“Ghosts, spirits and Schwarzenegger: 

 Children’s connections to God

in mediated culture

 

 

 

Lee Hood

Doctoral candidate

Symbolism, Media and the Lifecourse Project

Center for Mass Media Research

University of Colorado

Campus Box 287

Boulder, CO  80309

Lee.Hood@Colorado.EDU

 

Presented at the

Third International Conference on

Media, Religion and Culture

July 20-23, 1999

Edinburgh, Scotland

 



[1]Lynn Schofield Clark, correspondence with the author, 16 July 1999.

[2]See also No Place for Truth, by evangelical theologian David F. Wells (1993).

[3]This is a multi-year study involving a number of researchers and approximately 60 families.

 

[4]Coles, in fact, was a source and one of the inspirations for the Life article.

 

[5]The distinctions I am making between families are similar to those of Hoge, Johnson and Luidens’ (1994) divisions between “churched” and “unchurched.”  To be classified as “churched,” an individual must currently be a member of a religious body and have attended a religious service at least six times in the past year (1994, p. 67).  These distinctions hold true for the families placed in the two categories here: “institutionally religious” and “non-institutionally religious.”  There are also some differences in expressed belief which go beyond church membership and attendance, which are explored in these sections.

 

[6]Household income over $70,000.

 

[7]Household income approximately $30,000.

 

[8]Individual interview, November 2, 1997.

 

[9]Individual interview, November 2, 1997.

 

[10]Individual interview, November 21, 1998.

 

[11]Individual interview, November 21, 1998.

 

[12]Individual interview, November 21, 1998.

 

[13]Individual interview, November 21, 1998

 

[14]Individual interview, November 21, 1998.

 

[15]Individual interview, November 2, 1997.

 

[16]Individual interview, November 2, 1997.

 

[17]Family interview, September 28, 1997.

 

[18]Individual interview, January 3, 1998.

 

[19]Individual interview, November 9, 1997.

 

[20]It is worth noting that the Park brothers offered these responses in completely separate, individual interviews.

 

[21]Clark’s other discourses include institutional (equating religion with its organized institutions); revelatory (seeking God’s messages in different contexts); sentimental (seeing religion as something vaguely positive but without any necessary relevance in everyday life); social justice (emphasizing a need for social change and the role of the individual or the religious group in bringing that about); a discourse of otherness (observed among people of faiths other than Christians); an evangelical discourse, a discourse of religion as ultimate meaning and a moral discourse. (1998, pp. 267-291 and pp. 312-313) 

 

[22]Individual interview, November 19, 1997.

 

[23]Family income under $15,000.

 

[24]Individual interview, January 3, 1998.

 

[25]Individual interview, November 9, 1997.

 

[26]Individual interview, November 9, 1997.

 

[27]Individual interview, November 9, 1997.


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