ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a consideration of the origins of the study of religion and its historical relation to ideas of the nation-state. It reviews the history of the study of media and religion, offering a critical review of the field’s development and attempting to highlight how this book represents a step in new directions that reflect the learnings from the new global context of religion and media. The chapter considers the status of religion and media in the contemporary context, offering a challenge to the secularist view that religion is merely a marginal interest of the minority. Scholars studying the role of media in society have long been concerned with how developments in the mass media have played a central role in the creation and maintenance of political communities such as those of the nation-state. Religion was simply not on the agenda for these scholars, and certainly not connected with the media.
