ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a number of case studies that examine some of the characteristics and complexities of the interaction between media and Christianity within a cultural perspective. Jolyon Mitchell’s explores the growth of commercial religious videos in West Africa and the place they have created for themselves in the wider global market, offering their own distinctive religious narratives to intersect with popular needs and enjoyment. A significant advance in the study of media and religion from a cultural perspective has been a growing awareness of the importance of visual and material culture in religious sensibility and practice. David Morgan, who has done extensive work in religious visual culture explores this dimension with a study of visual media in Ethiopia. One of the most difficult methodological issues in the cultural perspective on Christianity and the media is in managing the complexity of factors that this approach involves.
