Tuning in the Spirit: Exposure to Types of Religious TV Programming among American Catholic Parishioners

Abstract

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What Would Jesus Buy: American Consumption of Religious and Spiritual Material Goods

“…Some religious goods such as Rick Warren's The Purpose‐Driven Life or Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code might well appear in a sermon in Protestant and Catholic worship services, whether explicitly promoting or condemning such items. Studies among Catholics (Welch, Johnson, and Pilgrim 1990) and religious residents in Dallas (Stacey and Shupe 1982) in the 1980s showed that greater religious capital (measured as orthodoxy and practice) was associated with greater consumption of the “electronic church” or religious television, contrary to the popular belief that the growth of religious programming would reduce traditional practice and belief. Assuming little has changed in this pattern of religious capital effects on religious consumption, we expect that religiously active individuals will consume more religious products than less active individuals.…”