Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age

Christopher Deacy, Elisabeth Arweck

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2009 - Religion - 260 pages

In recent years, there has been growing awareness across a range of academic disciplines of the value of exploring issues of religion and the sacred in relation to cultures of everyday life. Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age offers inter-di

Contents

• From Durkheim on Religion to Jade Goody: 43
• Contesting Martyrdom: 71
• Religionless in Seattle: 85
• Strategies Tactics and Textual Poaching: 105
• American Churches: 123
• A Study of the Role of the Text: 141
• Televising Religious Experience: 155
• Representation of Religion in Pretty Village Pretty Flame: 189
• Two Films of Stephen Chow: 203
• An Exploration of Iconographical Representation: 219
• Emerging Christian Communities and: 237
• Index: 253

About the author

Chris Deacy is Head of Religious Studies at the University of Kent, where he specialises in Applied Theology. His first book, Screen Christologies: Redemption and the Medium of Film, was based on his doctoral thesis and published by the University of Wales Press in 2001. His 2005 publication, Faith in Film: Religious Themes in Contemporary Cinema, published by Ashgate, was the product of a two-year Special Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. In 2008, Blackwell published Chris's latest book, co-authored with Gaye Ortiz, Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide, which focuses upon a number of theoretical and methodological questions that arise in the area of theology and film before applying many of these insights to a range of theological perspectives and filmic themes, including violence, justice and eschatology. Chris is a member of INTERFILM, the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the UK Theology, Religion & Popular Culture Network Group. Elisabeth Arweck is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Warwick (Institute of Education). She is a member of a range of national and international learned societies in religious studies and the sociology of religion and is a Council member of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion. Elisabeth is an editor of the Journal of Contemporary Religion. She has co-edited a number of volumes, including Reading Religion in Text and Context: Reflections of Faith and Practice in Religious Materials (with Peter Collins) (Ashgate, 2006), Materialising Religion: Expression, Performance and Ritual (with William Keenan) (Ashgate, 2006), and Theorising Faith: The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Ritual (with Martin Stringer) (Birmingham University Press, 2002). She is author of Researching New Religious Movements in the West: Responses & Redefinitions (Routledge, 2007) and co-author (with Peter Clarke) of New Religious Movements in Western Europe: An Annotated Bibliography (Greenwood Press, 1997). She has published a number of articles in journals (with Eleanor Nesbitt), book chapters, and entries in handbooks and encyclopaedias.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age; Religion and theology in interdisciplinary perspectives series; Theology and Religion in Interdisciplinary Perspective Series in Association With the BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group; Theology and religion in interdisciplinary perspective: Theology and religion in interdisciplinary perspective series in association with the BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group
• Editors: Christopher Deacy, Elisabeth Arweck
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2009
• ISBN: 0754665275, 9780754665274
• Length: 260 pages
• Subjects: Religion / Essays; Religion / History; Religion / Psychology of Religion