The broadening of the concept of religion from a substantive, anthropological definition to a more cultural, functional definition has enabled expansion of the study of media, technology and religion into a much wider field of social phenomena. It has Ben argued that this expansion has been so broad and unbounded that the more appropriate question in this field of study is no longer “What is religion?”, but “What isn’t religion?” This paper contends that the time is ripe to set aside a dualistic lens of religion and secular and look instead at embodie human reality as incorporating not only material, empirical and instrumental characteristics but also tanscendental, metaphysical and non-empirical characteristics that also need to be theorised in secular terms.
When the Christian Bible is referred to as the 'Word of God', the common understanding is that this refers to its textual content. There are, however, a variety of other uses made of the bible that point to an understanding of the Word of God as not just the textual content but also the material book itself. This article explores a number of uses of the physical bible as an instrument of spiritual mediation or power that have been practised since the early days of Christianity to the present time. Some of the understandings underlying these material practices are explored, along with differences in the religious-cultural context that sustain these different views, including the differences in religious hermeneutics between the oral and written word, the importance of the concept of the book in Christian identity, the relationship of fetishism and theological understanding, and cultural differences in understanding the relationship between textual and material signification.The Christian Bible is a book compilation of sixty-six historical documents which holds a distinctive place within Christianity as 'The Word of God'. While the specific meaning of this attribution is a matter of significant dispute, the most common reference is to the semantic content Studies in World Christianity 17.2 (2011): [175][176][177][178][179][180][181][182][183][184][185][186][187][188][189][190][191][192][193]
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