Globalization and Religion Future

SOC 420 Lesson 5 SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1: Keep Moving Forward—Media and the Future of American Religion

At this point, many of those young people are turning away from organized religions. Historically, about 5 percent of people identified as having no religion at all. “Among young people, that figure is now 30 percent,” according to [Robert] Putnam’s research [including in American Grace ]. “It’s a huge increase.”

Many of those young people say they believe in god, they simply don’t belong to an organized religion. And, since the “habits you form early tend to stick with you,” Putnam says, “That rapid increase in the number of young Americans who are dissatisfied with religion portends a drop in American religiosity over the years ahead.”

According to Putnam, a growing number of young people today are saying, “Look, if religion is just about conservative politics and homophobia and so on, I’m out of here. That’s not for me.”

—Public Radio International, “The Future of Religion in America,” first published October 19, 2010 at this link from PRI . [Note: The 30% figure cited above from 2010 is gradually increasing according to several reliable measurements, including Pew Forum statistics.]

First Things First— The Free Marketplace, Media, Megachurches, Globalization, and Religion’s Future

Welcome to Lesson 5! For this lesson, we will be reading about the concepts of the free marketplace of ideas/religious pluralism, media and religion, megachurches (and its related concept, multi-site churches), globalization, and the future of religion, among others. This should be exciting—there’s a lot of interesting material here as we move into religion and its role in the modern era. The media in particular is a lifelong area of interest for me, as I’m sure many of you will shortly be able to tell. ( Ever since I first read about the Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio broadcast in 1938 , I have been interested in exploring how media can broadcast messages to areas as wide as an entire country and why these messages can sometimes be highly convincing. So here’s one of my many opportunities to do exactly that. More in the lesson supplement—which I highly recommend to those of you interested in writing about media and religion!—and also in STS 494, Narrative, Technology, and Society! (

One advisory note before we begin— in much of what we cover here, we will be focusing a great deal on the North American Judeo-Christian tradition. The US is the focus of our class, as defined in the ASU course catalog; moreover, given the historical and demographic prevalence of this tradition in this country, this should not be too surprising. However, in the 21st century it is abundantly true the doors have been opening to more globalized religious groups and identities, as well as a general shift away from organized religion in general. So I most certainly encourage any of you who would like to explore how these concepts apply to other religious traditions and identities to take up the challenge. ( Please, examine these concepts in the other contexts that interest you! This could make a fascinating Assignment 7 for anyone who wants to take that on, and I’d definitely consider including insights from such a project in future supplementary material in Lesson 6! (

So given that note and encouragement, here we go:

Required Readings (copies also attached on Canvas):

Globalization and Future of Religion: Pew Research Center Presentation: Peter Berger, “Religion in a Globalizing World,” 2007 (first half required, remainder optional).

The Megachurch: Scott Thumma, 2015. “Learning from Megachurches.” Interview in Reflections: A Magazine of Theological and Ethical Inquiry from the Yale Divinity School .

Future of Religion in America: (Links to PDF) Hout et. al., 2012. “More Americans Have No Religious Preference.” Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, University of Cal-Berkeley.

Optional Readings and Resources (see also PDFs on Canvas):

Religion and Media: This essay from Richard Fox of the University of Chicago .

The Megachurch: Scott Thumma, 1996. “Exploring the Megachurch Phenomenon.”

Multi-Site Churches: Jacob Prahlow, 2018, “What are Multi-site Churches,” via pursuingveritas.com . (Yes, this is essentially a blog, but well-researched, as the sources are good and core facts check out.)

Religion and Music/Megachurch: Advertising and the megachurch from the Wharton School; an interesting analysis of Pentecostal megachurch music .

Future of Religion in America: Pew Research, 2019, “In US, Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace” ; Berger on Religion and Modernity, 2013 ; Wuthnow, 1988, Two Civil Religions .

The Free Marketplace of Ideas

To introduce this lesson, we need to start by considering at length the idea of the American religious context as something of a Free Marketplace of Ideas. As mentioned in Lesson 3, this concept is interconnected with the idea of religious pluralism, which has been a staple of religious culture in the US even from colonial days. Although we’ve made it to this point without really examining the pluralistic marketplace in depth, it is a profound idea with deep historical roots. This philosophical concept was critical in the formation of America as well as in the political reformulation of a number of other European societies. Think in terms of an open-air marketplace where consumers are free to wander from vendor to vendor, seeking the best deals on the goods in the marketplace and ultimately buying from the seller who offers the best value for the price the consumer is willing to pay. Rather fittingly, this free marketplace of ideas was not a concept developed or advocated by only one single philosopher, but rather stemmed from the general notion that all ideas needed to be weighed and considered on their own merits. Those in the marketplace also need to be free to make choices based on their own wishes and judgments. Those who participated in the marketplace could be trusted to know what was best for them and act in their own best interests. Accordingly, like a marketplace, the ideas that were best and true would be accepted and practiced; those that were inferior and false would be rejected and abandoned.

One prominent proponent of the Free Marketplace of Ideas was poet John Milton, best known today for his epic Paradise Lost. Two decades before he produced that masterpiece, however, his impassioned defense of freedom of speech, Areopagitica, resounded before Parliament in 1644. The ideals of Milton’s free-speech advocacy obviously weren’t accepted as completely then as they would later be in America—but those words and ideas resonated and endured, and were put in place almost a century and a half later. The ideal of the truth having a virtue of its own that made it powerful had a long precedent in English and European intellectual history. What was good and true would endure; what was false would ultimately fail. The notion had come largely from the Scholastics, the church-educated philosophers of medieval times, and hearkened back at least to the words of Jesus Christ in the New Testament long before them: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32.)

Consequently, if the truth could in fact make people free in any way, knowing the truth and allowing it to emerge was essential to liberty itself. In a truly free environment, in the Western context, one must be able to speak the truth and act upon it. The truth also had a power of its own to make itself known to those who were searching for it—even in a crowded pluralistic marketplace filled with all sorts of other goods of varying quality ranging from superior to inferior, buyers and sellers, and various distractions.

Hence, at least in theory, the motivated consumers who were acting completely without compulsion would actively seek out the best products in the free marketplace; that which was inferior would draw little attention. Vendors in that pluralistic marketplace, also acting fully without compulsion, would theoretically in turn produce the best goods to meet the need for the best products. This ideal, which predated Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (including his well-known “invisible hand” mechanism) and our modern capitalistic system, nonetheless furnished part of the inspiration for both. So the value of freedom in speech and thought long predated Milton’s eloquence, and it likewise awaited nearly a century and a half afterwards before being realized in legal form.

These ideals of freedom in speech, religion, and the press, long held in European society in some form despite their inconsistent-to-nonexistent application in various contexts, were not fully put into practice until they were written into the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights in 1787. Nor is it in any way an accident that the freedom of ideas and speech were written into the same Amendment as the freedom of religion. Remember, many of the early settlers of colonial America sought freedom from religious persecution, and this was a natural fit for corresponding freedoms of speech and assembly. Religion was a key focus of the freedom of speech, as well as a core preoccupation of the Founding Fathers, and religion and speech had a great deal of common ground in early America. Indeed, a fair amount of the speech in colonial America involved religion and various religious concerns—as well as political discourse. Moreover, religious (and political!) concerns were frequently discussed in groups, so it was likewise important to protect the freedom to gather to discuss these concerns. In particular, the nation’s founders wanted to allow a wide variety of religious beliefs and freedoms, AND also avoid establishing a state-sanctioned religion.

So as we consider this metaphor of the Free Marketplace, not only is it a marketplace of ideas, but it is also one of religion. Rather than having a government tell the people what to believe, the founders preferred a pluralistic religious model in America from the outset. Under a state-sanctioned religion, particularly the Church of England or the Catholic Church from whence the Anglicans came, European history had endured centuries of religious oppression, with power centered in a particular church that was not only approved by the governing powers but played an active role in political processes. In many European countries, this was the Roman Catholic Church, but in others, rival institutions such as the Church of England (or Anglican) held power. For instance, the Scandinavian governments generally supported Lutheranism. The state church could—and more often than not did!—wield its power in highly authoritarian and inhumane ways, collude with political leaders to maintain that power (the “ divine right of kings ,” etc.) and justify oppression against the people; see also this overview of several key historical issues in the separation of church and state .

Some of the abuses of state-sponsored religion—most notably a series of Inquisitions over several centuries, which required secular authorities to enact ecclesiastical judgments—were very much in the Founders’ minds. The experience of Henry VIII breaking with the Catholic Church in the 1530s and seizing power to create and control the Church of England could not have been far from their minds, either—not to mention the struggles with the Puritan sect during the British Reformation, wars with Catholic loyalists, and the woefully incomplete and inconsistent practice of the Toleration Act of 1689. ( See here for a timeline of England’s religious struggles during the colonial years. ) One commentator also argues that the key function of the First Amendment was not necessarily to guarantee the people’s freedom of religion, but most directly to protect religion from government influence . In any case, while it’s doubtful that the Founding Fathers fully envisioned a number of the accompanying problems—failures to grant the very rights the Constitution guaranteed, discrimination, persecution, and outright religion-related violence among them—they still clearly preferred the pluralism-of-belief scenario to state-established religion. They had been down that road as well as learned from those who’d traveled it even more extensively.

So the Free Marketplace of Ideas was established by default as the preferred model for American religion. No single religion would be preferred. Various religions would be allowed to exist and compete for believers. People would be able to choose for themselves what they wanted to believe. The most successful and plausible of these religions would succeed, especially over time; those that didn’t resonate or endure would fail. Remember also our question from earlier in the course about Rational Choice Theory and choosing religious belief. As many astute students have pointed out, Rational Choice doesn’t at all determine religion of origin, or the system of belief that an individual inherits. But as mentioned in previous lessons, Rational Choice seems a reasonable explanation for the conscious aspects of religious conversion, or when an individual decides to change religious beliefs. Ordinarily, though, individuals are frequently socialized into their religions of origin.

Moreover, as time has gone on, the growing influence of consumer culture in our society has permeated the religious world. In the 18th and 19th centuries, and presumably even in the early part of the 20th, our economy was predicated on investments and savings. But in the wake of the Great Depression—during which many lost their investments and savings—and particularly after World War II, the economic basis of our society began to shift. As the quality of American life improved and as products became more readily available, the US economy gradually shifted away from savings and investments toward expenditures and consumption. In short—saving and wisely investing money didn’t matter to American companies nearly as much as spending it! The growth of media and advertising played no small role in this process, of course.

So as Americans became more socialized in the post-war culture of consumerism, thanks in great measure to the rise of media and advertising, the consumer mentality also spread to the realm of religion. As consumerism took root in the larger American culture, one of its implications for religion gradually became clear: For many people, going to church became less about finding The Truth and worshiping God and more about finding whatever worked for the believer. Post-consumer religion was less about changing one’s mind and behavior according to what was True and more about finding—and perhaps even no overstatement to say, also worshiping—whatever the believer already believed. Accordingly, as the practice of consumerism set in, finding a church became much less a believer’s quest for The Truth and much more of a shopping trip for what fit best. (Such calculated decisions become nearly if not fully literal in the field of religious economics, for those interested in exploring these issues further.) As post-war consumers became more socialized into consumerism, largely through a process of social construction and much of it through broadcast media, most notably advertising, religious choice also became more or less a rational economic decision.

Religion and Media

At this point, when considering socialization—remember, the “superpower” of media (more on that in STS 494 () —we can further illustrate social construction of reality through the various forms of public communication over the centuries. Through the information and entertainment (often one and the same) ( provided over the airwaves and on the Internet, the media host our national discourse and (as previously mentioned) help socialize us as consumers. Likewise, media substantially influence politics—conservative talk radio, Fox News (and its deliberately liberal counterpart, MSNBC), alternative news outlets such as the Drudge Report and Huffington Post, innumerable politically oriented blogs, and other outlets adding to the overall political consciousness. (Here’s a handy resource for checking media bias , BTW…) Even beyond that, the emergence of highly skewed political propaganda (whether Occupy Democrats and the like on the left or Breitbart et. al. on the right) and outright “fake news” that played a role in the 2016 election and overall misinformation that still plagues us today is a troubling development for all of us who are concerned about misinformation. In any case, media of all kinds have recently helped reinforce a growing dynamic in our country today—the liberal v. conservative tension as a competitive zero-sum game (i.e., with winners and losers) rather than a cooperative social experiment that is only won when society as a whole benefits.

Media are not only key players in the social construction of our intersubjective political reality, and its corresponding place in terms of Bellah’s “civil religion” (which appears to be splitting into sectarian divisions), ( but they play a key role in the social construction of our intersubjective religious reality as well. An interesting and ironic point deserves to be underscored here: Religion and media are sometimes viewed as opposed. However, aside from some producers of popular culture that seem skeptical about (if not hostile to) religious messages, religion and media are actually quite highly integrated. Religion actually uses mass media extensively and has done so for centuries. We’ll take a look into at least two ways in which this is true of religion and media, though other applications are also possible.

Consider, for the first instance, that our modern plurality of religion in America stems largely from a media event—the invention of Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press about 1450, which allowed for the mass printing and distribution of the Bible throughout Europe and the world. Religion depends extensively on the printed word, which has been true for the past several centuries. The Bible, in fact, is Exhibit A on that point. We are talking about, hands down, the best-selling and most-published book of all time. Nothing else comes close. Then again, no other book has been both so long in print and so consistently in demand for what is approaching the past six centuries! The advent of the printing press and publication of Gutenberg’s original Latin version of the Bible in 1455 (sometimes the year varies slightly) struck a substantial blow to the ruling religious authorities, particularly in the Catholic Church, though the same applied to all state churches. They had established religious traditions, rituals, and a body of belief over several centuries. Publication of the Bible threatened all that, since individuals would be able to read what was widely considered “the Word of God” for themselves and decide what it meant. This would in effect open up the free marketplace of ideas, at least in terms of religion! The priests would lose their near-exclusive position as interpreters and proclaimers of the Bible!

Remember our discussion of heretics from our first session? The heretics—those who disagreed with the state church’s established interpretation of the scriptures, though their alternate readings varied widely—taught others according to their beliefs. The advent of Protestantism in the early Renaissance era produced this mass wave of heresy, with dissidents such as Jan Hus, John Calvin, English Bible translator William Tyndale, scientist Galileo Galilei, and others) emerging over the next couple of centuries, perhaps most influentially resulting in two movements. First, a series of questions, objections, and published critical writings from disenchanted Catholic priest Martin Luther in 1517 eventually produced Luther’s excommunication in 1521 and subsequent foundation of the Lutheran branch of Protestantism. A little more than a decade later, in 1534, England’s King Henry VIII also publicly split with the Catholic Church. Interestingly, the king—evidently highly controlling!—had earlier denounced Luther and defended Catholicism, and executed thousands of heretics. Still, he became bitter when the pope refused to grant him a divorce so that he could marry (as he believed, in line with the bio-medical thinking of the time) a woman capable of bearing him a son as an heir to the throne. This split produced the Anglican Church, with King Henry VIII at its head, of course.

So heresy in a sense was linked to the spread of religious pluralism, both in terms of promoting dissent and establishing alternative church organizations. Yet other dissenters arose as the Bible became more available to ordinary people. Religious and secular authorities alike, who had vested interests in preserving the church’s power, battled the spread of Bible publication to no avail. Printed media helped substantially diminish the church’s political influence and produced religious variety as people interpreted the Bible for themselves. So in a sense, Bible publication helped socialize people away from the church as much as it helped socialize existing believers. The free marketplace of ideas was a wonderful but at times a r

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