Deconstructing the Divine
From Christian nationalism to digital religion to the racialized dimensions of religion, CITAP hosted a successful Symposium on Religion, Media, and Public Life on November 10th.
Religion, Media, and Public Life | Reflection & Highlights
The Religion, Media, and Public Life Symposium addressed the intersection of technology, American religion, and politics. Our discussions challenged the historical relationship between the American church, the State, and the hegemonic power of white Evangelicalism and white supremacist religious appeals. We had 3 panels with scholars from across the country, as well as right here at UNC.
Here are a few highlights from the day:
Panel 1 | When god Goes Viral: Digital Culture and the Racial Dynamics of Religion
Hosted by CITAP Graduate Research Assistant LaRisa Anderson, the first panel of the day featured Dr. Heidi Campbell (Texas A&M University), Dr. Erika Gault (the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture), and Dr. LeRhonda Manigault-Bryant (UNC-Chapel Hill). Dr. Campbell discussed her experience growing up in a “hyper-conservative, Christian nationalist community” and undergoing a “deprogramming” process that pushed her to understand how to implement similar deprogramming against online discourse rooted in religious and racialized stereotypes. Recognizing racialization impacts who is considered properly “religious” and “American,” Dr. Gault unpacked how religion and freedom are firmly intertwined in the American consciousness. Dr. Manigault-Bryant further interrogated connections between American religion and liberation, acknowledging American religious liberation has often been won “at the expense of others.” America religion is thus simultaneously liberating and a site of often racialized contestation.
Dr. Gault considered how platforms like TikTok allow users to maintain connections with the Black church when in person attendance is not possible. Having watched religious online communities emerge in niche spaces during the mid-1990s, Dr. Campbell discussed how increasing accessibility has led younger cohorts to view online communities as primary components of their religious lives. Dr. Manigault-Bryant urged consideration of varied spiritual technologies (including film) in furthering access to and engagement with embodied religious experiences, while also highlighting how movement from original contexts can lead to reinterpretations and misunderstandings of Black spiritual media. Panelists additionally discussed the role of influencers and the commodification in online religious content.
Panel 2 | God Bless the West: White Christian Nationalism and the Evangelical Internet
Hosted by CITAP Principal Investigator Dr. Francesca Tripodi, the symposium’s second panel featured Dr. Eden Consenstein (UNC-Chapel Hill), Dr. Whitney Phillips (the University of Oregon), Dr. Xavier Pickett (Cornell University), and Dr. Samuel Perry (the University of Oklahoma). Dr. Consenstein began by affirming the encroachment of white Christian nationalism into mainstream, secular media outlets well into the 20th century—an encroachment made possible by elite credentials possessed by many white Christian nationalists. Dr. Phillips discussed how much of white Christian nationalism focuses on fear and loathing, particularly toward a devilish “liberal,” “socialist,” “communist” or otherwise “leftist” other. Considering the centrality of whiteness and its ties to American nationalism, Dr. Pickett emphasized the necessity of understanding how anti-Black racism impacts what speech is framed not only as radical, but unutterable. Tracing conservative movement from rejecting to embracing the term “Christian nationalism,” Dr. Perry reiterated the importance of understanding how this ideology operates on the premise of a white ethnoculture embodied in civic practices.
Panelists further interrogated the history of division based on a "leftist” devil in Christian Nationalism from the Red Scare onward and discussed strategies for public outreach addressing these divisions beyond academic audiences.
Panel 3 | Call to Action: Religion is Public
In the final panel of the day, LaRisa Anderson and Dr. Tripodi jointly hosted Drs. Campbell, Gault, Pickett, Perry, Phillips, and Consenstein. In a more informal setting than previous panels, panelists and audience members discussed how to actionably move past a tendency for American society to demonize groups marginalized based on race/ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, and how to break the cycle of demonization. Specific emphasis was placed on inherent threats toward critique, disagreement, and the capacity to speak truth to power in American higher education and in American civic life. The importance of accessing suppressed histories through museums and other public forums facilitating public engagement with these histories was emphasized as an important component of opening dialogue and preventing ongoing demonization.
Publications and Appearances
“For those who make content moderation decisions, those decisions are going to be really hard— because it's users with the most power (political, social, economic, etc.) who are the ones that are needing this hard decision around some type of moderation,” Shannon McGregor discussed content moderation on an R-Street Institute panel on November 2nd, “Online Content Moderation: Government vs. Private-Sector Solutions”.
Daniel Kreiss joined a panel, “Can the government mandate that social media companies provide transparency about their content moderation practices?” during the First Amendment Law Review Symposium hosted with the Center for Media and Public Life. Daniel discussed how the changing landscape of fragmented media will change how paid political content I studied. “We've moved from there being one master “forum” for discourse, where it’s easy look into pages of a newspaper and study what was on that newspaper. It is comparatively easy to watch nightly news broadcasts, and then be able to study what was on those broadcasts. In the internet era, that audience is much more fragmented and it's much harder to chronicle what's out there.”
Shannon McGregor spoke with the New York Times about Truth Social, noting that “Truth Social is obviously not surviving on ad dollars, and the ads that are being sold are not robust or sustainable.”
Affiliate Highlights
Affiliate Sharrona Pearl has published a new book, “Do I Know You?” (John Hopkins University Press). In her book, Sharrona Pearl delves into the intricate realm of face recognition, introducing the "face recognition spectrum" that spans from face blindness to super recognition. Drawing on archival research, neurological studies, and personal testimonials, Pearl explores how individuals at different points on this spectrum experience and navigate the world through facial recognition. She highlights the societal implications of framing face blindness as a disability and super recognition as a superpower, especially in the context of criminal detection and state surveillance, offering a nuanced perspective on how we understand and evaluate each other through the complex dynamics of facial recognition.
We are hiring!
We are seeking a Postdoctoral Research Associate to join us and work with Dr. Francesca Tripodi and the Search Prompt Integrity & Learning Lab (SPILL). Read the full description here and share the posting!
Coming Soon
February
February 8th @ 3:30pm | Book Talk: Voices for Transgender Equality: CITAP is hosting TJ Billard for a book talk on their “Voices for Transgender Equality: Making Change in the Networked Public Sphere”.