Mormon Lifestyles

PD Dr. Marie-Therese Mäder

doi:10.5771/9783845294216

Summary

Missionaries star in a reality show, polygamous families give viewers access to their everyday lives in a documentary series, religious couples portray their successful lives and their faith in TV spots. Using numerous examples, “Mormon Lifestyles. Communicating Religion and Ethics in Documentary Media” shows how documentary media fundamentally influence the public perception of religion. Religious affiliation is expressed by such media as a specific lifestyle. With a view to the global spread of Mormonism, the study explains how documentary media thematize and rework religion with specific tools and to various ends, including within the ethical and digital spaces.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2020
ISBN-Print: 978-3-8487-5241-6
ISBN-Online: 978-3-8452-9421-6
Publisher: Nomos, Baden-Baden
Series: Media and Religion | Medien und Religion
Volume: 5
Language: English
Pages: 385
Product type: Book Titles

Titelei/InhaltsverzeichnisPages 1 - 10 Download chapter (PDF)
Opening CreditsPages 11 - 12 Download chapter (PDF)
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  1. 1.1. Religious lifestyles in the media
  2. 1.2. Documentary media and religion – and a Mormon case study
  3. 1.3. Hermeneutic horizon of the researcher
  4. 1.4. Structure of this book
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  1. 2.1. The field of media and religion – an overview of approaches
  2. 1. The Semio-pragmatics of documentary media
    2. Documentary reading mode of “real life”
    3. Mediated religion in society and culture
    4. Reading modes of religion
  3. 1. Space of production
    2. Space of representation
    3. Space of distribution and circulation
    4. Space of consumption
    5. Spaces of communication in the LDS Church’s media library
  4. 1. Approaching spaces of communication
    2. Applied methods for the research
    3. Documentary sources of the study
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  1. 3.1. Mormons in the media
  2. 1. From religious movement to institutionalized Mormonism
    2. Mormonism as a new religious tradition
  3. 3.3. Mormon theology, ethics and worldview
  4. 3.4. Mormonism as a new world faith
  5. 1. Mormon history is American history
  6. 3.6. A sociological approach to The Mormon Quest for Glory
  7. 3.7. The multifaceted and scholarly reconstructed world of Mormonism
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  1. 4.1. Two sides of an image campaign
  2. 1. Space of production and distribution of a global campaign
    2. The limits of diversity in the space of representation
    3. The space of representation in I’m a Mormon, Parisian, and Mother of 7
    4. Controlling the reading modes in the space of consumption
  3. 1. Space of production as a private initiative
    2. A close look at Ex-Mormons in the space of representation
    3. The space of representation in My Name is Heather and I’m an Ex Mormon
    4. 1. a) More female participants in the online comments
      2. b) Drawing religious and social boundaries
      3. c) Linking Ex-Mormons and Mormons in the comments
    5. Eliciting sympathy in the reading modes
  4. 4.4. Spaces of communication in competition
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  1. 1. RTV as documentary media
    2. RTV between private and public
    3. Religion in the public sphere of the media
    4. RTV as interface between the private and public sphere of religion
  2. 1. Communication strategies of The District 1 and The District 2
    2. Success stories
    3. Proselytizing in private
    4. Baptism in public
    5. Reading modes of proselytizing in private to be baptized in public
  3. 1. Here are the Browns
    2. Binary gender roles in Sister Wives’ four spaces of communication
    3. 1. AUB theology reloaded in “Sister Wives”
      2. The Adam-God doctrine and the Law of Sarah
    4. 1. The doctrine of consecration
    5. The gendered and mediated religious worldview of Sister Wives
  4. 5.4. Religion linking the private and the public sphere
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  1. 1. Audience responses to religion in Meet the Mormons
    2. Framing the semio-pragmatic audience study
    3. Extracting the represented values, opinions, and attitudes towards Mormons
    4. Audiences perception of a Mormon world view
  2. 1. Preparation of the interviews
    2. Evaluation of the interviews
    3. Media professionals and their religious worldview
  3. 6.3. Persuasion through documentary media
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  1. Ethical questions in the spaces of communication
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  1. 8.1. Values, norms, and moral judgements
  2. 8.2. Responsibility and power relations
  3. 8.3. Ethical spaces of documentaries
  4. 8.4. Loyalties and hermeneutic horizons of the social actors
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  1. 9.1. Mormons and the race debate
  2. 9.2. Who are the Mormons?
  3. 9.3. The LDS Church and Mormon truth, historical and global
  4. 9.4. Participants’ loyalties and their impact
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  1. 10.1. Getting close to Mormons
  2. 10.2. Revealing abuses in the FLDS Church
  3. 10.3. The LDS Church as supervising shadow
  4. 10.4. Telling about strange and perverted Mormon practices
5. 11. Religion as Sensation and InfotainmentPages 345 - 348 Download chapter (PDF)
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  1. 12.1. The interface of documentary media and religion
  2. 12.2. Spaces of communication under scrutiny
  3. 12.3. The ethical space of documentaries about religion
  4. 12.4. Reading modes of Mormonism in the spaces of communication
  5. 12.5. Religion through the lens of documentary media
BibliographyPages 363 - 382 Download chapter (PDF)
Film IndexPages 383 - 385 Download chapter (PDF)