{"title":"What can the COVID-19 pandemic tell us about the connection between media and religion? The case of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Poland.","authors":"Marta Kołodziejska","doi":"10.1007/s41682-021-00091-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s41682-021-00091-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The aims of this paper are to investigate 1) how the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Poland has reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and lockdowns imposed nationwide, 2) how the pandemic context has influenced the Church's digital media productions, and 3) how the Church has adapted to some of the trends and consequences of deep mediatization (Hepp et al. 2017, 2018). Based in the constructivist concept of deep mediatization (Hepp et al. 2017, 2018), the paper analyzes interviews with Seventh-Day Adventist media professionals from Poland within the framework of the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse. Additionally, selected official YouTube channels of local congregations in Poland are analyzed quantitatively to identify the changes in the number of uploads and views. The analyses show that as a result of the COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions, media production and use increased substantially in some digital media formats produced by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, which was on the one hand a response to the pandemic context as such, and on the other hand, a reaction to the discriminatory laws which drastically limited the Church's activities offline. The pandemic has opened up new possibilities of participation, but also increased the chances of digital divides and exclusions. The study concludes that to mitigate the risks related to digital divides during the pandemic, some Polish pastors took on the roles of media experts and educators, incorporating technical skills in their authority status. This suggests that transformations of religious authority may be another consequence of deep mediatization processes.</p>","PeriodicalId":75357,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik","volume":"6 1","pages":"27-41"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8552981/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39861712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Researching religion and migration 20 years after '9/11': Taking stock and looking ahead.","authors":"Fenella Fleischmann","doi":"10.1007/s41682-022-00103-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s41682-022-00103-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This contribution to the special issue on religion and migration reviews two decades of large-scale survey research on changes in immigrant religion and the relationship between immigrants' level of religiosity and their integration into European societies. The body of work reveals that Muslims in European societies stand out due to their comparatively high levels of religiosity and greater stability in religiosity over time and across immigrant generations. While the comparative picture is rather clear, findings regarding the long-term trend in Muslims' religiosity and its association with immigrant integration are instead inconclusive. A systematic review of empirical studies of the association of (various indicators of) individual religiosity with immigrant integration reveals positive, negative and non-significant results for all outcomes and domains. Thus, based on the current state of art it is hard to assess whether and why religion forms a bridge or barrier to immigrant integration in Europe. To move the field forward, the contribution ends with a twofold proposal for a research agenda that includes a broadened empirical scope, moving beyond the focus on Sunni Muslims, and a conceptual extension that focuses on differences in reasoning about religion and religious meaning-making as additional, potentially more consistent and more powerful explanation for immigrants' social relations and positions in their new societies.</p>","PeriodicalId":75357,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik","volume":"6 2","pages":"347-372"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8889873/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10793089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How \"green\" can religions be? Tensions about religious environmentalism.","authors":"Jens Koehrsen, Julia Blanc, Fabian Huber","doi":"10.1007/s41682-021-00070-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s41682-021-00070-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Scholarship has suggested a \"greening\" of religions, supposing that faith communities increasingly become environmentally friendly and use their potentials to address environmental challenges. This contribution points to the problems of the supposed \"greening\" by indicating the ongoing disagreements in many religious traditions over environmental engagement. The disagreements show that religious environmentalism is an embattled terrain that involves actors with different interests, backgrounds, and understandings of their traditions. The authors illustrate that tensions are an inherent part of religious environmentalism, becoming manifest in different views and theologies, ambivalences, misunderstandings, and sometimes mistrust. They distinguish between four types of tensions: (1) intradenominational tensions, (2) interdenominational tensions, (3) interreligious tensions, and (4) religious-societal tensions. By drawing attention to the tensions of religious environmentalism, this contribution sheds light on the struggles and limitations that religious environmentalists face in their ambitions to address climate change and other environmental challenges.</p>","PeriodicalId":75357,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik","volume":" ","pages":"43-64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9273537/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40623876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"[The anti-semitism of the others: towards a differentiated view of anti-semitic attitudes among Muslims in Germany].","authors":"Cemal Öztürk, Gert Pickel","doi":"10.1007/s41682-021-00078-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s41682-021-00078-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>For some years now, there has been a discussion about a new anti-Semitism. The focus of these debates is increasingly on immigrants, but above all on Muslims, and thus there is now talk about an Islamized anti-Semitism. These discussions quickly became a political issue. Right-wing extremist actors such as the Alternative for Germany seized on the evidence of anti-Semitism among Muslims and instrumentalized it for their anti-Muslim agenda. This instrumentalization, in turn, makes it difficult for people working against anti-Muslim discrimination to acknowledge the existence of anti-Semitism among Muslims. Using a variety of empirical material, this article examines the prevalence of anti-Semitic resentment among Muslims and how it relates to the persistence of anti-Semitism in German society. The results show that traditional forms of anti-Semitism, and in particular Israel-related anti-Semitism, are particularly accentuated among Muslims. Together with ethnonational, right-wing extremist anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism among Muslim submilieus poses a threat to Jews in Germany. Anti-Semitism among Muslims draws on narratives from their countries of origin and on religious sources. However, anti-Semitism among Muslims in Germany is less pronounced than in most societies in the Islamic world. Moreover, guilt-denying articulations of anti-Semitism remain a hallmark of the autochthonous population and right-wing political milieus. Anti-Semitism in Germany therefore requires a more nuanced understanding than seemed necessary just a few years ago.</p>","PeriodicalId":75357,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik","volume":"6 1","pages":"189-231"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8480124/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39861710","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Religion and the internet: digital religion, (hyper)mediated spaces, and materiality.","authors":"Giulia Evolvi","doi":"10.1007/s41682-021-00087-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s41682-021-00087-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article offers theoretical reflections on the study of religion and the Internet by critically discussing the notion of \"digital religion\" (Campbell 2012). In particular, it stresses the importance of integrating material and spatial approaches to the study of digital religion. In doing so, it proposes the theory of \"hypermediated religious spaces\" to describe processes of religious mediation between online and offline environments by taking into account materiality and space. The article discusses theoretical perspectives by means of case studies: first, the importance of materiality within Internet practices is illustrated through the example of Neo-Pagan online rituals; second, the notion of space, and \"third space\" in particular, in relation to Internet practices is analyzed through the case of the hashtag #Nous-Sommes-Unis, circulated by French Muslims; third, the theory of hypermediated spaces is exemplified by the analysis of a live-streamed mass in the Italian city of Manerbio during the Covid-19 lockdown. The article aims at kindling scholarly reflections on terminologies and theories for the global and interdisciplinary study of digital religion.</p>","PeriodicalId":75357,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik","volume":"6 1","pages":"9-25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8525051/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39861711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"[Exploring the Interplay between communication of the Gospel und popular religion. A case study on the church-launched YouTube channel \"Jana believes\"].","authors":"Jonathan Kühn, Henrik Simojoki","doi":"10.1007/s41682-021-00067-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s41682-021-00067-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The relationship between religion and popular culture has attracted considerable attention in the field of the sociology of religion. However, church-based religious communication has rarely been explored in this perspective. This in mind, the paper explores the YouTube channel \"Jana believes\", a pioneering and also controversial project sponsored by the Evangelical Church in Germany.The argumentation proceeds in five steps. First, Hubert Knoblauch's concept of \"popular religion\" is interlinked with the practical-theological perspective of \"communicating the Gospel\" as well as with more recent approaches to the mediatization of religion. Then characteristic elements and video genres of YouTube communication as part of popular culture are explicated. Against this background, the distinct profile of the YouTube channel \"Jana believes\" is outlined, with specific regard to the vlog genre. Subsequently, the interplay between popular religion, communicating the Gospel and mediatization of religion is explored in a more in depth-analysis of two exemplary video sequences.Finally, the summary brings together both sides of the interplay in question: On the one hand, the channel videos are designed according to established standards of personalized YouTube communication. In line with the concept of popular religion, the boundaries between private and public become fluid. Public communication of the Gospel is constituted by sharing what is private in life and faith. On the other hand, in the case of this channel the subjective enactment of faith is also shaped and transformed by the involvement of the church. Particularly regarding questions of authenticity and authority, the tension between popular religion and communicating the Gospel at times leads to potentially conflictual negotiation processes.</p>","PeriodicalId":75357,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik","volume":"5 1","pages":"195-220"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s41682-021-00067-z","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39861708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial.","authors":"Olaf Müller","doi":"10.1007/s41682-021-00098-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s41682-021-00098-6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":75357,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik","volume":"5 2","pages":"309-311"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8667528/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39749323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"[Piety, fashion and business: positions of ethical/aesthetic femininity in muslim lifestyle-vlogs].","authors":"Gabriel Malli","doi":"10.1007/s41682-021-00068-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s41682-021-00068-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The article discusses empirical findings on the construction of models of Muslim femininity in German-speaking lifestyle vlogs on YouTube, in which faithful Muslim women appear as influencers and stage their everyday routines and practices in a mostly idealized way and with references to religious knowledge. Applying a post-structuralist theoretical framework, I consider those models as subject positions of a specific discourse of Muslim femininity promoting certain modes of self-understanding, self-conduct and related ways of affection. After a brief discussion of Muslim and secular discourses of femininity in which my data can be located, I present results from a discourse analysis of videos from two German-speaking channels: I suggest that the producers constitute a hybrid model of Muslim subjectivity which encompasses templates of a successful Muslim life in a secular society. In this context, producers seek to dissolve everyday contradictions and tensions between Western consumer and popular culture on the one, and Muslim religiosity on the other hand. By doing so, they produce a position of ethical/aesthetical Muslim femininity that brings together ideals of fashionable expressivity with religious self-conceptions and (neo-)liberal discourses of female autonomy and self-entrepreneurship.</p>","PeriodicalId":75357,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik","volume":"5 1","pages":"243-270"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8700261/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39772042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Popular cultural representations of postfeminist religiosity in the International Christian Fellowship: an analysis of the \"Ladies Lounge 2021\" webpage.","authors":"Maren Freudenberg, Dunja Sharbat Dar","doi":"10.1007/s41682-021-00077-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s41682-021-00077-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Femininity and female gender roles in conservative religious environments are highly disputed topics both within communities of faith and in sociological discourse. In light of social transformations of gender perceptions in the past decades, conservative Christians have had to reevaluate traditional understandings of womanhood in societies that have become steeped in popular culture and thoroughly mediatized. Taking this development as a point of departure, this article examines how femininity is represented in the International Christian Fellowship, particularly on its \"Ladies Lounge\" webpage. Advertising an annual event geared exclusively towards women, the website's landing page contains images and text that we examine by means of visual and textual sequence analysis. Our research results reveal that women are depicted as sensually attractive and self-confidently professional while at the same time being relegated to an exclusively female sphere within (but not beyond) which they wield authority and influence. As such, femininity is represented as self-empowering, but only within a specific, postfeminist framework. This ambivalent depiction of women's agency challenges conservative Evangelical values at the same time as it affirms them. In this sense, the study contributes the growing body of literature on gender and Evangelicalism.</p>","PeriodicalId":75357,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik","volume":"5 1","pages":"271-293"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8475442/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39861709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"[Rationalism and mystification. On the formal pathetic of being against].","authors":"Robert Schäfer, Nadine Frei","doi":"10.1007/s41682-021-00095-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s41682-021-00095-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The article presents the results of the interpretation of qualitative interviews with coronavirus critics. It focuses on the forms of social criticism manifested in the interviews. The analysis (1) shows that the critique is based on a rationalistic ideal of crisis resolution. The fact that the coronavirus crisis, from this point of view, is not dealt with rationally is seen as an indication that there is something fundamentally wrong with it. It is this problem that the <i>conspirituality</i> of the critics reacts to: a combination of conspiracy theory and esoteric ideas whose unity is based on the interest in the mysterious. The analysis (2) allows to determine the specific style of the critique of counter-measures as formal pathetics: Substantially, it remains relatively empty, while rhetorically it is emphasized all the more emphatically. The rhetorical means are the most drastic comparisons possible, the romanticism of the heroic resistance and the claim to be committed to the well-being of children. Finally, (3) we put forward a socio-theoretical embedding of the critique of counter-measures, which assumes with Eisenstadt that modern society is characterized by an erosion of the foundations of all certainty. This leads to a fundamental credibility problem, manifesting itself in the loss of confidence in central social institutions (politics, science, medicine, media). The criticism of counter-measures expresses that in an ideal-typical way.</p>","PeriodicalId":75357,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik","volume":"5 2","pages":"391-410"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8620311/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39749322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}