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“For many Europeans a crucial question dominates the scene: will American style televangelism make inroads into the European market? If it does, will this change the nature of European religion as a whole?” (Davie 2003, 272)
Consequences
This study uses the issue of homosexuality in relation to Christianity as point of departure for a discussion of the relationship between the mediatization, deprivatization and vicarious religion, i.e. that the European churches offer a space for discussing changes in the moral climate, and that the media attention to those debates attests to this
"From the normative perspective of modernity, religion may enter the public sphere and assume a public form only if it accepts the inviolable rights to privacy and the sanctity of the principle of freedom of conscience. This condition is met and, therefore, the deprivatization of religion can be justified in at least three instances:"
a) When religion enters the public sphere to protect not only its own freedom of religion but all modern freedoms and rights […]
b) When religion enters the public sphere to question and contest the absolute lawful autonomy of the secular spheres and their claims to be organized in accordance with principles of functional differentiation without regard to extraneous ethical or moral considerations.
c) When religion enters the public sphere to protect the traditional life-world from administrative or juridical state penetration and in the process open up issues of norm and will formation to the public and collective self-reflection of modern discursive ethics (Ibid. 57-8).
Strong vs. weak mediatization
Media as:
Conduit
Language
Environment
Russian Orthodox Church
Catholic Church in Mexico
Protestants in South Africa
Church of Sweden
- Laestadians
- Society
Swedes leave the church because it has not kept up with the developments in society, which it has to do if it wants to remain relevant
1. The data suggests that a shift have long since occured in society and the new post-material values are entering the religious system through law, politics, and media.
The autonomy of the religious system is threatened politicization and mediatization in a process of securitization.
2. It only becomes a debate when the church or religious actors act in contradiction with the general public attitudes towards homosexuality, personal autonomy and in some cases human rights, i.e. the media primarily pays attention to those actors who fail to live up to the three instances of legitimate deprivatized religion identified by Casanova
3. You can find a number of topics much more important for and debated in society than gays and the rights they have already acquired that are ignored or only sporadically addressed by the churches, for instance bio-engineering, genetic manipulation, or global warming.
By Henrik Reintoft Christensen
Research question:
Homosexuality and Christianity
Faroe Islands:
- attack and nervous break down
- Politiken: parents, gays, christians
Midterm Election:
- Mark Foley, Congress man
- Ted Haggard, Leader of NAE
"Liberal baby killers"
"The parliament has become a platform for religious fundamentalism"
"The Ford company [must be] boycotted because it accepts homosexual employees"
Not Vicarious Religion
"The Presbyterian church expels pastors if they marry homosexuals".
"It has nothing to do with Christianity.
It is religion"
’Californian values’
"it is a case of discrimination against Christians"
Vicarious religion might exist, but it is not a convincing argument regarding the debate on homosexuality:
"God abhors those men"
"Unfair Islands"
“We are a Christian nation and as such we take care of all in society. That is how it is, and therefore we do not need to change anything”
Gay marriages and gay pastors
- Norwegian church/state debate
Deprivatization and re-publicization of religion
"it is exactly the ties between state and church that facilitate the church’s inclusiveness towards female bishops and homosexuals in the church. A free church will be more cramped and less inclusive"
"If the pastors and bishops has to share the attitudes of politicians, trade unions, and common members, it will end up “de-Christianizing" the church”
The church “should be the progressive force which brandishes the banner of humanity and human autonomy”
Religion and Media in the Sociology of Religion
- Swedish debate on the church's future
the media as an institution are important for social control because they can define who is “controversial and violative of normative values of society” (Beckford & Richardson 2007, 407).
Mediatization
Questions addressing, for example, the direct and indirect effects of religion on local, national and international economics, or the mutual links between religion and mass media, are not discussed in this collection but clearly deserves sociological attention” (Dillon 2003, 10).
By the mediatization of society, we understand the process whereby society to an increasing degree is submitted to, or becomes dependent on, the media and their logic. This process is characterized by a duality in that the media have become integrated into the operations of other social institutions, while they also have acquired the status of social institutions in their own right . As a consequence, social interaction – within the respective institutions, between institutions, and in society at large – take place via the media. (Hjarvard 2008, 109)
Religious actor
Non-religious actor
Consequence II:
The media use of religious actors.
Symptomatic of sociology of religion.
- Beckford and religion and gender equality.
- Davie and vicarious religion.
Consequence I:
little or no interest in religion.
Casanovas four factors behind
secularization:
- Reformation
- Nation states
- Capitalism
- Science
Representation of Religion
Could it be that the churches offer space for debate regarding particular, and often controversial, topics that are difficult to address elsewhere in society? The current debate about homosexuality in the Church of England offers a possible example, an interpretation encouraged by the intense media attention directed at this issue […] Is this one way in which society as a whole come to terms with profound shifts in moral climate? If [this] is not true, it is hard to understand why so much attention is being paid to the churches in this respect. If it is true, sociological thinking must take this factor into account (Davie 2006, 26,