Church, Market, and Media: A Discursive Approach to Institutional Religious Change

Description

Marcus Moberg offers a new model of religion and religious life in the post-war era, through focusing on the role of markets and media as vectors of contemporary social and cultural change - and therefore institutional religious change. While there is wide agreement among sociologists of religion that there this area is transforming on a global scale, there is less agreement about how these changes should best be approached and conceptualized. In a time of accelerating institutional religious decline, institutional Churches have become ever more susceptible to market-associated discourse and language and are ever more compelled to adapt to the demands of the present-day media environment. Using discourse analysis, Marcus Moberg tracks how new media and marketing language and concepts have entered Christian thinking and discourse. Church, Market, and Media develops a framework that approaches changes in the contemporary religious field in direct relation to the changing socioeconomic makeup of contemporary societies on the whole. Through focusing on the impact of markets and media within the contemporary religious setting of mainline institutional Christian churches in the Western world, the book outlines new avenues for further theorizing the study of religious change.

Marcus Moberg is Senior Researcher in the Department of Comparative Religion at Abo Akademi University in Turku, Finland. His research interests include the sociology of religion, media and culture, religion, markets and consumer culture studies, and the discursive study of religion.

In an era of apathetic secularism, Marcus Moberg offers up a finely tuned discursive analysis of mainline Protestant efforts to increase relevance through marketization that is as original as it is thought provoking ... [Church, Market, and Media: A Discursive Approach to Institutional Religious Change] serves as a much-needed and engaging contribution to the study of religion, media, and society. * Journal for Religion, Film and Media * Moberg uses discourse analysis to provide a lens through which to understand broader socioeconomic changes that led to the marketization of religion. In taking on the ideology of neoliberalism and the language of corporate salesmenship, churches have changed not only how they talk about themselves but how they prioritize and execute the work that they do. For scholars, this is a welcome addition to the canon on media, marketing and religion. * Mara Einstein, author of Black Ops Advertising (2016) and Brands of Faith (2007) * The author offers an engaging analysis of how Protestant Christianity is being informed by highly mediatized practices and marketized discourses, in ways that create a unique contemporary religious context in need of further study. By outing specific tendencies where church language and strategies about communication and mission have primarily shifted from once theological to now organizationally-focused discourses, this study highlights this clear move towards a marketization of religious culture as religious organization seek to negotiate their shifting social and cultural positions within society. * Heidi A Campbell, Associate Professor, Texas A&M University, USA * Some of the most exciting work in contemporary sociology of religion is done in two areas: substantively, the field is increasingly turning its gaze towards the relation between religion and economic systems and economic ideologies. Methodologically, the field is embracing the study of discourse and the ways in which society is discursively legitimated. Marcus Moberg is one of the handful of people who have pioneered both developments and Church, Market and Media is a tour de force of rigorous analysis and sociological imagination. Significantly, it moves on from theorising discourse and religion to actual discourse analysis, paving the way for future research in critical discursive study of religion. * Titus Hjelm, Reader in Sociology, University College London, UK * Marcus Moberg steps away from the political bias and the focus on the degrees of 'secularity' that still shapes the social scientific study of religion and presents us with a refreshing outlook by paying attention to the cultural, social and institutional effects of the rise of neoliberal ideologies and practices (including New Public Management and marketing), consumerism and new electronic media on mainline Protestant Churches. Through the case studies of United States, British, and Nordic Protestant Churches, including particular attention to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, Moberg highlights a qualitative shift enacted by the penetration of market and new media ideologies and practices in their official strategic discourse. Moberg's innovative and agenda-setting book constitutes a significant contribution to the important debates on the definition and dynamics of the concepts of marketization and mediatization alike. * Francois Gauthier, Associate Professor, University of Fribourg, Switzerland *