ABSTRACT
The stakes for the Church as church are far higher, the long-term implications far more troubling, than one would assume when treating “global culture industries” as yet another issue area to be dealt with via business-as-usual approaches. Like a culture or language, it is a communal phenomenon that shapes the subjectivities of individuals rather than being primarily a manifestation of those subjectivities. A similar sequencing is suggested by Wayne Proudfoot in his Religious Experience, a major work on the matter. To him, religious symbols are not simply expressive or descriptive, but in fact are constructive of religious experience. The criticisms are more concerned with how real-life religious groups manage, reformulate, fight about, and advocate within and between narrative postures. These are important questions, but they are not intractable ab initio; neither do they undermine the cogency of cultural-linguistic approaches to faith.
