using the readings, please complete test 1450 PS. there is also a book that i will pass onto you once you download the rest of the class readings

In contemporary Western societies, secularization makes religion more private.

The religious task, where religion is excluded from the public square, is often one of identity construction.

People may hyphenate several religious traditions or sample from many in the process of their construction of a personal religious identity. Traditions, communities, and institutions Chapter 1considered a variety of ways that people think about religion. For some, religion is a matter of ideas or beliefs about God, gods, or the sacred. For others it is a matter of practice. Historically, religion was something that people did together; they grouped themselves in communities organized by shared beliefs and practices. Even the hermit was part of a larger religious community that gave his or her solitude meaning. People found their identity in broad traditions such as Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and sha- manism. Co-religionists shared a worldview rooted in common mythology, values, and ethos, and in shared activities. This shared religious practice was a powerful source of social unity, though it also produced con flict among and sometimes within communities. Institutionalized forms of religion emerged around particular traditions of belief and practice. These institutions range from small local communities such as a mosque, temple, or church, to regional and transnational institutions like the Vatican. They have structures of authority, may own property, and often hold moral, economic, and political in fluence within the larger society. Now, in the digital age, they may exist wholly or partly online. No religious institution fully encapsulates its larger tradition; there is no single example that fully embodies the possibilities of any large and long-established religion. For instance, those who self-identify as a Buddhist will likely affiliate with a particular Buddhist tradition, perhaps practicingTheravadaorMahayana Buddhism, and following cultural expressions within these movements. Their practice and beliefs might be shaped by Tibetan, Korean, or Japanese cultural expressions of Buddhism or by Western adaptations of these traditions. In these varied Buddhist contexts they develop beliefs about matters such as reincarna- tion and who has the authority to teach or perform rituals in their Buddhist community. They may develop particular local disciplines and practices.

The varied institutional expressions of a broader religious tradition may reflect language and cultural differences, or divisions over beliefs and practices, and systems of authority, conflicts over power and property, or other matters.

Consider, for instance, how over time Christians divided themselves between Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant expressions and then subdivided further into national churches, religious orders, and denominations.

To take but one example from the history of Christianity, John Wesley (1703–91) sparked a reform movement within the Church of England that led to the Methodist movement in the mid-eighteenth century and later to the establishment of separate Methodist churches. Continued reform movements established new institutional forms of the Methodist or Wesleyan branch of Christianity. In 1787, for instance, black Methodists in Philadelphia, chafing under racism and racial separation in the church, broke with the denomination to found the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Another split established the Free Methodist Church in 1860 partly in protest against the then common practice of charging worshipers for space in the pews. In the United States, immigrant European Methodists organized themselves into separate churches as well, creating places for worship that continued the language and practices of home.Methodist groups have split and recombined in new configurations, growing to become what is now the second largest Protestant group in the country and an institution with churches on six continents. Today Methodists continue to struggle over what unites and divides them, and some suggest that the largest Wesleyan body, the United Methodist Church, will split over whether gay people have a full place in the church. The process of growth and change in the Methodist Church has been duplicated in other Christian bodies.

Thus, it may be more accurate to talk about“Christianities”rather than Christianity as a single integrated form of belief and practice. Similar patterns of unity and distinction exist in other religious traditions.

Where is religion located today?

In the mid-twentieth century, sociologists reflecting on the decline of organized religion in the West developed the idea of secularization (Berger 1967). They noted that, in complex modern societies, religion was becoming increasingly privatized, and secular institutions and the state itself were largely taking on the 22Religious identity in media cultures social and charitable functions once carried out by religious institutions. The sociologists concluded that religion was gradually going to fade away. Many of these thinkers forecasted, in fact, that in industrialized societies religion would have disappeared by now. Many religious institutions have lost members and influence. This is particularly true in the industrialized West, especially northern Europe, where religious identity and practice has markedly declined. In the global South, meanwhile, especially Africa and Latin America, both Pentecostal Christianity and Islam have spread. Even in the northern hemisphere religion has not died away; it continues to vie for space in the public square.

Certainly many people in modern societies, and in some places the majority, no longer identify themselves as religious. When secularity is the dominant form of public life, traditional forms of religion may be pushed to the margins.

Religions continue to exist, but they involve fewer people, are more private than public, and have less influence on society. The secularization argument suggests that in such cultures religion has lost its power to provide unity and that other forms of social identity, ritual, and ethical discourse emerge to provide social coherence. This is an important phenomenon to recognize and raises the question of whether religion is simply one of many ways to explain and organize life.

In contrast to this perspective, another view is that religion fulfills certain essential purposes in society. According to this argument, in seemingly secular societies, religion has not disappeared; it has just taken new forms. In places where institutional forms of religion have lost influence, there has actually been a displacement of the core purposes of religion. People practice other types of ritual behavior that serve the functions of religion rather than activities that are classically“religious.”There are many expressions of this displacement of reli- gion away from traditional centers of religious life. One expression can be seen among people who describe themselves as spiritual without being religious; that is, they hold certain beliefs or have particular practices such as prayer, meditation, or the celebration of particular religious holidays without affiliating themselves with organized religion. Another expression of displaced religion can be found in civil religion. By invoking God in political speeches and on public monu- ments, articulating myths of national origin, or participating in rituals that venerate past leaders or the military dead, the nation itself becomes a location of the sacred. It is also argued that, when we idolize celebrities (Ward 2011) or participate in rituals of sports fandom (Evans and Herzog 2002), we are involved in practices that take on the forms and functions of religion.

And some, such as Wiccans and other Neopagans, seek to return to forms of religion that have fallen out of favor with others.

Attention to what is happening“on the ground”suggests that there is con- tinuous significant, if shifting, religious practice. While once-dominant forms of religion have become less common and lost influence, other forms of religion emerge or become more predominant. In some places, religions contest with each other for authority as one religion expands in influence and another shrinks. For example, the Buddhist and Hindu traditions are found in EuropeMaking and articulating religious identity23 and America partly due to migration but also due to conversion and the development of culturally distinct forms of practice. Similarly, Islam is increasingly part of the European and American religious environment.Religion also takes other, less established forms. Some of these seem episodic and happen without clear structures and with informal transient leadership. In the United States, for instance, new forms of public mourning have emerged.

Famous examples include the gatherings in New York ’s Central Park following the murder of former Beatle John Lennon and in a park near Colorado ’s Columbine High School after the infamous shootings took place there (Figure 2.1). In the aftermath of both public and private tragedies, informal and temporary “shrines ”are established. People may gather in a public space at or near the location for ritual activities like singing, lighting candles, and giving memorial speeches. Prayers may or may not be o ffered. People often build “altars ” on which they place pictures of the dead, poems, notes, and flowers. The music, speeches, and objects they leave may or may not include traditional religious references and symbols. Teddy bears, for example, have become a common talisman at sites where a child died. Practices such as these also happen in virtual space as people use social media like Facebook or PostSecret as locations for confession and mourning. In a famous example of such a phenomenon, the sheer volume of response to pop star Michael Jackson ’s death was so large that it overwhelmed and shut down some forms of social media. These new forms of icon and ritual do not require the participation of o fficial religious leaders, nor are they part of any ongoing institution or movement. Do they constitute “religion ”? If so, do they suggest that religion is becoming less organized, more an e ffervescent experience that bubbles up in times of stress?

Figure 2.1 Site of Columbine High School shooting 24Religious identity in media cultures New religious movements have arisen, such as the various forms of Neopaganism. Sarah Pike, who studies a variety of new religious movements, argues that we best understand what religion is doing by examining how it is practiced at the margins of society (Pike 2008). Some of these religious movements have emerged from within established religions, while others develop outside established patterns of religion. They may prove to be transitory, like the “cargo cults”which peaked in the 1950s in Polynesia, or become increasingly established, like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Scientology.

New media provide space for both conversation about religion and a location for religious experience. Websites like Patheos or Beliefnet contain blogs, essays, and question-and-answer forums about religion. These sites are independent and exist entirely online, there are others that are extensions of established face-to- face religious communities. As people feel freer to leave the traditions they were raised in, new religious movements emerge both off- and online, some as fleeting as theflowers and crosses at the site of a tragic accident.

Religion has not in fact disappeared. New forms of ritualization and meaning making steadily arise. In addition, traditional settings like the synagogue, ashram, church, mosque, or temple, and the traditions of which they are a part, remain powerful locations of religion in many places.

Constructing religious identities; media, hyphenation and sampling, and authority In the preceding section we saw that religions contend for influence with one another and with secularity. In this process religion can provide social cohesion or serve as the location of conflict and difference. Change is not simply a modern phenomenon but an element of religion itself.

Stewart Hoover (2006) argues that in what he calls the current“media age” we see a distinctive change in how people understand and embody religion.

Hoover argues that today the task of religion is one of constructing and articulating an individual religious self. This seems particularly to be the case in the West. Whether located within institutionalized religious communities, in loose networks, or entirely on their own, people are less likely to think of religious identity as something inherited from their forbears or expressed by a relation- ship to a single religious tradition. Whereas in the past religion was more clearly a matter of group identity, according to Hoover religious identities today often integrate ideas and practices from multiple sources. Rather than pursuing a particular tradition, individuals feel free to pick and choose from a range of available beliefs, practices, and symbols. New Age practitioners have been seen as a prime example of this individualized approach to religion. They draw on both Western and Eastern religions, often in conjunction with Jungian under- standings of mythology and motivational psychology. But New Age religion is not characterized by any particularly doctrinal integration of these sources; rather individuals combine them in ways that are individually satisfying. One canfind this same integrative practice among people who identify themselvesMaking and articulating religious identity25 within or between several traditional religious communities. There are, for example, individuals who simultaneously practice Christianity and Buddhism or Christianity and Islam (Frykholm 2011).While it is taking place far more frequently today, the process of religious construction is not entirely new. Africans who were enslaved and brought to the Americas, for instance, came practicing Islam or the traditional religions of Africa. A part of their oppression was religious; they were forced to relinquish their own religions while Christianity was imposed on them. While many slaves and their descendants adopted Christianity, others resisted this imposition.

Still others integrated their traditional practices with Christianity. One rich example of this can be seen in the practice of Candomblé, a religion that began among slaves in Brazil. Practitioners connected the Yoruba orishas (spirits or deities) with Catholic saints and developed unique expressions that continue to be practiced in Brazil and beyond (Capone 2010). Once while in Brazil I asked an Afro-Brazilian Catholic priest about Candomblé ’s integration of seemingly discordant religious elements. The priest replied, “Some say to us that you must choose between Candomblé and the Church, but we say, ”sweeping his arms widely open, “this is our religion. ”(SeeFigure 2.2.) The in fluences of media If this pattern of religious identity construction precedes the “media age, ”what does it have to do with media? Mass media have expanded our information about religious ideas and practices that di ffer from those of the communities within which we were raised. Social media provide settings for conversation about religion but also locations for practices and construction. So, the new Figure 2.2 Candomblé practitioners with a statue of the orisha lemanjá 26Religious identity in media cultures media tools and locations that established religious communities and institutions increasingly used to connect their members, or invite others to join with them, make information and images about the gamut of religions more generally available. Media have become more complex than in the past, providing access to a wider range of voices. New forms of media such as the Internet give us access to a vast array of voices. Today, virtually anyone can have his or her own blog or website. This expansion of sources legitimates a wider range of religious authorities and makes it easier for people to“shop”for alternative voices.

New media do more than simply provide access to a wider range of infor- mation about religion. Instead, media model and encourage a constructionist way of building knowledge and articulating identity. Religious identity becomes something that one assembles from multiple sources, rather in the way that a hip hop artist creatively samples and repositions a musical phrase into an emerging composition. The way a wiki is constructed further illustrates this modern process of meaning-making. Wiki texts are notfixed; they undergo ongoing construction by multiple authors, who edit, sample, comment, and expand on them until it is impossible to point to a single author or unchanging text.

Personal identity is constructed in a similar way. Categories once assumed to befixed, such as race, gender, and religion, seemfluid. More and more people do not allow their race to be defined by the box on a census form. Instead, they define themselves as biracial or multiracial. Gender, for many people, is not reducible to biology; it is a matter of performance, experienced and expressed in a variety of ways (Butler 1990). In similar ways, religion is not simply a matter of inheritance. Religion is constructed and performed, often with elements sampled from different traditions, even when, as with Candomblé, those traditions reflect religious worldviews that seem to be at odds with one another.

For many people, then, identity is an individual project. It is not inherited but chosen, developed, and performed. It might involve construction from multiple sources. Consider, say, a Presbyterian Protestant who attends retreats at a Roman Catholic monastery, a Jew-Bu (a cultural or religious Jew who also practices Buddhism), or someone who practices a complex form of New Age identification. Worshiping communities include many people who participate yet resist becoming members. The people who resist joining, it seems, are reluctant to let the tradition define their religious identity. Something similar is at play in those who identify as Catholic but reject particular church teachings such as those concerning birth control. The complex identities of these individuals exist at the meeting place of several religious communities or traditions.

American religion writer Cathleen Falsani (for links, see cathleenfalsani.com) exemplifies the way religious identity is created and performed in relationship to media. Her writing is far more personal than is typical of religion journalism; the traditional membrane between the personal and the public is quite porous in her work, and her own complicated religious identity becomes part of the story. She identifies as an Evangelical, yet some years ago she became a“Dudist” priest by sending money to a quasi-religious group that has grown up around the Coen Brothers’filmThe Big Lebowski. Dudists celebrate thefilm’s witty Making and articulating religious identity27 combination of California slacker culture and the pop-Buddhism of its protagonist, “The Dude.”Their proclamation of aDudist religionis usually understood as an ironic comment on religion and their extreme interest in thefilm. Over the years Falsani came to call herself, with an interreligious chuckle, the“Dude-i- vata.”It is tempting to think of this as mere language play about religion, a joke not to be confused with her“real”Christian life. But, she reported performing a wedding in July of 2010 using her Dudist credential. Presumably for the couple and community that gathered, this was not an ironic parody of religious ritual. Surely, then, Falsani’sidentification as the Dude-i-vata must be understood in some way as a part of her religious life.

Hyphenation and sampling There seem to be two distinct tendencies or paths that people follow in the individual projects of religious identity construction described in this chapter.

The social processes that are at play here could be termedhyphenationand sampling. These are concepts that are related but different.

The termhyphenationpoints to the linking of distinct traditions by a common factor, an occurrence that is often signified linguistically with a hyphen. With respect to religion, hyphenation is taking place when an individual simulta- neously embraces two or more traditions in such a way that his or her partici- pation in one cannot be understood without acknowledging the other. Thus, someone who is simultaneously participating in Hinduism and Christianity could be thought of as a“Hindu-Christian”or a“Christian-Hindu.”This phenom- enon is similar to what is signaled when one or both partners in a relationship choose to hyphenate their last names. Recognizing that they are part of two families of origin, the partners do not choose one name over the other or move back and forth between them. Instead, they point to both names and families as being part of their identity. The couple itself, then, serves as a point of integration between separate entities.

Sampling, introduced above, is a practice regularly employed by recording artists and hip hop DJs. Sampling refers to the way musicians borrow a musical phrase from another work and embed it in a new esthetic context, often giving it new meaning by the way they juxtapose it with other musical elements.

In the broader digital culture, visual images and texts are used in a similar way.

Artists gather materials from disparate sources, combining them into something that is new and unique. Applied to religion, sampling denotes how people appropriate images, objects, practices, and beliefs from religious traditions and use them in new ways without necessarily identifying themselves as part of the tradition from which they sample. Think of a woman who displays a statue of the Buddha in her home, intending it as a spiritual expression but without further embracing Buddhist practices. Perhaps she also listens to Gregorian chants to aid with meditation but does not identify herself as a Christian, or she has memorized passages from theTao Te Chingbut does not consider herself Taoist. Perhaps she unites a sense of karma and rebirth with pre-Christian 28Religious identity in media cultures Celtic images and Native American practices. The woman issamplingthese sources. Her relationship with the sources is more fragmentary than in cases of hyphenated religious identity. Religious practitioners, such as this woman, who sample, function as consumers who construct a religious self out of material from multiple sources. For them, validity lies in this rich self that they construct. Some critics see approaches to religion such as hyphenation and sampling as “ smorgasbord religion, ”where people adopt what they like about a religion and leave on the table what they do not. However you judge these approaches, hyphenation and sampling seem to be a part of the way religion continues to adapt and change in our day. Observers of religion need to see these practices accurately, understand what they mean to the participants, and ask how they in fluence the broader culture in which they happen.

What are the consequences of these contemporary forms of religious belief and practice? As will be argued more fully inChapter 3, the emergence of new media with their multiple voices and interactivity has decentered traditional centers of authority and provides a model for the trend toward a religious identity crafted from multiple religious sources. Media culture accelerates the modern focus on individual identity and conscience. It invites the individual to construct a religious identity out of bits of loosely integrated beliefs and practices gathered from multiple sources.

Religious authority When people claim the personal authority to shape their individual religious identity, traditional forms of religious authority are challenged. What does religious authority look like in contemporary media cultures? It is hard to remember that even so basic a source of authority as sacred writings emerged in a particular period and have been interpreted and venerated in di fferent ways. It could be argued that leaders, tradition, and writings have less authority than they once did, or that they are granted authority in new and di fferent ways by practitioners in the contemporary media age. Fundamentalism within various religions can be understood in part as resistance to this relaxing of traditional forms of religious authority. What do these re flections tell us about the nature of religion and the relation- ship between religion and media as they are lived out today? Religion is fluid.

People increasingly think of religion as an individual practice and are conse- quently constructing religious identities from multiple sources. In the current media culture traditional religious institutions and movements will certainly lose authority, as we see in the loosening of denominational commitment among many transient Christians in North America. When they move from one part of the country to another, Americans are likely to seek the religious community that “meets their needs ”rather than attend the closest church of the denomination they grew up in. It is not that people do not consult traditional sources of religious authority but that they often do so with a consumer ’s mentality. Rather than seeking to Making and articulating religious identity 29 conform to patterns of religion preserved in sacred texts, handed down by tra- dition, or articulated by clergy and teachers, they are inclined to ask what is useful to them or what confirms and supplements their existing assumptions.

How does this picking and choosing affect the traditions? How does it affect the practitioners? Religion serves multiple functions. It appears that the practice of constructing religion from disparate sources provides the confirmation of individual identity and values that religion in its traditional form often provides.

But does a customized religion have the content and authority to challenge the practitioner’s individual and societal assumptions and social behaviors, another traditional function of religion?

In summary, in digital culture people seek out religion and/or adopt prac- tices and beliefs from multiple traditions that meet their individual needs.

Modern media give them greater access to a broad range of religious practices and beliefs. This construction of the individual religious self reflects a shifting of authority. From the multiple voices that are present the individual can, and perhaps must, choose. A particular teacher or tradition, or some portion of the teaching or tradition, has authority because the individual grants it, usually in conjunction with other competing sources of authority. Discussion questions 1 The author suggests that it is more accurate to talk about“Christia- nities”than Christianity. What does this distinction add to our understanding of this particular religion and to the phenomenon that ismedia, religion, and culture? Do youfind this a helpful distinction?

Why or why not?

2 What is secularization? Where do we see evidence of secularization?

How have media been part of the process of secularization? How does religion change when the secular expands?

3 Discuss the physical sites of public mourning that have been estab- lished to commemorate tragic deaths. What objects, messages, and practices are typically included in these sites? Who is“in charge”of such sites? Are these sites religious? How, or how not? What does the existence of sites suggest about the role of organized religion today?

4 Discuss the idea that people construct areligious self, and the ways that contemporary media culture contributes to the expectation that iden- tity construction is a central task of religion. Identify examples of such identity construction, either from the chapter or from your own observation. How is this similar to, or different from, how religion has been practiced in the past?

5 How are understandings of religious authority changing? What new models of authority does the chapter suggest are emerging? Do you see evidence of this? 30Religious identity in media cultures 6Thereflections that follow present two quite different images of contemporary media. Schofield Clark examines how a young Ethiopian immigrant uses digital media to express his identity, while Ward con- siders how mainstream media turn celebrities into demi-gods. What do these examples suggest about the power of media and about the way people shape or are shaped by contemporary media? References Berger, Peter L. (1967)The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, New York: Anchor Books.

Butler, Judith (1990)Gender Trouble, New York: Routledge.

Capone, Stefania (2010)Searching for Africa in Brazil. Power and Tradition in Candomblé, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Evans, Christopher H., and William R. Herzog, II (2002)The Faith of Fifty Million: Baseball, Religion and American Culture, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.

Frykholm, Amy (2011)“Double Belonging: One Person, Two Faiths,”The Christian Century, January 14.

Hoover, Stewart M. (2006)Religion in the Media Age, New York: Routledge.

Pike, Sarah M. (2008)“Religion,”in Morgan, David, ed.,Key Words in Religion, Media and Culture, New York: Routledge.

Ward, Pete (2011)Gods Behaving Badly: Media, Religion, and Celebrity Culture, Waco, TX:

Baylor University Press. Making and articulating religious identity31 Reflection When Gods fall (o fftheir bike) Pete Ward Early in 2013 an interview with Oprah Winfrey made headlines across the world. The cyclist Lance Armstrong, seven times winner of the Tour de France , confessed to being a drugs cheat. There had been rumors over a number of years, but when the news broke disbelief quickly turned to anger. Four months after the interview one young fan from Syracuse expressed the feeling of many, “It ’s just sad and it ’s just an awful thing because he was like my idol, but now I lost all respect for him. ” 1 Speaking on CNN, Betsy Andreu, the wife of a cyclist and former team mate of Armstrong, expressed frustration at the confession.

I was willing to give him a chance and that ’s how he responds? Lance can redeem himself but only if he comes clean to the USADA and WADA because there is no way he conducted the biggest fraud in sports history on his own. 2 Journalists spoke of the demise of a figure who had been worshiped by fans. Ali Khaled said that Armstrong, just like so many other sports stars, has proven himself to be the latest “idol with feet of clay. ” 3CNN said that Armstrong ’s confession to Winfrey represented a “fall from grace. ” 4 (seeFigure 2.3.) Figure 2.3Oprah Winfrey interviews Lance Armstrong Lance Armstrong is hardly unique in his disgrace. He joins a long list of fallen sportingfigures from OJ Simpson to Tiger Woods and Oscar Pistorius.

Though commonplace, the demise of a sports star is always greeted with disbelief. Some kind of bond between the star and the wider public has been broken. In coming to terms with this rupture, the language of reli- gion has taken centre stage. The media likes to talk of them as “fallen idols. ”This implies that they were figures who were once worthy of worship but no longer; but on closer inspection the word “idol ”casts some doubt. Idols are not real Gods; they are false, and this is a clue to unpacking the religious and non-religious dynamics in celebrity worship. Lance Armstrong ’s signi ficance goes way beyond his sporting prowess.

Let ’s be honest, no one but the French are really bothered about cycling.

It is hardly the NFL or world cup soccer for that matter. That is not to belittle the massive achievement of winning the Tour seven times, something no one has ever done before. The real story about Armstrong is that he did this after he had been diagnosed with multiple forms of cancer, fought the disease, and broke through to recovery. It was his struggle with the big “C ” that jettisoned him into public consciousness.

He was someone to be admired, to be respected, to look up to, and to be inspired by. Anyone who had been touched by illness and adversity could identify with him and find something in his story to help them on their own journey. This in essence was the “connection ”between Armstrong and the public. This connection was powerful and signi ficant, but it was never religion. No one really worshiped him, there was no Church of Lance, no Armstrong shrine to visit. Lance was always an idol. The sacred doesn ’t reside in the sports star: it is located in the fan. The journey of the self is what is of the deepest religious signi ficance. The religious meta- phors of the journalist are attached to figures such as Armstrong, but their real point of reference is the ongoing struggle of the individual towards making the most of themselves and not letting themselves go. This is the true religious discipline and the real cult of the celebrity.

Notes 1http://centralny.ynn.com/content/top_stories/631225/fans-react-to-lance-\ arm- strong-s-admission, accessed May 1, 2013.

2www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-2264338/Lance-Armstrong-confes sion-Oprah-Winfrey-How-world-reacted.html#ixzz2LRU7GM2e, accessed May 1, 2013.

3www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/sport-comment/a-very-dark- period-for-sport#ixzz2LRXNko00.

4http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/22/sport/lance-armstrong-pro file-cycling-usada, accessed May 1, 2013. Making and articulating religious identity 33 Reflection Digital storytelling and narratives of identity Abel’s story Lynn Schofield Clark “Mkerew mkerew enbi kale mekera ymkerew.”This is an Ethiopian proverb that Abel’s grandmother taught him. It means,“Advise him and advise him. If he refuses to listen, let trouble advise him.”When Abel produced a digital story as part of an after-school project, he chose to begin with this proverb.“That still motivates me to keep on pushing forward,”Abel says in his story.“And now, I listen thefirst time so that I don’t have to let the consequences teach me.” Abel’s grandmother meant a great deal to him. She raised him as an Orthodox Christian in Ethiopia for nearly 12 years. Then, she helped him to move to the United States to live with his father so that he would have a better education and more opportunities.

During the summer after Abel graduated from high school, Abel’s grandmother became gravely ill. His father traveled to Ethiopia to be with her, leaving Abel to care for himself for several weeks. And then, Abel suffered a number of discouraging setbacks. He began to wonder whether or not he would achieve his dream of attending college and, out of his despondency, he started making some bad decisions.

Abel had presented his digital story as if he were afinished product:

“Now, I listen thefirst time so that I don’t have to let the consequences teach me,”he’d said. Yet, only a few months later, he found that con- sequences of his actions were once again teaching him. Once again, he found himself shaking his head, realizing that it was indeed better to listen for the wisdom of those who loved him than to wait for trouble to teach him. And once again, he had to seek andfind forgiveness. Perhaps the hardest part was forgiving himself for not being quite asfinished with the lesson as he had thought he was.

Abel also had to apologize to one of his friends, and that was hard. But that friend told him,“Look back at that story you made, and remember what your grandmother said. Use that story to remind yourself of how much she loved you and wanted the best for you.”Abel’s other friends agreed. In that moment, the digital story became more than a school project. It became an anchoring narrative, a narrative of aspiration that helped Abel to remember who he was and who those who cared about him wanted him to be.This is the strength of the digital storytelling format in relation to self- development and, by extension, faith formation. He could refer to it in di ffi cult times to recall those who had seen it and who knew him, both in his struggles and in his triumphs. The digital story became more than an end-product or a media production. It became a source of well-being, connected to other sources of well-being that included friends, family members, and his broader ethnic and faith communities.

It can be frustrating to realize that we do not live perfectly, that we do not progress to greater and greater virtue. It ’s a painful lesson, but it ’sa lesson of humanity. When a digital story can provide us with anchoring narratives that help us to remember who we are and who those we love most want us to be, they can serve as important bridges to our faith journey. They can remind us to pause, breathe, and listen. In this way, these mediated moments can help us to remember not to surrender to our worst, but that we are called by our faith and our community into our best (Figure 2.4).

Figure 2.4 Abel Making and articulating religious identity 35