Reconsidering mediatization of religion: Islamic televangelism in India

Abstract

This article proposes a rethinking of religion and mediatization by differentiating between two intersections of religion and media, public religion and religious mediation. I argue that whenever religious change that can be usefully described as mediatization occurs it can best be captured as an effect resulting from the interaction of these two dimensions. Extending the debate on religion and mediatization beyond Christian North Atlantic contexts, I compare two instances of Islamic televangelism in India in order to illustrate the diversity of configurations of public religion and religious mediation even within the same regional setting and religious tradition. My analysis greatly complicates an assessment of mediatization as the subsumption of religion under an extraneous media apparatus, pointing at the highly uneven nature of media-related religious transformation and the ongoing domestication of contemporary media practices into established religious paradigms.