ABSTRACT
Thus, religion, as I understand it in this chapter, should not be defined apart from the relationship that exists between “transcendent realities” and the human “communities” that embody them. The very expression community recalls such relational concepts as “common,” “share,” “engage,” “interest,” “identity,” “interaction,” and “encounter,” all having something to do with a sense of “belonging” and “participation.” The sense of belonging engendered by the community of living beings enables the definition and construction of identities. A human community is a fellowship or association of persons sharing common grounds on matters of mutual interest. Religion means that this identity is inspired by shared religious experiences. In her work on Religious Sensations, Birgit Meyer draws attention to the fact that dichotomizing subjective and primary religious experiences on the one hand and the religious life of the community on the other is problematic. The disposition of the individual in search of God, she points out, is “part and parcel of a discursive, and hence shared cultural construction” (Meyer 2006: 8). This is the thinking that will direct the thrust of this chapter on “community.” Without the community that depends on what Meyer refers to as “sensory regimes”—that is, the bodily techniques, doctrines, and practices that make up a religion-the searching individual craving for experiences of a transcendental nature would be nonexistent (Meyer 2006: 9). The media play a central role in providing the “symbolic resources” through which we make meaning out of our social worlds and “religion and spirituality are important parts of that meaning-making” process (Hoover 2006: 56).
