Negotiating Religious Identity and Mass Media: Examining the Relationship Among Lived Religion, Mass Media, and Narrative Identity

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.