ABSTRACT
As an object of study, the intersection of religion and media offers a neverending supply of primary sources, whether niche-market Bibles, televised depictions of Hindu epics, or Internet sites selling online ritual services. Even the more traditional textual sources that have long been the focus of religious studies-canonical and extra-canonical scriptures, spiritual diaries, law codes-are themselves excellent sources for the study of how religion is “mediated” or conveyed. Despite this plethora of sources, scholars have only relatively recently considered texts and images of religious communication as something more than containers of doctrine, debate, or other kinds of data. Spurred in part by a reinvigorated interdisciplinary interest in book history and print culture, scholars of Christianity, for example, have begun to study not only competing interpretations of biblical texts but how Christians have cultivated reading itself as virtuous and profitable (in both spiritual and financial senses) (Brown 2004; Coleman 2006; Cressy 1986; Gutjahr 2001; Hall 1989; Johns 1996; Klassen 2006; Nord 2004; Peters 1999). A common denominator in the shift from the study of the theological or intellectual meanings of texts and images to the investigation of their production, consumption, and physicality is the theoretical concept of practice.
