wfn.org | Media, Culture and Theology session to precede RCC 2000 March 29, 1999

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@wfn.org>]

Contact:  Kelly C. Martini, RCC 2000 Promotions Chairperson
kmartini@gbgm-umc.org
(212) 870-2985

Media, Culture and Theology: Challenges for Change

Religious Communication Congress (RCC) 2000 participants who arrive early 
for next spring's international, multifaith forum in Chicago will have a 
chance to sharpen their communication skills in a special, in-depth 
pre-conference presentation, "Media Culture and Theology: Challenges for 
Change."

The day-long seminar will be held Wednesday, March 29, and the $25 
registration fee will include materials and lunch.
The media have become the culture within which we form our religious values 
and identity, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. This seminar will 
reflect upon the current research about the power that audiences have to 
interpret and shape the meaning of image, music and media products through 
popular cultural practices. It invites participants to examine the ideas 
stemming from this provocative research and their implications for the 
future of religion.

"What we do is very different from the approach taken by most previous 
research on the media," said Stewart Hoover, Ph.D., RCC 2000 workshop 
panelist and Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, 
University of Colorado at Boulder.  "Rather than taking the perspective of 
media producers and owners, and thus looking at media in terms of their 
effectiveness at conveying messages, we radically stand with the receivers 
of those messages. We look back with them at the whole inventory of media 
which they have available and from which they choose."

"Workshop participants will hear and learn from some of the top scholars in 
this emerging field," said Shirley Whipple Struchen, chair of RCC 
2000.  "It will be a rich experience and will provide thought provoking 
stimulation for reflection and action."

The RCC 2000 workshop will be led by five members of the International 
Study Commission on Media, Religion and Culture. The Study Commission is a 
think-tank of scholars and media practitioners who have gathered together 
during the last three years to promote ground-breaking research and 
innovative practice about media and church policy, with a focus upon church 
ministry within today's media culture. The fields of study that are 
represented include: media studies, media reception studies, anthropology, 
religious education, theology, media production, art history and 
telecommunications policy.

During the Wednesday event, workshop leaders will explore a number of key 
questions about the relationship of media and faith groups. In what ways 
can we say that the media have come to occupy the spaces traditionally 
occupied by religion? What is the relationship of religious authority to 
modes of symbolic practice? How must we think about the relationship 
between religion and the media? What does this new situation imply about 
epistemology?

Other members of the workshop panel include: Mary Elizabeth Hess, Ph.D., 
who teaches at the Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry 
at Boston College; Peter Horsfield, Ph.D., Project Researcher with the 
Electronic Culture Research Project within the Commission for Mission of 
the Uniting Church in Victoria, Australia; Adán M. Medrano, a video and web 
site producer and President of JM Communications in Houston, Texas; and 
David Morgan, Ph.D., Chair of the Study Commission, who is Associate 
Professor of Art and Chair of the Department of Art at Valparaiso 
University (Indiana).

RCC 2000 will be held March 29-April 1, 2000 at the Chicago Marriott
Downtown. More than 1,500 religion communicators are expected to explore
the congress theme, "Faith Stories in a Changing World."  Participants
can save $50 by registering by December 31, 1999. For more information,
call (212) 870-2985 or visit the congress web site at www.rcc2000.org .