commbox Religion & Communication

"This special issue seeks to explore the common ground shared by practices of filmmaking and religious institutions located within postcolonial settings and increasingly linked in global infrastructures. The articles presented here converge in combining theoretical reflections about the interface of ... film and religion with specific examples or historical and ethnographic cases. Written by authors with backgrounds in film studies, religious studies, and anthropology, the contributions to this multidisciplinary issue are based on two common, more or less explicit, points of departure. One concerns the realization that the actual entanglement of religion and film highlights the limitations of a modernist view proclaiming the retreat of religion from the public sphere as an inevitable consequence of the processes of modernization and secularization. In our perspective, the interface of film and religion can more fruitfully be addressed from a postsecularist perspective, which seeks to overcome the unproductive, teleological, and normative understanding that religion should be confined to the private sphere. As the contributions to this issue show, in contexts as diverse as India, Ghana, Nigeria, Brazil, and postsocialist Poland, the accessibility of modern mass media in conjunction with the politics of neo-liberalism actually facilitate the proliferation of religion in the public sphere. This implies not only that religions may assume a strong public presence, but also that religion and entertainment are increasingly difficult to distinguish from each other. For example, as Maria José de Abreu shows, the Catholic Charismatic priest, pop-singer, and film actor Marcello Rossi embodies this convergence. Not only has film become a prime medium of religious expression, films also often address a religious audience which in turn is seen to authorize audiovisual representations of the transcendent or divine as truthful and authentic. Ravi Vasudevan argues here how Hindu devotional films represented their own religious spectators as a kind of selfauthenticating redefinition of the social with the divine. Whether this authorization actually occurs, as the articles by Birgit Meyer on Ghanaian pentecostally-oriented video-films and by Matthias Krings on Hausa videos in Northern Nigeria show, is a matter of an intense politics and aesthetics of persuasion that may or may not be successful. While in our era of globalizing media the condition of the possibility for religion to assume a public role appears to depend on the successful accommodation of filmic media, the incorporation of such media also threatens to transform religious practice into a form of mass entertainment. The fear of being made subject to superficial visual regimes, as the articles by Mattijs van de Port and Marleen de Witte highlight, may lead religious practitioners to be highly suspicious about the formats and styles that go along with audiovisual mass media. In addition to this postsecular stance, the articles presented in this special issue also share a commitment to moving beyond the assumption of an ontological difference between religion as a domain of the transcendent, on the one hand, and film as a domain of neutral technology, on the other. In this regard, we prefer the notion of mediation as a more open-ended, non-determinist solution for exploring the multiple relationships between religion and film. For example, once religion is understood as a practice of mediation, media appear not as alien to the realm of religion, but as an inalienable element on which any attempt to access and render present the transcendental ultimately depends. By using “mediation” we hope to shift our emphasis away from religion and film as abstract substantialized essences towards a non-dualist emphasis on the relational and contingent practices in which film and religion overlap and engage each other. Brent Plate, in his contribution to this issue, coins the term “religious cinematics” to stress explicitly this point where religion and film merge through the embodied practices of the human senses." (Guest Editors’ Preface, pages 150-151) more

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The Production of the South African Muslim Book: As a Means of Empowerment and a Source of Identity

Muhammed Haron

In: From Papyrus to Print-Out: The Book in Africa Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Bibliophilia Africana 8 Conference Proceedings, Centre of the Book, Cape Town, 11-14 May 2005

Cora Owens (ed.)

Pretoria; Cape Town: National Library of South Africa, Centre of the Book (2005), pp. 18-47

"South Africa's Muslim community like all its other religious minority communities has been proactive in preserving its religious identity through the formation of a number of institutions. Over the past three centuries the community has occupied itself in not only erecting mosques and building coll ... more

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Comunicação e família

Ivonete Kurten

São Paulo: Paulinas (2005), 71 pp.

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Oratória sacra: Formação de pregadores e de formadores (elaboração de roteiros para pregação e ensino passo a passo)

Dercides Pires da Silva

Cachoeira Paulista: Editora Canção Nova (2005), 119 pp.

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Las audiencias de programación religiosa radial en el cono este de Lima - Perú

José María Rojo García

Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Facultad de Comunicación y Lenguaje, Magister Thesis (2005), 217 pp.

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Stimme der Stimmlosen: UCIP - Katholische Weltunion der Presse. Anmerkungen, Episoden, Hintergründe

Günther Mees

John P. Foley (Vorwort)

Münster et al.: Lit (2005), 196 pp.

"Die erste Buchpublikation zur Geschichte der 1927 gegründeten UCIP. Günther Mees, u.a. Vorsitzender der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Katholische Presse (AKP) und erster deutscher UCIP-Präsident (1992-1998), kennt den Weltverband aus einer mehr als 40jährigen Tätigkeit. Der Autor möchte seine Niedersch ... rift als den „Bericht eines Beteiligten“ verstanden wissen, dessen Sicht „daher weithin subjektiv und [...] auf persönlichen Erfahrungen“ gründet, doch „stets um eine objektive Erkenntnis bemüht“ ist. Mees legt die Geschichte der UCIP in einem weltweiten Zusammenhang der katholischen Presse dar, wobei er in seiner umfassenden Schilderung des Weltverbandes vor allem den Beitrag der deutschen katholischen Publizisten, ihrer Kirche und der kirchlichen Hilfswerke würdigt. Überaus interessant sind dabei die von ihm dargelegten Bemühungen z.B. um die Gründung des „Catholic Media Council (CAMECO)“ zwischen dem damals in Rom residierenden polnischen Bischof Deskur und den in Bonn amtierenden Münsteraner Kirchenvertretern Tenhumberg und Wissing, die von den publizistischen Fachleuten P. Eilers SVD und Höller unterstützt wurden. Dass der spätere Bischof von Münster, Heinrich Tenhumberg, über die Schönstatt-Bewegung sogar die Gründung einer katholischen Nachrichten-Agentur in Chile gefördert hat, ist eine von etlichen interessanten Informationen, die Mees in seinem persönlich-spannend geschriebenen Buch unterbreitet. Diese perönliche Bezogenheit erlaubt es dem Verfasser auch, auf „wunde“ Stellen der UCIP einzugehen, ohne peinliche Betroffenheit auszulösen. Das große Verdienst dieses Buches liegt jedoch in der umfangreichen Zusammenfassung zahlreicher Einzelfakten, aus denen die Tätigkeit der UCIP, vor allem in den Entwicklungsländern, als Wegbereiter der Meinungs- und Pressefreiheit sichtbar wird. So vermittelt die Publikation auch eine lückenlose Sicht über die eigenen Veröffentlichungen der UCIP, über ihre vielseitigen Bildungsveranstaltungen, über die zahlreichen UCIP-Preisträger, die Kongresse und Sonderveranstaltungen, wobei der Schilderung der regionalen und der beruflichen Gruppierungen eine besondere Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet wird." (Verlagsbeschreibung) more

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Del Génesis a internet: Documentos del Magisterio sobre las comunicaciones sociales

Pascual Cebollada García (ed.)

Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos (2005), lxix, 1220 pp.

"Esta obra reúne los principales documentos doctrinales y pastorales de la Iglesia sobre las comunicaciones sociales. Es, en parte, heredera de la preparada en 1968 por Jesús Iribarren, 'El derecho a la verdad', también en la Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos (BAC), pero recoge además documentos ... more

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Muslim Martyrs and Pagan Vampires: Popular Video Films and the Propagation of Religion in Northern Nigeria

Matthias Krings

Postscripts, volume 1, issue 2-3 (2005), pp. 183-205

"In December 2000 the government of Kano State in Muslim northern Nigeria reintroduced shari’a and established a new board for film and video censorship charged with the responsibility to “sanitize” the video industry and enforce the compliance of video films with moral standards of Islam. Sta ... more

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Religious Remediations: Pentecostal Views in Ghanaian Video-Movies

Birgit Meyer

Postscripts, volume 1, issue 2-3 (2005), pp. 155-181

"This article addresses the interface of video-films and Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity in Ghana. This interface, it is argued, needs to be examined from a position that transcends the confines of film studies and religious studies and leaves behind a secularist perspective on the relationship ... more

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Interreligious Dialogue as Communication

Franz-Josef Eilers (ed.)

Manila: Logos (Divine Word) Publications (2005), 192 pp.

"The communication dimension of Interreligious Dialogue has never been especially addressed and studied. Because of this the FABC Office of Social Communication organized the fifth Bishops' Institute for Social Communication (BISCOM V) in Bali, Indonesia from November 22 to 27, 2005 under the theme, ... more

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Glosario: Vocabulario de términos religiosos y eclesiásticos para periodistas

Lima: Conferencia Episcopal Peruana (2005), 102 pp.

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Comunicação e liturgia na comunidade e na mídia

Helena Corazza

São Paulo: Paulinas, Serviço à Pastoral da Comunicação (SEPAC) (2005), 103 pp.

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Médias pour une culture de paix

Brussels: Signis (2005), 35 pp.

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Im Zeichen des Halbmonds: Kinder-und Jugendliteratur aus islamischen Ländern und von MigrantenautorInnen

Geraldine Schmidt-Dumont

Berlin: Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (GEW); Arbeitgemeinschaft Jugendliteratur und Medien (2005), 48 pp.

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Steyler Missionschronik 2006 [Schwerpunkt Papua-Neuginea]

Heinz Helf, Martina Ludwig, Angelika Striegel, Martin Üffing (eds.)

Sankt Augustin: Steyler Missionswissenschaftliches Institut (2005), 176 pp.

"Der Schwerpunkt der Missionschronik 2006 ist Papua-Neuguinea. Neben dem Bildteil stellen auch viele Artikel Aspekte der missionarischen Situation vor sowie die Antworten, die die Steyler Ordensfamilie heute dort gibt." (Vorwort)

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