Communication and Religious Preservation

After reading Peter Weibel’s ‘Religion as a medium – the media of religion’ I had a greater understanding about how important the relationship between religion and communication is. Many of the worlds most practiced religions, for example Catholicism and Buddhism, have their core teachings and philosophies rooted many millenniums ago. While many of us understand that this is the case, we somewhat take for granted how these teachings, stories and experiences have made it though out history somewhat unscathed. In other words, key religious values and messages have kept their meaning in the 21^st century, despite an initiation hundreds of years ago.

This is where Weibel stresses the importance of writing and language as the progression and continuation of religious tradition. He explains that, “writing allows the spoken word to leave the body, to be temporarily stored in a medium and then to be incorporated into another body”. At the beginning of Christianity, for example, Angels were said to be God’s messengers. As time went on, people would use the spoken word in order to retain a message or event. Gradually, as society evolved, the written word meant that people were able to communicate beyond a physical location and present time. All of these methods preserved the basis of the teachings over time, until the present day.

In the 21^st century, we are seeing a different generation of religious communication – one that Weibel alludes to briefly in his article. Technologies such as television and the Internet have emerged as new formats for disseminating religious messages, and inspiring religious communication. However, I think that, because these mediums provide a very different sense of religious communication and preservation, some are resistant to fully engage.

References:

Weibel, P. 1945. “Religion as a medium – the media of religion”. Medium Religion: Faith, geopolitics, art, pp. 30 - 43