Social Science and the Study of Media and Religion: Going Forward by Looking Backward

In public and private discussions of the state of the world, of culture, of social institutions or of the family, the conversation is very likely to include some mention of the media or religion. In the current climate of culture wars (Hunter, 1991), some are likely to see problems—or solutions—as arising from media practices and content; others will see religion as the problem or as the solution to all that is or may be wrong. In choosing sides, they “give voice to their hopes and fears about how things are, how they will be, and how they should be, and how they will be, and how they should or might be” (Buddenbaum, 2001b, p. 20). To advance their arguments, those on each side will very likely arm themselves with statistics drawn from research on the media or on religion. However, what is missing from most discussions is serious attention to the possibility of joint and reciprocal effects between media, both religious and secular, and religion in all its myriad varieties, as well as of the joint and reciprocal effects among the media, religion, other institutions, and the surrounding culture (Buddenbaum, 2001b). Some of the blame for this tendency to consider media and religion as separate and antagonistic and to treat both in isolation from other institutions and from the culture can be placed on people’s propensity to think in dualistic, either–or, right–wrong terms (Stout, 2001). However, much of it must also lie with researchers. JOURNAL OF MEDIA AND RELIGION, 1(1), 13–24 Copyright © 2002, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.