Religious revelation, secrecy and the limits of visual representation

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to a more adequate understanding of the adoption of modern audiovisual mass media by contemporary religious groups. It does so by examining Pentecostal-charismatic churches as well as the Christian mass culture instigated by its popularity, and so-called traditional religion in Ghana, which develop markedly different attitudes towards audiovisual mass media and assume different positions in the public sphere. Taking into account the complicated entanglement of traditional religion and Pentecostalism, approaching both religions from a perspective of mediation which regards media as intrinsic to religion, and seeking to avoid the pitfall of overestimating the power of modern mass media to determine the world, this article seeks to move beyond an unproductive recurrence to oppositions such as tradition and modernity, or religion and technology. It is argued that instead of taking as a point of departure more or less set ideas about the nexus of vision and modernity, the adoption of new mass media by religious groups needs to be analyzed by a detailed ethnographic investigation of how these new media transform existing practices of religious mediation. Special emphasis is placed on the tension between the possibilities of gaining public presence through new media, and the difficulty in authorizing these media, and the experiences they induce, as authentic.

The anthropology of media and the question of ethnic and religious pluralism

“…Perhaps no other field of knowledge is as well positioned to address the question of mediation taken seriously from a comparative perspective than the anthropology of media. Beginning with the research of Terry Turner, Faye Ginsburg and others on indigenous media, and now among other topics also including a focus on religious counterpublics (Hirschkind 2006; Meyer 2006a), and media producers, such as journalists and film producers (Boyer 2005; Boyer and Hannerz 2006), anthropologists have analysed uses of new media technologies as profoundly interconnected with diverse cultural frames of reference 1 . This has led them to a particular focus on media consumption, initially also inspired by the work of Stuart Hall in cultural studies, whose work emphasises the role of media audiences as active producers of media messages and their meanings (Hall 1980).…”

“…Anthropologists tend to analyse media as intrinsic to religion (de Vries 2001), and ask how the use of media technology articulates with the mediation of the transcendental (Hirschkind 2006; Meyer 2006a; Oosterbaan 2008; Schulz 2006; van de Port 2006). An important issue is also the creation of new publics and forms of religious authority through the use of new media technology, such as audiovisual media in Ghana (Meyer 2006a), audiocassette sermons in Egypt (Hirschkind 2006), and televangelism in the Americas (Birman 2006). Anthropologists pay attention to the ‘remediation’ or reframing of already established media that authenticate religious experience and authority through new media (Meyer 2005).…”

“…In the present‐day world perhaps the most important of these dynamics is that religious practitioners often recast older claims for a more direct or ‘immediate’ access to supernatural forces through their deployment of contemporary media technologies, which may go hand in hand with radicalisation or maximisation of religious claims in social and political worlds. While from a philosophical and theological point of view the deployment of ever more complex human artefacts in pursuit of immediacy in interacting with the divine constitutes an intriguing paradox, empirical studies of media use have shown that claims for a more direct, unmediated access to the supernatural, however conceived, are also part of strategies of power (Engelke 2007; Meyer 2006a; Keane 2007). That is, they bolster claims of moral superiority that frequently also involve claims to authority in other social and political fields.…”

(Not) Made by the human hand: media consciousness and immediacy in the cultural production of the real

“…Unsurprisingly, this dream that one's imaginations do not involve human design but are immanent to the world is particularly strong in the realm of religion. As Birgit Meyer put it, ‘all religions assume a reality that is transcendental to, rather than demonstrable in, the material world’ and they all face the task to find ways to render present this ‘absent presence’ that is the Divine (Meyer 2006; cf. Stolow 2005; de Vries 2001).…”

Un/making difference through performance and mediation in contemporary Africa

“…Van der Veer 1995). Following this line of reasoning, recent studies put a focus on the objects and materials that enable and shape religious practices, and thereby mediate believers' experience of divine presence (Meyer 2006(Meyer , 2009Schulz 2008;Stolow 2010;Van de Port 2005Vasquez 2011). Chidester (2005, Meyer (2012) and Schulz (2014Schulz ( , 2015 explicitly ask how a sense of authentic experience is generated through religious artifacts and practices, and emphasize the aesthetic dimension of the process.…”