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I NEGOTIATING RELIGIOUS IDENTITY AND i NEGOTIATING RELIGIOUS IDENTITY AND MASS MEDIA: EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP AMONG LIVED RELIGION, MASS MEDIA, AND NARRATIVE IDENTITY A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Alanna R. Miller July 2015 Examining Committee Members: Dr. Andrew Mendelson, Advisory Chair, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism Dr. Donnalyn Pompper, Department of Strategic Communication Dr. Rebecca Alpert, Department of Religion Dr. Dustin Kidd, External Member, Department of Sociology ii © Copyright 2015 by Alanna R. Miller All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT The purpose of this dissertation is to further clarify the role of mass media for evangelicals in negotiating religious identity. This project uses lived religion, cultural studies, and narrative identity as a framework. Over the course of seven months, I conducted participant observation in an American Baptist congregation, where I observed both their religious and media practices. Additionally, I conducted qualitative interviews with selected key congregants to get a fuller picture of both their media use and their narrative religious identity. I found that narratives about media and media use led participants to certain strategies of distancing and/or integrating media with their religious identity. Various narrative tools, such as maps, symbolic inventories, tropes, and spiritual anchors, were used by participants to juxtapose media with their religious practice. By using these tools, participants sought to gain more moral and religious certainty by using media as both a proxy for self and as a proxy for Others. As moral and religious uncertainty is a characteristic of modernity, I conclude that there may be ramifications for larger media use and moral thought. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee. I was fortunate enough to have members on my committee that not only aided me on this dissertation, but informed my thinking as a scholar. Special thanks to Andrew Mendelson for all the guidance and direction, which always improved my work immensely. Thanks also to Donnalyn Pompper for all the support and for shaping my thinking early in my coursework in generative ways. Rebecca Alpert, thank you for your guidance on my thinking on the religious context of this dissertation (and more). And thanks to Dustin Kidd for the insights on this dissertation and providing me with a strong sociological grounding early in my coursework. There are other members of the Temple community that also shaped my thinking and provided much support, helping make this project possible. I greatly benefitted from the instruction provided by Pablo Vila, Fabienne Darling-Wolf, Matthew Lombard and Tom Jacobson in my coursework with them. Furthermore, I also must thank Tom Wright for all his support and advice as well. I also want to thank my fellow Temple doctoral students in my cohort and outside, most especially David Crider, Heidi Mau (and Cheryl Nicholas), and Sam Srauy for their support and help. I also wish to thank my family for their support and seemingly endless patience. Thanks to the Katie, Kevin, Caleb, and Emily for their support, occasional borrowing of research materials (Kung Fu Panda), and being an inspiration to me in being the coolest family around with the coolest kids. Thanks also to Megan and Max for being my biggest cheerleaders, and whose emotional support made this possible in actually making me stop working occasionally. And big thanks to Joe Miller and Nancy Elder, whose financial v and emotional support (as well as genetics) made one of the biggest contribution and whom I could never hope to repay for all that they’ve given me. Finally, I would like to thank the members of Jordan Baptist Church who graciously let me into their lives and shared so much of themselves and their thinking with me. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………………………. iv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION……..………………………………………………………... 1 Religious pluralism versus the God gap………………………………….... 3 The God gap……………………………………………………….. 4 Evangelicals in America …………………………………………… 8 Lived religion…………………………………………………..................... 12 Evangelicals and the mass media……………………………...…………… 14 Narrative religious identity…………………………...……………………. 19 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE…...……………………………………………..... 23 Lived religion……………………………………...………………………. 23 Characteristics of lived religion………………...…………………. 26 Dissolving boundaries………………………………………27 Practice…………………………………………………….. 28 Symbols……………………………………………………. 33 Importance of interpersonal relationships……………......... 36 Lived religion and mass media…………………………………...... 37 Lived religion and evangelicals……………………………………. 44 Culture, mass media and identity………………………………………....... 49 Symbols…………………………………………………………….. 50 vii Practice…………………………………………………………….. 57 Narrative identity…………………………………………………………… 61 Defining narrative identity…………………………………………. 61 Perinbanayagam’s poetic self……………………………… 63 Holstein and Gubrium’s empirical self………....…………. 66 Concepts for religious narrative identity…………………....……................ 69 Resources and maps………………………………………... 69 Tropes……………………………………………………… 72 Inventory and toolkits……………………………………… 74 Spiritual anchors…………………………………………… 76 Themes in evangelical narrative identity…………………………... 78 Tying Together Lived Religion, Cultural Studies, and Narrative Identity: Research Questions…………………………………………………………………… 93 3: METHODS…...…………………………………………………………………. 97 Ethnographic methods and participant observation………...……………… 97 Procedure for this study……………………………...…………...... 101 Qualitative interviewing………………………………………...………...... 102 Procedure for this study…………………………………...……...... 104 Ethics Concerns…………………………………………………………...... 105 A Note on the Researcher’s Perspective…………………………… 106 Data Analysis………………………………………………………...…....... 111 Limitations………………………………………………………………...... 113 4: FINDINGS: NARRATIVES ABOUT MEDIA AND MEDIA USE…………… 116 viii “Good” media versus “bad” media…………………………………………. 118 Systematic media untruth…………………………………………………... 128 Negative portrayal of Christianity and evangelicals……………………….. 131 Idiosyncratic condemnation of immorality………………………………… 141 Assumption of media power………………………………………………... 148 Media as common culture……………………………………………..…… 153 5: FINDINGS: DISTANCING NARRATIVES WITH MEDIA………………….. 161 Media as separate………………………………………………..…………. 161 Media as tools…………………………………………………..………..…. 166 Christian media………………………………………..………........ 167 Secular media……………………………………….………...……. 174 New media……………………………………….…………...……. 183 6: FINDINGS: INTEGRATING NARRATIVES WITH MEDIA: MEDIA AS METHOD...………………………………………………………………………... 200 Maxine: The story of Faith…………………………………………....……. 201 Narrative maps and tropes…………………………….…………… 204 Jack: The church of others…………………………………….…………… 206 Lindsay: The inside outsider………………………………….…………..... 208 Doug: Working towards an ideal…………………………………………… 212 Inventory and toolkits……………………………………….……... 215 Pastor Tim: Redemption…………………………………………..………... 216 Lily: Justice…………………………………………………….….……….. 218 Spiritual anchors…………………………………….…….……….. 226 ix Integrative narratives………………………….…………………….….…... 227 7: CONCLUSION...…………………………………………………………..…… 228 Narrative tools.……………………………………………………………... 229 Inventory and toolkits……………………….……………………... 229 Narrative tropes……………………………..……………………… 231 Narrative Maps……………………………..……………………… 232 Spiritual anchors……………………………………….…………… 233 Religious uncertainty in the face of everyday life………………………….. 234 Proxy for self: Identification……………………………………… 236 Proxy for Others: The problem of understanding………………… 238 Future directions and questions……………………………………………. 238 The sufferings of God in the world………………………………………… 240 REFERENCES CITED……………………………………………..……………… 242 APPENDIX A: Preliminary list of questions for qualitative interviewing……………………… 267 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Mention Harry Potter on an evangelical message board and you are sure to get a wide and prolific range of impassioned responses. Some responses are what one would expect from evangelical groups based in a fundamentalist philosophy promoting separation of the faithful from the world: “Why is Harry potter wrong? Because it's full of witchcraft sorcerers spells demons and occult symbols throughtout [sic] these movies. God is not pleased with these abominations that all believers are to separate them self from [sic]” (KNOWLEDGE BOMB, 2011) But, other responses are more varied, some dismissing fiction from any real moral meaning and others gaining moral teachings from the movies, at times, consistent with Christianity: “The things I learn i [sic] that there are people that like you for your name and people who like you for you. That never lose hope in fighting evil and good friends are always loyal to you” (Saya, 2011). These discussions highlight the kinds of discussions evangelicals and other religious people engage in regularly in our media-saturated world. Research clearly shows the centrality of mass media, religion, and identity in modern life to most people in America. The great amount of time we spend with mass media is well documented. For example, the Institute for Communication Technology Management estimates that on average we spend consume 15.5 hours of media a day (Short, 2013). Additionally, the majority of Americans, 92 percent, believe in God or a universal spirit, with nearly 75 percent claiming a Christian faith (The Pew Forum on Religion and Public
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