Publisher’s Website<\/a><\/p>\n\tOn January 28, 2019 President Donald J. Trump summoned the rhetoric of white conservative evangelicals and their longstanding effort to \u201cput the Bible back in schools.\u201d Trump tweeted, \u201cNumerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible. Starting to make a turn back? Great!\u201d\u00a0 As with most of the President\u2019s tweets, whether threatening a foreign leader or defending himself against the \u201cconstant negative press covfefe,\u201d a digital storm of responses and subtweets ensued. Franklin Graham of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association confirmed his unwavering evangelical support of the President. Graham wrote, \u201cThank you Mr. President. The Bible is the best-selling, most widely read, most translated, most quoted, and most influential book ever written.\u201d North Carolina activist Rev. Dr. William Barber responded, marking out the boundaries of a Christian ethic in opposition to Trump and his evangelical pandering. Barber wrote, \u201cBefore @realDonaldTrump celebrates #BiblicalLiteracy, he should read the more than 2000 Scriptures on how governments & politicians are called to treat the poor, immigrants, the sick, women & children. B\/c his policies are not in line with the call of love & justice in the Bible.\u201d As Trump ignited a digital debate on the role of Christianity in the public sphere, he provided yet another example of how Twitter.com and other media platforms have transformed public dialogue surrounding American politics and religion. In Religion and Media in America<\/em>, Anthony Hatcher, Associate Professor of Communications at Elon University, attempts to analyze the mechanisms that make this dialogue a reality and investigates the various ways media facilitates Christianity\u2019s relationship with American popular and civic culture.<\/p>\nEquating \u201creligion\u201d with \u201cChristianity,\u201d Hatcher argues that religion continually adapts to and is affected by new media forms in the United States. Organized in three sections, Hatcher provides six case studies that demonstrate the ways media facilitates Christianity\u2019s participation in American culture.<\/p>\n
While Hatcher achieves his goal, the volume leaves much to be desired. To begin with, the lack of distinction between religion and Christianity, even while acknowledged, reinforces a \u201cChristian-centric\u201d study of religion. Hatcher\u2019s equation of Christianity with religion constructs \u201cnon-Christian\u201d religious traditions through the lens of Christianity and erases their presence in the academic study of religion.<\/p>\n
Beyond this broad critique, Hatcher\u2019s introduction presents a part-theoretical, part-historiographical survey that wades into longstanding debates in the field. While a necessary foundation, the discussion distracts from the contribution of the text. Through a barrage of block quotes devoid of Hatcher\u2019s voice and drawn from a limited historiographical and theoretical scope, the introduction offers definitions of \u201creligion,\u201d \u201cevangelicalism,\u201d \u201cspirituality,\u201d the \u201csecular,\u201d \u201cnones,\u201d and “others.” Instead of thinking about Hatcher\u2019s contribution to the study of Christianity and media, the reader might approach each chapter questioning Hatcher\u2019s use of these terms or other problematic areas that Hatcher acknowledges but fails to situate in the context of his work and the broader, more recent scholarship. Hatcher provides no clear explanation of how he will use these terms. For example, his use of the \u201csecular\u201d varies throughout, particularly in the final section \u201cSacred and Profane Media,\u201d without proper acknowledgment. He switches back and forth between a definition that understands the secular as the \u201cabsence of religion\u201d and other interpretations that understand the secular as the commodification of religion. In the context of Christianity\u2019s use of media, Hatcher fails to recognize how his subjects produce and police the category \u201creligion,\u201d the \u201csecular,\u201d and its neighboring concepts in order to render, manage, and silence various populations, especially people of color. Hatcher\u2019s use of the term \u201cevangelicalism,\u201d most notably in the context of the American South, is also problematic. He defines evangelicalism through the classic \u201cBebbington quadrilateral,\u201d offering a privileged role to belief. Though Hatcher recognizes the problems of defining evangelicalism, the volume settles for a definition espoused by Frances FitzGerald\u2019s 2017 The Evangelicals<\/em>, which understands the history of evangelicalism as an attempt to guard doctrine and shape American culture. This formulation ignores the racialized dynamics of evangelicalism and reinforces the interests of white conservative evangelicals.<\/p>\nIn Chapter 2, \u201cMoral Mondays in the South,\u201d Hatcher argues that Rev. Dr. William Barber is the heir to Martin Luther King, Jr.\u2019s brand of Christian civil disobedience. But Hatcher analyzes Barber\u2019s Moral Mondays and progressive evangelicalism through the lens of conservative white evangelicals, giving Barber a voice only in reaction to white evangelicalism. Less than two pages address the black social gospel and liberation theology that inform Barber and his efforts to champion Christian social justice. Meanwhile, Hatcher richly details white evangelical\u2019s history of political involvement and use of popular media. Finally, Hatcher\u2019s chapter on Moral Mondays in the South<\/em> ignores critical inquiry of the religio-racial dynamics of the American South. Without acknowledgement of the co-constitutive nature of religion and race in the South, one cannot properly understand why MLK and Rev. Barber emerged in their specific contexts, or why white evangelicals might champion the Bible in public schools and seek to silence programs of racial reconciliation. Throughout the volume, the role of race is largely ignored, especially in the context of the American South.<\/p>\nThese quibbles aside, Hatcher does a fine job at providing six case studies that convincingly demonstrate the intimate relationship between Christianity and media. Most importantly, Hatcher offers a glimpse into the ever-changing mechanisms that make possible the conditions for a nation to debate #BiblicalLiteracy with the President of the United States on a social media platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Review: Religion and Media in America Dan Wells Dan Wells is Adjunct Instructor of Religion at Florida State University. JSR Volume 22 Cite this Article Dan Wells, “Review: Religion and Media in America,”\u00a0Journal of Southern Religion (22) (2020): jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wells. Open-access license This work is licensed CC-BY. You are encouraged to make free use of this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1090","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1125,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1090\/revisions\/1125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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