the region can assume it was produced with tacit or direct support of the US government or someone in power somewhere.

This relates to the fourth point, that the media frame is now the definitive frame for legitimation in public discourse globally, and projection of images into that frame is now a central condition of power, cultural ascendancy, and identity politics.  Islam’s representation in that frame matters.

This leads to the fifth point–the particular problem of the mediation of religion.  Religions vary in their understanding of mediation and appropriate kinds and methods of mediation. Islam is widely known to possess a particular sensibility and sensitivity about realist depiction.  Metaphor is fine, natural imagery is fine, but religion  is diminished when it or its history are depicted.  Thus, the mediation of religion today, when mediation is at the center of global interactions, is of fundamental import.

Sixth, contemporary practices of mediation and circulation carry with them the imprimatur of empowerment.  The broad circulation of cultural materials and the exposure and framing of cultural institutions globally mean that we are encouraged to think of ourselves as involved, even complicit, in these interactions.  What were once merely audiences are today more active the making of meanings, and their reactions to circulated meanings are also quite different than in the past.

The Constructive Mediation of Religion Then and Now Redux

Today’s visit to Trinity College, Dublin to view the Book of Kells got me thinking again about yesterday’s them: about how we imagine that authentic religion–at least in the past when it was “real”–was all about mystery and effervescence and received wonder.  That such experiences might be constructed for us, does that delegitimate them?  Certainly, in contemporary discourse, when we look at the construction of digital imaginings of the religion, this criticism comes to mind.

Nabil Echchaibi and I have suggested that there is a certain “as if-ness” in digital religion–the necessity that those who mediate and remediate religion in these spaces must inhabit a position to do so and must do so with a self consciousness that they are constructing mediations for themselves and for others.

The Book of Kells is one of the oldest illuminated Christian manuscripts. It was created by monks at the abbey on Iona, off the Scottish Coast, in the Ninthe Century.  It is magnificent.  Its folio 34e, a full-page illumination of the Greek Characters Chi and Ro as the crucified Christ is a masterpiece.

The interpretation at Trinity College, where the manuscript is exhibited, speculates that the monks’ primary motivation for their creative labors was spiritual discipline.  But, was there not also some sense somehow that this was being done for someone’s (someone else’s) gaze?