Stewart Hoover’s Weekly (sort of) blog

A periodic reflection on religion in the media, media in religion, contemporary culture, and ongoing research.

May 14, 2009

This blog is now on Hiatus until June 16 because its Blogger is at an undisclosed location (as Clark DeLeon used to say in the Philadelphia Inquirer) in the mountains, unplugged, writing. 

It will resume when he reconnects.

May 11, 2009

Lots to talk about this week, but I’ll be brief as I have to get ready for the ICA conference in Chicago.  Angels and Demons continues to get attention, though its opening weekend prospects are in doubt.  And, it continues to be the sound of one hand clapping in some ways—the controversy, that is.

Then, there is the Pope’s current Middle East trip.  There is a lot to talk about there, but the cloying tendency for more than one of the media commentators to use the old-saw-of-a-headline: “Papal Pilgrimage” continues.  Don’t get me started.  But I will.  Pilgrimages are something the faithful engage in and actually might be headed in the direction of paying obeisance to someone like his holiness, rather than vice versa.  The usage emerged with John Paul II’s early trips (I don’t recall who first used it) and had the intention of masking his trips—which might have been seen as imperialism on the part of Rome (particularly given the fact that he was often there to discipline dissidents or political radicals among the clergy)—with a mantle of humility.  It sort of worked for John Paul II, but it is really a stretch for the current Pope.

Finally, we went to see The Soloist recently, and found it very unfortunate that the script made the Cello instructor into a religious fanatic.  It seemed totally unnecessary as a plot device, but I’d be happy for other views.

May 7, 2009

I can’t let another week go by without a comment on the new Dan Brown/Ron Howard effort, “Angels and Demons.” Tom Hanks is back, too.  Now, I really enjoyed DaVinci Code as a book (not so much as a movie).  Couldn’t put it down.  But, as we know, the Vatican did not, and this opprobrium has stretched to this new effort.  There is a place somewhere for a reflection on how The DaVinci Code, The Passion of the Christ, and Michael Moore were all linked in a cultural conversation that once (does it still?) linked conservative Protestants and Catholics in common purpose.   The DaVinci Code was critiqued (or—as was described—used as a “teachable moment”) in both Catholic and Evangelical parishes.  That time has passed and I doubt Evangelicals will be as excited about this new film as they were about the first one.

This time, the conversation is different.  Ron Howard has quite rightly noted a commonplace about the historic relationship between Catholic Authority and media.  That is that the Church took forever to realize that they could make millions for media of which they disapproved simply by disapproving it.  Lapsed Catholics, some cafeteria Catholics, anti-censorship advocates, and the simply curious can make a really big audience for something the Church does not like.  In recent years, they’ve seemed to learn this lesson and act accordingly in the way they respond to things like the Code.  And, I think it is even true in the case of the Code.  They took a very nuanced approach—at least in comparison to, say, their reaction to The Last Temptation of Christ two decades ago.

Interestingly, this leaves Howard, et al., actually accusing them of stuff they haven’t really done, but the commercial media know the power of the trope of Vatican opposition.  Thus, Hanks, Howard, and Brown, in Rome last week, almost seemed like they were “calling the church out” rather than responding to provocation themselves.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am one of those anti-censorship types myself, who was motivated to go to The Last Temptation as a matter of protest more than anything else....

May 5, 2009

OK, another NPR story.  On Monday’s ME, Steve Inskeep interviewed Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times.  The interview was about cultural and religious customs in the Middle East, but the real theme was how Muslims negotiate identity in modernity, and how religious authority is being relativized.  Surprisingly, perhaps, (particularly here in the U.S.) Muslims are less subject to an “authoritarian personality” syndrome than the popular stereotype.  MacFarquhar discussed the actual meaning of the term “Fatwa” in everyway practice, which is as a kind of guidance.  The unstated theme of the interview, though, was the media and mediation of religion.  Every example of how Muslims seek Fatwas today was a media example, confirming again the role of mediation in religious change.  Inskeep also gets a merit for pushing MacFarquhar a bit on the idea that by “shopping around” for Fatwas (going online, or instance) means they are like Christians (can you say “Cafeteria Catholicism?”) here in the U.S. 

A listener comment the next day (today), though, gets a demerit.  Typical, perhaps, of many NPR listeners (is this just my stereotype?)   “The truth is, all religions are the same. Rather than thinking for themselves, followers just shop around for the Kool-Aid flavor they like.”  Fascinating, rather than a sign of autonomy, “seeking” is just another sign of the defect of mind that is “religion.”

May 3, 2009

Regular readers will recognize that one of my major themes here is National Public Radio and the way it treats religion as an object and a story.  In another context perhaps, I’ll sometime address how and why I think NPR is particularly significant.  Anyway, it was this week that NPR noticed the emergence of Muslim Televangelism.  On Saturday’s (May 2) All Things Considered, two stories ran back to back.  First, they covered the crack in the wall that has finally opened to let Al Jazeera English into the U.S. Cable Television market.  The interview, with one of the early adopter cable systems, was remarkable, but not surprising, for its focus on the charges of “anti-Americanism” leveled at the service. As is usually the case when journalists discuss journalism, the idea that all journalism is on some level subjective, was not on the table.

Then, a story from Cairo about Muslim Televangelism.  It focused on two important examples: Amr Khaled and Moez Massoud.  It made interesting contrasts between the two and while they noted--indeed assumed--their challenge to religious authority, they did not contemplate the argument that such programs may represent a new force in Islam and the Muslim reformation.  Still, a clear frame of skepticism defined the report, and the most interesting—and telling and typical—note came at the end.  The reporter said something like “....it remains to be seen whether these are only of passing influence, but they are clearly building large audiences.”  The idea that building audiences might suggest something more than passing importance seemed not to be on the radar.  The larger assumption seemed to be that in the case of religion in general—and Islam in particular—large, permanent, even “timeless” impulses and values are probably impervious to influence by something as ephemeral as mediation.  We’ll see....

April 26, 2009

A reflection on the raging debates over torture (or “enhanced interrogation”) policy comes from our current work on masculinity.  The debates, discourses, imbrications, truth-claims, and armchair philosophizing (how many ways are there to put the “...you have apprehended a terrorist who knows about a bomb that is about to go off...” values-clarification exercise?)  vividly demonstrate the moral-discursive instability of this debate.  It is a debate in search of grounds, illustrating some profound axioms of post-structuralist and post-modern theorizing (get out your Derrida, Butler, Foucault, Eco, Barthes, etc.).  What, exactly, is at issue here?

After a number of different conversations, including men of a range of political and social perspectives, I am reminded of one of the most profound and consistent findings of our research.  That is that it is difficult for people (women and men) to articulate clear, inductive, and normative framings and definitions of what masculinity is or what it means to be a man.  What most can say, however, that vague—but powerfully salient—terms and symbols are fundamental.  And among these are notions of “decisiveness, “character,” “provision,” and “protection.”  Thus, when it seems that some are comfortable with the notion that it was OK to use illegal techniques under the pressure of time and circumstance, they are saying that that was the “manly” thing to do.  This manliness, further, is both valorized for its own sake and in turn valorizes these actors as “manly men.”  This would help explain the motivation of some to forcefully and credulously (and in profound legal jeopardy) defend their own—and others’—participation in actions that are thought by others to have been immoral, illegal, and actually counter-productive acts.

This manliness perspective was well-articulated recently by Glenn Beck, (mentioned as well in my March 30 post) who said (and I paraphrase) “...believe in something, even if it is wrong, believe in it....”

April 21, 2009

OK, so it is a busy time of year, and I am slowly working my way through Newsweek’s requisite Easter-week-oh-my-we’ve-been-ignoring-religion-again issue, which this year was headlined by a long piece, The Decline and Fall of Christian America.  The Author, John Meacham, launches from the recently-released report from the American Religious Identification Survey that found a 10% reduction in Christian denominational identification since 1990.  The same survey, which received a lot of press attention, also found a notable increase in the number of Americans claiming no religious identification (the “nones”).  Leaving aside the controversy that has always surrounded the methods and instrumentation of this survey among religion sociologists, there are some real trends there, and they are worth noting. 

Meacham provides an elaborate reading that is in some ways laudable, though with some lacunae.  The primary one arises in the conventional journalistic way he treats the story.  He seems to frame it through the eyes and voice of an Evangelical leader—Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, thus necessarily framing these data in terms of their implications for conservative Protestantism.  A conventional—and misleadingly narrow—framing.  Yet, Meacham moves beyond Evangelicalism, looking for broader implications and correctly identifies the prospects of institutional authority as one of these.  Journalistic convention prevents him from fully embodying his own subjectivity in relation to these issues (he reveals that he is an Episcopalian), relying instead on a reference to the timeworn debates over the “Death of God” from the 1960s (T.J.J. Altizer, et al.) as a way of explaining the contemporary movement toward “post-Christianity.”  But the earlier debates have little to do with the contemporary ones (as is obvious from some of Meacham’s other observations in the piece).  What is really at issue—it seems to me—is the gradual unraveling and unsettling of the mid-20th Century settlement of the Protestant Establishment as the first among equals in American civic culture.  That that settlement was so tacit and taken-for-granted should not confuse us.  That is what is at issue here, and contemporary journalism does little to help us understand it, or its prospects.  As an adherent of that brand of Christianity, Meacham's impulse to leave it implict misses a major opportunity here.

April 16, 2009

This week, NPR has presented a five-part series considering the state of British life 600 years after Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Rob Gifford follows the path of Chaucer’s pilgrims and reflects on a changed Britain.  As an example of the treatment of religion this reportage has been both good and bad.  On the one hand, he explicitly addressed questions of religion in each segment.  The third, in fact, looked directly at changes in British religion today.  At the same time, though, these stories essentialized the religion “object” in some important ways.  It was perhaps too obvious to Gifford that he had to address religion since that was the historic motivation for Chaucer’s characters.  To his credit, he did suggest that religion remains inevitable in British life in spite of Britain's consensual secularization.  Religion, though, remains largely the province of the “others,” to Gifford, and he did not make much of an effort to describe how immigration and religious change might be changing the core of British identity.  Click here to hear the reports

April 8, 2009

On tonight’s All things considered, a story about West Bank settlements.  For the first time in mainstream coverage that I can recall, the fact that American Evangelical Ministries are involved in the support of these settlements came up.  This is an important dimension of the story, and one that dramatically complicates the way we understand how, where, and why, American support of Israel is formed and shaped.  John Hagy ministries, in particular, is mentioned.

April 3, 2009

Kudos once again to Terry Gross, who in my view does the best job of dealing with religion of any interviewer in the media, anywhere.  On yesterday’s show, the guest was Robert Martensen, a bioethicist and author of A Life Worth Living.  It is a very interesting book about the end of life.  In it, he reflects on his own experience with his own mother.  An absorbing tale, as recounted on the show.  Here is the key thing, though.  At one point in the show, Gross asks him about his own faith and spirituality in relation to this question.  It had not come up, except indirectly in his reflection on the experiences of others.  She did not need to raise it. Another interviewer would not have.  But she boldly did, and it resulted in a very interesting and absorbing and informative discussion.  She continues to demonstrate to her colleagues in the media that they do not need to be shy or intimidated by the “religion” or “spiritual” story.  Just go for it.

March 30, 2009

This morning’s New York Times carries a cover story about Fox’s L'enfant terrible Glenn Beck.  Several things come to mind thinking about Glenn, and about this particular account of his rise.  First, the article portrays his appeal as largely conservative and populist, a function of an era when conservatism is trying to find its mojo.  Based on our work on masculinity, I’d add another nuance.  I’m not sure his appeal is so much populist is it is a kind of reflexive masculinism.  Jon Stewart showed a clip of Glenn last week in which he said (with great passion) something like, “...I don’t care what you believe in, but believe in something, even if it is wrong.....”  This echoes the kind of fundamental masculinist thinking described to us in our interviews and focus groups.  Decisiveness and character and a sense of purpose tend to trump issues of preciesly what someone needs to be decisive about. 

The Times story was also notable for the way that it introduced questions of religion, though it was never clear whether it was thinking of it as primarily metaphoric.  Tom Rosenstiel likened Beck to the  radio evangelism that flourished during the Great Depression.  For others, the religiosity of Beck was less clear, but neither interviewees nor Brian Shelter and Bill Carter, who wrote the article, could resist seeing Beck’s rhetoric and appeal in religious terms.  And, it is worth noting, Beck is both a Mormon and a recovering alcoholic.

March 29, 2009

In the Failures of Religion Coverage department is News this morning that Terry Nichols, the co-conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing, is suing the federal prison system for better food.  His claim is that the whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, and generally healthier diet he requests is a matter of religious belief.   One wonders what this belief is.  Is it his own imbrication or is he an adherent of one of the established religions for whom macrobiotic diet is a matter of piety?  Options include Buddhism, obviously, but also Seventh-Day Adventism, which might be more likely.  Was he raised Adventist or Buddhist?  Has he taken on one of these more recently, or this an informal faith of some kind?  No matter, it is an important dimension of the story.  Instead we get reference to claims that appear vague and a story that does little to contribute to the public understanding of religion.

March 25, 2009

It is a valuable discipline to notice new religion issues or storylines as they emerge, so as to watch them develop, both as stories and in relation to broader social discourse.  Two this week caught my eye, for different reasons. First was Cardinal Egan’s interesting invocation of the issue of priestly celebacy.  It got some attention in New York, of course, but also has been running through the Catholic online world and blogosphere.  The framing is interesting, in that the coverage I’ve seen seems to assume (as do many advocates) that some change in that area is inevitable in modernity, but at the same time is framed around the real problem being the vocations crisis.

A second issue, and one that is potentially far more profound, has to do with the release of critical accounts by Israeli soldiers of their experiences in the recent operations in Gaza.  These have been newsworthy because they represent (though not for the first time) cracks in the moral solidarity of the Israeli military.  The New York Times ran a piece on Sunday suggesting that some of the excesses these soldiers report result from the influence of an increasingly strident ethno-nationalist religious influence in their ranks.  Again, the question of modernity and also of secularism, seem to frame this coverage.  It will be interesting to see how and on what grounds, this story continues.

March 23, 2008

I’m in Toronto, doing a site visit for the upcoming Media, Religion, and Culture conference that will take place there in August, 2010, directed by Joyce Smith of Ryerson. 

It is always fascinating to look in depth at media when I travel abroad, and there are a number of very interesting, and uniquely Canadian stories emerging there.  One that caught my eye, (and is probably totally under the radar down home) has to do with the “Red Eye” program on Fox News (hosted by Greg Gutfeld).  Am I the only one who has never even heard of this show?  Anyway, at some point in the last week, its talking heads picked up a news item about the Canadian military hoping to draw down their presence in Afghanistan significantly by 2010 to rest and recover from a many-year-long involvement.  This apparently led to pooled ignorance among the “Red Eye” panelists, one of whom observed that he was not even aware that Canada has troops there, with Gutfeld himself helpfully observing “....Isn’t this the perfect time to invade this ridiculous country?  They have no army.”

This happened to coincide with Canada suffering four fatalities on the battlefield, and Canadian press coverage of the Fox commentators’ bloviations really peaked on a day when two of the caskets returned to a Canadian air base.  A very bad juxtaposition.  But it had two interesting implications. One was with patriotism and masculinity, obviously.  In his lukewarm apology to Canada, Gutfeld limited himself to the “...brave men, women and families of the Canadian military....”   Not a peep about his sins of jingoism, provincialism, etc.  It also reminded me of the log-standing discourse about power balances in the media.  Here we are in the U.S., with all the tacit media power and influence, and we barely notice when our media commit offenses such as this. Meanwhile, from north of the border, we do look very much like imperious media imperialists.

March 21, 2009

Some of you know that we are doing a study of religion, spirituality, media and masculinity.  Curtis Coats and I traveled to Minnesota two weeks ago to conduct some focus groups with men there, and among the things I’ve been thinking about since is something we’ve been hearing about Misterogers.  we first picked this up in a group here in Denver, but it came up again in all of the groups in Minnesota....  The idea that while Misterogers was a positive role model for fatherhood, nurturance, and a kind of masculinity, that he has another “side,” at least in urban-mythology-land. 

What was that other “side?”  Many of our men are convinced that before he became a Presbyterian-minister-turned-children’s icon, Misterogers had a military career of some kind.  One told us he was a navy seal.  Another that he was a paid assassin, another that he was a decorated Marine, another that he’d worked in espionage either during Korea or Vietnam.  Now, we’ve looked into this and can’t find any confirmation of this in the various Rogers biographies we’ve seen.

So, what does this mean?  Why is it important for the screen Misterogers to be balanced by such a background?  Clearly, the idea that he is a “manly man” is somehow important, but what does that tell us about the nature of gender today?  Well, we’re contemplating this....