Church, Market, and Media: A Discursive Approach to Institutional Religious Change 9781474280570, 9781474283205, 9781474280594

Citation preview

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Church, Market, and Media

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Also available from Bloomsbury Christian Metal, Marcus Moberg The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music, edited by Christopher Partridge and Marcus Moberg Is God Back?, edited by Titus Hjelm Practical Spiritualities in a Media Age, edited by Curtis Coats and Monica M. Emerich

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Church, Market, and Media A Discursive Approach to Institutional Religious Change Marcus Moberg

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 Paperback edition first published 2019 © Marcus Moberg, 2017 Marcus Moberghas asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Moberg, Marcus, 1978- author. Title: Church, market, and media : a discursive approachto institutional religious change/ Marcus Moberg. Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. |Includes bibliographical references andindex. Identifiers: LCCN 2016058145| ISBN 9781474280570 (hb) | ISBN 9781474280594 (epdf) Subjects: LCSH: Church renewal. | Change—Religiousaspects–Christianity. | Church and thepress. | Church marketing. | Suomenevankelis-luterilainen kirkko. Classification: LCC BV600.3 .M63 2017 | DDC262.001/7–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016058145 ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-8057-0 PB: 978-1-3500-9839-8 ePDF: 978-1-4742-8059-4 ePub: 978-1-4742-8058-7 Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works Pvt Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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Contents Preface 1

Introduction The study of religion and markets The study of religion and media A discursive approach to social and institutional religious change Main focus and material Structure of the book

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Part 1 Theoretical and Analytic Framework 2

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Discourse Analysis and the Study of Social and Religious Change Discourse analysis as method The discourse of social institutions and organizations The technologization of discourse Concluding remarks Marketization, Mediatization, and Institutional Religious Change Marketization and social, cultural, and religious change Mediatization and social, cultural, and religious change

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Part 2 Application and Cases 4

The Marketization and Mediatization of Institutional Christian Protestant Churches Mainline Protestant churches in the United States The Church of England in Britain: “resourcing the future” The Nordic context: civil service and “effectiveness”

75 78 98 109

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Contents

Discourse and Beyond: Marketization and Mediatization within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland The current state of the ELCF Marketization discourse within the ELCF Mediatization and new media discourse within the ELCF Beyond discourse: organizational mediatization within the ELCF

Postscript Notes Bibliography Index

121 123 125 136 143 153 155 183 197

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Preface This book is the result of a research path that I got on gradually over a course of several years. It reflects my thinking on what I view as some of the most notable forces shaping the institutional religious field today. This book also reflects my interest in applying discourse theory and discourse analysis in the study of religion. My thinking in the area of markets and religion is particularly indebted to many inspiring discussions with Dr. Tuomas Martikainen and Dr. François Gauthier. My thinking in the area of discourse theory and discourse analysis has also benefited greatly from my numerous discussions and collaborative ventures with Dr.  Kennet Granholm and Dr.  Titus Hjelm. I  also wish to thank AnnaStina Hägglund for her constructive comments on earlier drafts of this book and Daniel Frandsen for helping me with my translations from the Danish language. Chapter 5 in this book is based on research conducted with funding from the Academy of Finland (application number 250262). Parts of this book contain work that has already been published elsewhere. Parts previously published as “First-, Second-, and Third-Level Discourse Analytic Approaches in the Study of Religion: Moving from Meta-Theoretical Reflection to Implementation in Practice” (in Religion 43/1, 2013, Taylor and Francis, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0048721X.2013.742742?j ournalCode=rrel20) are included in Chapter  2. Parts previously published as “Introduction” (coauthored with Sofia Sjö and Kennet Granholm, in Religion, Media, and Social Change, Routledge, 2016) are included in the Introduction. Parts previously published as “Exploring the Spread of Marketization Discourse in the Nordic Folk Church Context” (in Making Religion: Theory and Practice in the Discursive Study of Religion, Brill, 2016) are included in the Introduction and in Chapters 4 and 5. Parts previously published as “Mediatization and the Technologization of Discourse:  Exploring Official Discourse on the Internet and Information and Communications Technology within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland” (in New Media & Society, published ahead of print, 2016, http://nms.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/08/10/1461444816663701. abstract) are included in Chapters 3 and 5. All reproduced content from the official Web site or official documents of the Presbyterian Church USA has been reproduced with the kind permission

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of the Office of Communications, Presbyterian Church USA. All reproduced content from the official Web site or official documents of the United Methodist Church (USA) has been reproduced with the kind permission of the United Methodist Church (USA). All reproduced content from the official Web site or official documents of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has been reproduced with the kind permission of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. All reproduced content from the official Web site or official documents of the Church of England has been reproduced with the kind permission of the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England. All reproduced content from the official Web site or official documents of the Church of Denmark has been reproduced with the kind permission of the Church of Denmark. All reproduced content from the official Web site or official documents of the Church of Sweden has been reproduced with the kind permission of the Church of Sweden. All reproduced content from the official Web site or official documents of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland has been reproduced with the kind permission of the National Church Council, and Church Communication Centre, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland.

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Introduction

In 2009, the United Methodist Church in the United States initiated an extensive campaign titled “Rethink Church” that was directed at young “tech-savvy seekers who wished to make a difference in the world but who might not be attending a church.”1 In 2011, the Church of Sweden adopted a new official communication strategy that highlighted how the “communication of the Church of Sweden is to be planned in a systematic manner and be carried out in an integrated way in order to reach overall communication goals.”2 In 2012, the Presbyterian Church USA developed a “Mission Work Plan Strategy” containing a set of “Primary Objectives” based on “directional goals to describe tangible outcome targets that can be measured, monitored and evaluated for progress.”3 The 2013 report from the Mission Advancement unit of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America highlighted how “marketing communications” supports and strengthens “the identity and mission” of the church.4 In 2015, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland announced that it would “maintain an efficient administration, both lightweight and effective.”5 In 2015, the “Report of the Task Force on Resourcing the Future of the Church of England” presented a wide range of recommendations for reforms designed to achieve “church growth”—all of which were presented as being “critically dependent on dioceses being strategic about their mission activity and leadership requirements.”6 In 2016, the Church of Denmark developed a new “Digital Strategy” for 2016–20 containing a series of primary goals, “each of which includes a number of focus areas that shall be strengthened in coming years in order for the strategy to be realized and bring the effects desired for the goals to be reached.”7 The general character, organizational culture, and communication practices of long-established institutional Christian Protestant churches are changing. As is illustrated by the quotes above, so too is their language. These changes are not arbitrary. Nor are they coincidental. They have come about as a consequence of a particular set of broader social changes that have followed in the wake of

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Church, Market, and Media

the rise and spread of neoliberalism since the early 1980s and rapid advances in new media technologies since the early 1990s. This book focuses on the ways in which these social changes relate to, as well as translate into, institutional religious change. Indeed, some of the most significant social changes that have affected Western societies in the past three to four decades have been directly market economy and media related. The spread of neoliberalism has brought a range of thoroughgoing restructurings of the global political economy, facilitated the emergence of transnational corporations, furthered the increasing financialization of the global economy, and greatly aided the definitive establishment of consumerism as the principal cultural ethos of late-modernity.8 These developments have gone hand in hand with and been further propelled by continuous advances in new digital media and information and communications technologies (ICTs). As Rothenbuhler notes, “From family life to politics to globalization, the sense that the world is in transition is widespread, and communication scholars, politicians, public commentators, and lay observers alike see that the media, conceived broadly, are key participants if not the very infrastructure of those changes.”9 How have these changes affected the contemporary Western institutional religious field? The sociological study of religion currently finds itself in a transitory phase marked by the rethinking and abandonment of earlier monolithic secularization theories coupled with a growing emphasis on the need for novel perspectives and further theoretical innovation.10 While there is wide agreement among sociologists of religion that the general character of religion and religious life and practice has undergone significant changes and transformations following the abovementioned developments, there is less agreement, and indeed some degree of confusion, as to how these changes should best be approached and conceptualized. The growing scholarship on markets and religion and religion and media does, however, provide us with useful perspectives to build on.

The study of religion and markets Scholarly inquiry into the relationship between religion, markets, capitalism, economics, and consumer culture has developed into a broad and multidisciplinary area of study. As religions and religious communities have historically often formed integral components of the very fabric of the societies and cultures in which they have been embedded, they have naturally always been deeply

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Introduction

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engaged and implicated in various types of economic affairs and practices. In this sense, as Passas observes, “it appears that there is no clear-cut distinction separating religious organizations from commercial ones and the two are best conceived as the ideal-type ends of a continuum.”11 Although historical and contemporary relationships between religion and wider socioeconomic arrangements long remained a somewhat underresearched area within the study of religion in general, a substantial and constantly growing scholarly literature has now emerged on the subject. Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing to this day, the study of religion and “markets” (however that term is understood) has largely emerged and evolved during a time period that has been marked by an accelerating spread and increasing perpetuation and normalization of economistic and marketassociated language and terminology across ever more social and cultural domains. The general new social and cultural emphasis on economics and market transactions and behaviors that was ushered in through the spread of neoliberalism during the 1980s was also extended to the world of academia, including the sociological study of religion. Indeed, in 1993, Warner12 announced the emergence of a “new paradigm” in the sociological study of religion in the United States, spearheaded by a set of earlier studies13 that viewed changes and developments in the religious field within a framework for an “open market system” for religion. The so-called new paradigm heralded a new general approach to the study of religious change on the whole that positioned itself in direct opposition to the secularization paradigm, which had dominated the sociological study of religion since at least the late 1960s. In sharp contrast to the secularization paradigm, the new paradigm approach argued that free market competition in the field of religion (as was largely the case in the United States) was conducive to religious vitality, whereas the enduring presence of religious “monopolies” (as was largely the case throughout much of Europe) instead worked to inhibit religious vitality, thus aiding further religious stagnation and decline. The new paradigm approach essentially remains based on a liberal-utilitarian understanding of the market as a principal organizing mechanism of social life as a whole—an idea we shall discuss in more detail in Chapter 3. In line with this understanding, new paradigm scholarship tends to view the religious field as constituting a de facto market that, like any other market, is governed by market logics and imperatives such as competition, supply, and demand, and that comprises actual religious products, goods, services, and other provisions. Consequently, changes and developments in the religious field are viewed as being best studied and understood using theoretical perspectives derived from

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economic theory. For example, Roof ’s widely read Spiritual Marketplace, published in 1999, is based on the general premise that “an open, competitive religious economy makes possible an expanded spiritual marketplace which, like any marketplace, must be understood in terms both of ‘demand’ and ‘supply.’ ”14 Aiming to understand notable transformations in the religious landscape of the United States since the early post–World War II era, Roof contended that “religion in any age exists in a dynamic and interactive relationship with its cultural environment; and, in our time [the 1990s] we witness an expansion and elaboration of spiritual themes that amounts to a major restructuring of religious market dynamics.”15 A more recent example of a study that balances between a de facto market approach and what could be termed a market analogy approach is found in Einstein’s Brands of Faith (2008), which accounts for the many ways in which the rise of consumer culture has affected the general character of the religious landscape in the United States and propelled a substantial increase in marketing and branding practices on the part of religious communities and organizations themselves. Expressly situating her study in the new paradigm tradition, Einstein maintains that “viewing religion as a product, rather than as a social mandate, brings considerable insight into understanding not only why religion has flourished in the United States, but also why it has been marketed historically as well as today.”16 The new paradigm approach has by now become widely established in the sociological study of religion in the United States. Although market metaphors have more recently become increasingly common in the sociological study of religion in Europe as well,17 the new paradigm approach has generally not been regarded as being particularly useful or applicable to the study of religious change in the European context. The notion of the market as an organizing principle of the social was extended to that of a fundamental principle of individual behavior in the work of rational choice theorists such as Stark, Finke, and Iannaccone during the 1980s and 1990s. In a conscious attempt to further develop the new paradigm in even sharper contrast to the “old paradigm” (i.e., the secularization paradigm), in Acts of Faith,18 Stark and Finke developed a general theory of religion that approached religion not “as an expression of human irrationality or non-rationality,” but instead “as a product of rationality.”19 The rational choice theory of religion thus came to root the explanation for all developments in the religious field and people’s religious behaviors in the rational self-interested pursuits of individuals. While rational choice theory has become widely applied in the study of religion in the United States in particular, it has also been the subject of a great deal of debate and criticism.20 For present purposes, it is enough to note, as Gauthier,

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Martikainen, and Woodhead do, that rational choice theory “assumes a classical economic account of a marketplace composed of utilitarian-minded ‘rational actors,’ and therefore has less to say about contemporary consumer society, with its emphasis on the emotional dimensions of the creation, supply and satisfaction of consumer demand.”21 Significant as the debates on the new paradigm and rational choice approaches have been for the general sociological study of the dynamics of religious change, the scholarship on religion, markets, and consumer culture also encompasses a much wider range of more specialized studies. These include studies on various types of historical relationships between religion, markets, and economic arrangements, usually those of Christian churches in Europe and the United States;22 studies primarily focused on various types of cases of the general commodification of religion (or certain forms of religion) in contemporary (mostly Western) consumer-capitalist societies;23 studies on religion, marketing, branding, and advertising;24 explorations of the impact of consumer culture on contemporary Christian life and practice from a theological perspective;25 studies dealing with the commodification of various forms of alternative spirituality;26 and a growing number of studies focusing on the impact of market imperatives and consumer culture ideologies and practices in various Islamic contexts.27 So far, however, few studies in the area have been explicitly concerned with exploring the ways in which currently ongoing changes in the field of religion are reflective of more general processes of socioeconomic and media-related change.

A new approach to the study of religion in market society In spite of the wealth of contributions already made, the question about how best to approach and conceptualize changes in the religious field in a society and culture marked by the ever-present influence of market imperatives, conspicuous consumerism, and new media remains a pertinent one. In a series of more recent contributions, Gauthier, Martikainen, and Woodhead have argued for the need to construct a new “alternative paradigm for understanding religion today, outside the secularization/postsecularism episteme.”28 This, they argue, is because the social scientific study of religion within the secularization paradigm has tended to “overstate the political and institutional dimensions of religion while failing to recognize the growing importance of economics in structuring all spheres of social life since at least the 1980s, under the guise, namely, of consumerism and neoliberalism.”29 The need for a new approach is further motivated by the ways in which socioeconomic change and the rise of consumerism

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as a dominant social and cultural ethos during the second half of the twentieth century has coincided with radical transformations in the Western religious field. As has been thoroughly documented by numerous studies, the post–World War II period has witnessed quite a dramatic decline in institutional forms of religion coupled with an increasing emphasis on the subjective over the collective and the experiential over reason across different types of religions and religious traditions.30 In contrast to much previous research in the area of religion, markets, and socioeconomics, this new approach does not limit its focus to the (both presumed and actual) effects of market logics, consumer culture ideologies, and new media on different aspects of contemporary religious life, but is instead interested in developing a more comprehensive and cohesive interpretive framework that insists “on the coherence and the systematic character of certain global reconfigurations affecting religion by recasting these against the backdrop of the globalization of economic ideologies and consumer practices, which have gone hand in hand with the development, democratization, and dissemination of communication technologies, especially digital media.”31 In contrast to new paradigm and especially rational choice theory perspectives, such a broader interpretative framework does not amount to an argument for the reduction of social realities to economic determinants,32 but should rather be understood as an attempt at drawing our attention to “the noneconomic [i.e., the ideological, ideational, and discursive] dimensions and effects of market economics and their correlates in globalizing societies.”33 This approach to the character and fate of religion in neoliberal market society is thus one that strives to highlight the role of “market ideas”34—in the sense of market economics–inspired ideologies and discourses, coupled with continued advances in new media technologies—as prime vectors of contemporary social and cultural change on the whole, including religious change. Indeed, as Gauthier, Martikainen, and Woodhead point out, the spread of neoliberalism and the increasing permeation and normalization of market imperatives and economistic language and terminology across ever more social and cultural domains has already developed into a central topic of inquiry throughout several disciplines in the social sciences. It is, therefore, they argue, “pressing to continue this work in relation to religion, asking fresh questions about how contemporary religious phenomena may be implicated in changing consumer and market logics.”35 While these developments can be explored in relation to a wide range of religious phenomena and types of religious communities, in alignment with the new approach outlined above, this book focuses on the effects of an increasingly marketized and mediatized general social and cultural environment on

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Introduction

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long-established traditional and institutional Christian Protestant churches in the Western world. Following from its partial focus on general processes of economy- and market-related social change, the book explores currently ongoing changes in the institutional Christian Protestant religious field in relation to the theoretical concept of marketization, understood as “the permeation of market exchange as a social principle”36 and the process whereby different social and cultural domains and subsystems are gradually but increasingly visibly “subjected to a deliberate policy of economizing.”37 As noted above, processes of marketization have gone hand in hand with developments in media and new media technologies. The effects of these developments on the contemporary religious field have been both profound and diverse. It remains clear, though, that the constantly accelerating development of “technologies, institutional arrangements, circulatory systems, and shifting modalities of reception” that are commonly collectively referred to as “media” have increasingly come both to provide the environments and to set the parameters for how modern institutions and organizations, including religious institutions and organizations, of virtually all strands organize, function, interact, construct, express, and communicate their messages and activities (both outward and inward) in ways unknown to previous generations.38

The study of religion and media Although various relationships, both past and present, between religion and media have received plenty of scholarly attention from historians, sociologists, anthropologists, theologians, and cultural critics alike,39 the bulk of this work has not been specifically concerned with studying or theorizing the role of media in processes of religious change. As Hoover and Lundby argued already in 1997: “Sociologists of religion . . . have tended to avoid the problematization of media as rendering any unique contribution to modernity or postmodernity. They have not arrived at any general theory of how media fundamentally changes cultures—and religion—in spite of the fact that much such work . . . is highly suggestive.”40 They went on to argue how rethinking the relationship between religion and media has “to begin with more general reflections on media, religion, and culture as they are embedded in changes in society.”41 Although great improvements have been made in this regard within both the study of religion and media and the sociological study of religion during the past couple of decades, there is undoubtedly still some truth to this observation.

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A more sustained and cohesive scholarship on the relationship between religion and media had already emerged in the latter part of the 1980s following increased scholarly interest in the phenomenon of televangelism and the rise of the Religious Right in the United States.42 During past decades, the scholarship on media and religion has grown exponentially and broadened its scope to the study of representations of religion in different types of mass media;43 novel theorizing on the appropriation of new media and media technologies by religious groups themselves;44 the study of the relationship between religion, the internet, and digital technologies;45 and studies of the relationship between religion and media reception and media use in the everyday lives of individuals46—to name just a few areas where considerable advances have been made during the past decade alone. In addition, a lively and still very much ongoing debate on religion and the theoretical concept of mediatization has also emerged—that is, the gradual process of social and cultural change whereby the influence of the media (understood broadly as institutions, technologies, infrastructures, environments, and commercial enterprise) has gradually expanded within virtually every domain of society and culture and public and private everyday life.47 The theoretical concept of mediatization provides a particularly useful framework through which to approach the broader social and cultural impact of modern-time developments in media and their associated technologies. This is not least because it offers a framework through which to explore the ways in which developments in media have been deeply intertwined with wider processes of marketization.48 In its partial focus on media-related change, this book thus utilizes the theoretical concept of mediatization in direct combination with that of marketization. These two theoretical concepts should, however, primarily be viewed as “sensitizing concepts” and heuristic devices rather than firmly bounded definitive concepts. In particular, they should be viewed as encompassing both a set of actual as well as ideational and discursive dimensions.

A discursive approach to social and institutional religious change In focusing on the twin processes of marketization and mediatization, the intention is by no means to argue that markets and media constitute the only factors shaping religion today. Nor is the intention to argue that a focus on marketization and mediatization would provide the “best” way to study contemporary processes of institutional religious change. Having said that, the approach of this

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Introduction

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book is nevertheless grounded in the firm contention that a serious and systematic consideration of the impact of processes of marketization and mediatization as key vectors of social and cultural change in the post–World War II era has great potential to nuance and enrich already existing theoretical thinking on contemporary institutional religious change. This potential is, however, crucially dependent on the capacity of researchers to provide firmly empirically grounded arguments about exactly how processes of marketization and mediatization work to effect social, cultural, and institutional religious change. This book directs particular attention to the ways in which processes of marketization and mediatization have been accompanied by the spread of a set of powerful discourses and discursive formations that have proliferated throughout ever more social and cultural domains and increasingly come to underpin contemporary criteria of effective institutional and organizational life, agency, practice, and communication. The focus of this book thus lies firmly on the ideational and discursive dimensions of processes of marketization and mediatization. The book is further based on the premise that the ideational and discursive dimensions of marketization and mediatization have had the strongest and most clearly observable effect on long-established institutional Christian Protestant churches that have retained close structural relationships to states and core social establishments, and for which the gradual general transition from a previous vertical national-statist model of social organization toward a horizontal, deregulated, and market-inspired network model has been most challenging.49 Indeed, as argued by Gauthier, in an increasingly marketized and mediatized social and cultural environment, institutional forms of religion which correspond most to the bureaucratized, rationalized, deritualized, vertical and nationally bound characteristics of the earlier state regulatory model are in decline all over the world, while those religious phenomena which have embraced the marketised, mediatised, emotional, holistic, autonomous, entrepreneurial, personalised and voluntary characteristics of the consumer model seem to be faring best.50

In order to address the ideational and discursive impact of processes of marketization and mediatization, this book adopts a discourse and language-centered approach to processes of social and institutional religious change. As such, this book engages in a very particular form of empirical analysis that aims to bring the ideational and discursive effects of processes of marketization and mediatization on the present-day character of traditional institutional Christian Protestant churches into clearer focus.

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Following Fairclough, a discourse-focused study of the dialectical relationship between social, discursive, and religious change can usefully include a historical variable aimed at drawing our attention to “qualitative differences between different historical epochs in the social functioning of discourse.”51 Though such a historical variable should not be included for the sake of being able to identify any “radical disjunctures” in discursive practices between different, supposedly clearly delineated historical periods, it can nevertheless be of great help in identifying “qualitative shifts in the ‘cultural dominant’ ” with respect to the “nature of the discursive practices which have most salience and impact in a particular epoch.”52 In other words, striving to identify which discourses and practices that appear to hold particular prominence and salience across different social and cultural fields during a certain time period provides us with a good starting point for exploring the dialectical and mutually affective relationship between processes of religious change and wider social and cultural change. For example, as Fairclough argues, “contemporary social life demands highly developed dialogical capacities,” as evidenced, among other things, in a “great increase in the demand for. . . communicative labour” and a general “notable new focus on training in the ‘communicative skills’ ” across a range of social domains and types of institutions and organizations.53 Another closely related notable feature of contemporary discursive change can be found in the increasing general shift toward a consumer or “promotional” culture, central aspects of which have been “the incorporation of new domains into the commodity market,” a “general reconstruction of social life on a market basis,” and a “generalization of promotion as a communicative function. . . across orders of discourse.”54 Moreover, as Fairclough observes, the common conception of contemporary capitalism as a “knowledge-driven” or “knowledge-based” socioeconomic order “implies that it is also ‘discourse-driven,’ suggesting that language may have a more significant role in contemporary socioeconomic changes than it has had in the past.”55 Though we should remain wary of succumbing to economic determinism, the notion that the increasingly widespread perpetuation and normalization of economic and market-related language and discourse has ushered in a new “cultural dominant” across Western societies (and indeed beyond) finds wide support among political economists, social theorists, and sociologists alike. Thrift, for example, highlights how capitalism has become a “theoretical enterprise in which various essentially virtual notions (network, the knowledge economy, the new economy, community of practice) are able to take on flesh as, increasingly, the world is made in these notions’ likeness.”56 Bourdieu and Wacquant, in their turn, identify the emergence and establishment of a new global vocabulary or

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“new planetary vulgate” that “is endowed with the performative power to bring into being the very realities it claims to describe.”57 These thoughts are further echoed by Mautner who, quoting Prasad and Caprioni, writes that “marketisation is a societal mega-trend showing in almost archetypical fashion how ‘at any particular point in time, certain patterns of meaning become more entrenched than others and take on the appearance of objective reality.’ ”58 Indeed, she goes as far as asserting that market-associated language and vocabulary have generally become naturalized to such an extent so as to “make alternative, nonmarketised views almost unsayable and, crucially, unthinkable.”59 Though this new cultural dominant is more firmly connected to the increasing general marketization of society and culture on the whole, it is important to note that developments in media and new media technologies have been deeply implicated in its establishment, and not least with regard to the proliferation of discourses of an “information economy” or “information society.” Apart from a few notable exceptions,60 studies within the sociology of religion have, so far, rarely devoted any serious attention to the role of language and discourse as a key component in contemporary processes of religious change. Indeed, in spite of the wide proliferation and establishment of discourse theory and discourse analysis throughout the humanities and social sciences, discourse analytic approaches have only fairly recently started to become more widely utilized in the academic study of religion. Whereas it should be acknowledged that great advances have been made in the discursive study of religion in recent years,61 only very few studies have so far utilized discourse analytic perspectives as a way of advancing our understanding of contemporary processes of religious change. This book constitutes an attempt at combining discourse analysis as both a theory of language and methodology with theoretical perspectives drawn from the sociology of religion, religion and media studies, social theory, and political economy in an effort to develop an integrated approach to the study of the ways in which social change in its discursive dimensions is dialectically related to ongoing processes of institutional religious change. As such, this book is as much concerned with theoretical development as it is with empirical analysis. The aim of the book is thus by no means to simply “prove” the effects of marketization and mediatization on contemporary institutional Christian Protestant church life and practice but rather to explore the ways in which the discursive and ideational dimensions of marketization and mediatization have affected the ways that traditional institutional Christian Protestant churches themselves have come to view and react to the broader social and cultural environment that they currently find themselves in.

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Main focus and material The main aims of the book as outlined above are explored in relation to a set of institutional Christian Protestant churches in three regions across the Western world: the United States, Britain, and the Nordic countries. In the context of the United States, our focus will be on three of the so-called mainline American Protestant churches:  the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), the United Methodist Church (UMC), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Whereas the PCUSA and the UMC both represent a stronger evangelical heritage, the ELCA instead represents a stronger Augsburg Confession Reformation heritage. It is worth noting that modern-day developments in North American mainline churches have received far less scholarly attention compared to that which has been devoted to other major currents in American Christianity, such as Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism.62 In the context of Britain, our focus will be on the Church of England (CoE), which still retains the status of state church. In the context of the Nordic countries, our focus will be on the historical Lutheran majority churches of Denmark (Church of Denmark, CoD), Sweden (Church of Sweden, CoS), and Finland (Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, ELCF). Though the CoS and ELCF have both been disestablished and enjoy higher levels of autonomy from the state, the CoD still holds the position of official state church with a lesser degree of autonomy from the state. As will be explored in more detail in Chapter  4, whereas the churches explored in this book display many notable differences, they also share many notable similarities. Although in different ways, they all share a historical experience of deep structural embeddedness within their respective national, social, and cultural contexts. In Britain and the Nordic countries, this experience is one of firm historical embeddedness and establishment as national majority state churches. In the United States, where no official or formal religious establishment has ever existed and the religious field has always been organized along congregational and denominational lines, the experience has been rather different. But here, too, up until at least the first decades of the twentieth century, the so-called Seven Sisters of American Protestantism made up a “virtual” religious establishment in the United States.63 The churches explored in this book can thus well be seen to constitute long-established social institutions in both the formal or “primary” as well as the informal or “secondary” senses in that they have all traditionally materialized in dense organizational structures as well as been highly formative for, and indeed provided the very foundations for, social and cultural traditions, morals, practices, and mores.64

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Introduction

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The similarities among these churches also extend to their general organizational structures, contemporary outlooks, theology and ecclesiology, and current social and cultural positions within their respective countries. To varying degrees, they all display most or all of the following characteristics: (1) They all have long histories and have all been varyingly shaped by historical experience; (2)  they all display high degrees of institutionalization and bureaucratization and tend to be democratically organized according to a territorial parish model; (3) they all retain various types of close, both historic and contemporary, structural relationships to particular nation-states and national social establishments; (4) they are all characterized by an increasing general openness to liberal, modernist, and progressive theologies; and (5) they put less emphasis on proselytization in favor of an increasing emphasis on social issues, civic engagement, welfare, and egalitarianism. These churches also share some largely similar experiences of modern-era general processes of religious change. Since the 1960s, they have all experienced continued, and indeed accelerating, decline on virtually all fronts, ranging from dwindling membership figures to a general loss in social and cultural position and influence. As a consequence, the discourse of these churches has increasingly become marked by a general language of crisis, survival, and need for thoroughgoing structural and organizational change. In focusing on these types of traditional institutional Christian Protestant churches, this book deliberately excludes Christian churches of a nondenominational or “post-denominational” character, such as independent evangelical, Pentecostal, and charismatic congregations—which have typically displayed a much higher capacity and willingness to adapt to the present-day media environment, market-oriented modes of organizational culture, and the consumption-oriented sensibilities of modern populations. However, evangelical, Pentecostal, and charismatic churches’ various engagements in an increasingly marketized and mediatized social and cultural environment have already received extensive scholarly treatment elsewhere. This book also excludes the Roman Catholic Church from its analysis. There are several reasons for this. Although the Catholic Church makes up a sizable and significant denomination in many of the predominantly Protestant countries explored in this book (especially in the United States), different national Catholic denominations nevertheless remain firmly part of the wider global Catholic Church. Their selfunderstanding is thus generally less national-establishmentarian compared to the long-established and much more nationally bound institutional Protestant churches. Moreover, although different national Catholic churches possess quite

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a large degree of independence, they still remain enmeshed in the wider structure of the global Catholic Church. For these reasons, it would be difficult to do justice to the effects of marketization and mediatization on the current character of the Catholic Church as a whole unless the entire book was devoted to it. This book is instead interested in exploring the ideational and discursive effects of marketization and mediatization across a wider range of institutional church contexts.

Official church discourse The primary material analyzed in this book consists of a larger sample of “official” institutional Christian Protestant church discourse. Put simply, by “official” church discourse is meant the type of discourse that is produced by and within these churches themselves. Such discourse is most commonly found in official church strategy documents, statements, reports, and protocols of various sorts, as well as on official church Web sites. Examples include documents on church organization, statutes, policies, communication, and new initiatives of various sorts. Such documents tend to be publicly accessible and directed toward a larger audience, such as all church employees, members, or the general public as a whole. They are usually available for download through official church Web sites. The officially sanctioned discourse of a given church thus expresses and outlines its official stance (both outward and inward) on various topics such as, for example, its view on modern information and communication technologies and their implications for the church in question, or its own understanding of itself and its own regeneration within its own social and cultural context. Given its focus on marketization and mediatization, this book primarily focuses on official church discourse on communication and organizational renewal-related topics. A total of seventy-nine publicly available separate official church documents were thoroughly screened for keywords on organizational structure and renewal-related and communication-related themes. A thorough screening was also conducted of all of the official Web sites of all of the churches explored in this book. A  total of forty-seven official church documents were selected for further analysis. These included both shorter documents of only a few pages to documents spanning several hundreds of pages. A total of thirty-three of these figure in the analyses of this book.

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Introduction

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Structure of the book The book is divided into two main parts. The first main part, comprising Chapters 2 and 3, outlines the main methodological, analytical, and theoretical approaches of the book. The second main part, comprising Chapters 4 and 5, is devoted to the empirical exploration and analysis of the ideational and discursive effects of marketization and mediatization on the present-day character of the abovementioned institutional Christian Protestant churches in light of their publicly available official discourse. Having outlined the main focus and aims of the book above, Chapter 2 proceeds to outline the main analytical and methodological approach of the book. It accounts for discourse analysis as a tool in the study of social, cultural, and religious change, and explicates the discourse analytical framework and terminological apparatus that is employed and operationalized in upcoming chapters. The chapter opens with an overview of the concept of discourse and its main theoretical underpinnings. The following section then moves to account for discourse analysis as a method in direct relation to the main research questions and material of this book. The third section focuses on the discursive dimensions of social institutions and organizations and outlines some of the main ways that discourse analysis provides us with tools for studying institutional and organizational change. This section also accounts for the phenomenon of the technologization of discourse, which provides the key framework in relation to which the analysis in subsequent chapters unfolds. Overall, the chapter provides a comparatively detailed and comprehensive account of the main dimensions and levels in the social functioning of discourse to aid the successful analytical transition from one level of analysis to the next. Chapter 3 outlines the main theoretical approach of the book. It focuses on the twin processes of marketization and mediatization as prime vectors of social institutional and organizational change. The chapter is divided into two main parts. The first main part focuses on the concept of marketization and the increasing proliferation of market-associated discourse, language, and terminology throughout ever more social institutional and organizational domains, including that of religious institutions and organizations. It starts out with tracing the historical development of the notion of the “market” as an organizing principle of the social. It then continues with a brief general overview of the most notable socioeconomic and cultural changes of Western societies since approximately the start of the post– World War II era up until the late 1970s. This is followed by a discussion of the

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main ideological tenets of neoliberalism, the establishment of neoliberalism as a new global political economic order, and its effects on the socioeconomic makeup of contemporary Western societies. The chapter then proceeds to discuss the discursive dimensions of marketization and its most notable effects on contemporary social institutional and organizational life. The first main part of the chapter closes with some more specific observations on the effects of marketization on the contemporary religious field, and especially as they relate to the changing character and self-understanding of traditional institutional Christian churches. The second main part of the chapter moves to discuss late-modern developments in media and Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) and their effects on contemporary social institutional and organizational life and practice. This discussion primarily unfolds in relation to the theoretical concept of mediatization and the ways in which media and their associated technologies have developed into an increasingly integral and formative element of late-modern society and culture on the whole. In critical dialogue with previous research in the area, this is followed by an exploration of the discursive dimensions of processes of mediatization. The chapter closes with a discussion of the ways in which the continuous development of the internet and digital technologies have affected media and communication discourses and practices of Western institutional Christian churches. Chapter 4 turns to explore the ways in which marketization- and new media associated discourse has made its way into the official strategic discourse of the abovementioned traditional institutional Christian Protestant churches. The analysis focuses on notable examples from the official discourse of all of these churches. Each region is explored in its own respective section and each section is preceded by a general discussion of a limited set of developments in the religious landscapes of these regions that are particularly relevant for an adequate understanding of each case. The analysis of each case is also preceded by a brief overview of the historical development and current state of each church. Chapter 5 is devoted to a more detailed investigation of the ideational and discursive effects of marketization and mediatization within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. The analysis in this chapter proceeds in the same manner as in the previous one. In addition, this chapter also ventures beyond the realm of discourse per se and considers some of the actual practical effects of processes of marketization and mediatization within the ELCF. The chapter closes with a more detailed account of the ways in which the ELCF has engaged in a “strong” process of organizational mediatization. The book closes with a brief postscript that includes some general reflections and suggestions for further research.

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Part One

Theoretical and Analytic Framework

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Discourse Analysis and the Study of Social and Religious Change

Since the so-called linguistic turn of the humanities and social sciences in the 1960s, and the subsequent “discursive” turn in the early 1980s,1 there has emerged a wide range of varyingly related approaches for studying how our language use and modes of representation fundamentally affect and shape our understandings of reality and our constructions of meaningful worlds. Indeed, as Fairclough comments:  “The interest in language in recent social theory is substantially attributable to understandings of modernity which in one way or other centre upon language or imply an enhanced role for language in modern social life as compared with pre-modern social life.”2 Frequently coupled together under the heading “discourse analysis,” various approaches to the social functioning of language in modern times have become firmly established and widely employed throughout many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, including the study of religion, as was already briefly discussed in the Introduction. Notwithstanding the large variety of different approaches, most discourse analytic perspectives share the same meta-theoretical/epistemological underpinning, namely that of social constructionism. The meta-theoretical/epistemological orientation of social constructionism is based primarily on the idea, and indeed conviction, that we as people, as social and communicative beings, in various ways are constantly and continually involved in collaboratively constructing and reconstructing our own sense of ourselves and our conceptions of reality. In large part, social constructionism thus centers on the long-debated meta-epistemological predicament concerning the question on what grounds we as humans can be said to be able to gain “knowledge” about the world that surrounds us separately from our own individual experiences of it.3 The term “social construction” was originally introduced by Berger and Luckmann in their hugely influential treatise The Social Construction of Reality,4

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which also played an important role in establishing the theme of social construction as a topic of scholarly inquiry.5 Though important precursors for social constructionist perspectives can be found across many different disciplines (e.g., philosophy, psychology, linguistics, social interactionism, the sociology of scientific knowledge), most commentators single out debates on the nature of language and representation within the fields of semiotics and literary theory in the 1960s as having played a particularly important role in the definitive establishment of social constructionism as a recognized meta-theoretical and metaepistemological orientation.6 These so-called post-structuralist debates centered on a radical questioning of modernist meta-narratives and the modernist “picture metaphor” view of language, that is, the view that words and language correspond to and are able to communicate pictures of the world “as it is.”7 In sharp contrast to the modernist view, post-structuralist scholars instead emphasized how words and sentences always gain their particular meanings in the particular human interactional and relational contexts in which they appear and are used.8 Particular focus was directed at how our ways of constructing our conceptions of reality together through language and other modes of representation not only fundamentally shape our own understandings of ourselves and the world, but also play a central role in mediating, validating, and strengthening power relations and hegemonic views of reality within society and culture on the whole.9 For example, Foucault10 famously used the term “discourse” to refer to such representations and also developed his own influential “genealogical” method through which to historically trace the origins and developments of such representations in order to reveal their continuing effect on modern society and culture.11 Although it is important to recognize “post-structuralism” as an umbrella term that encompasses a wide range of different viewpoints and perspectives,12 for the purposes of our present discussion, it is enough to note that the post-structuralist questioning of modernist epistemologies and metanarratives became instrumental in bringing about what is commonly referred to as a general “legitimation crisis” within the humanities and social sciences.13 As Murphy pointed out, “although many theoretical and philosophical questions remained unanswered by this labor, its net effect was to change the way many scholars understood their own research.”14 Drawing on the above understanding of the nature of language and representation, social constructionism holds that communication and relationships are central to human meaning-making, as it is primarily through our language use and other modes of representation that we construct and maintain meaningful worlds. From a social constructionist perspective, language is therefore not

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adequately understood in terms of a “neutral information-carrying vehicle,” but rather as something that always also “creates what it refers to.”15 Although social constructionist perspectives have developed in many different versions, the following set of interrelated key assumptions remains widely shared by most social constructionists. First among these is a critical stance toward received and taken-for-granted understandings of knowledge and reality.16 Second, as possible constructions of reality and the world are multiple, all modes of understanding are viewed as being intimately tied to and contingent upon particular historical, social, and cultural contexts. Third, social constructionism holds that all forms of knowledge and understanding are consensual in character and “sustained by social processes.”17 Fourth, social constructionism also maintains that “knowledge and social action go together.”18 Different constructions of the world invite different forms of social action and will therefore have “implications for what it is permissible for different people to do, and for how they may treat others.”19 It is worth underlining that discourse is central to all of these key assumptions. In contrast to realist and post-positivist epistemological approaches, social constructionism holds that all knowledge necessarily must be viewed as always being partial and contingent upon historical, social, and cultural context. It is important to recognize, though, that this equally must apply to social constructionist claims themselves.20 As a consequence of this, social constructionists have often been accused of adopting an ultimately self-refuting radical relativist epistemological position that denies the existence of a material, physical reality outside language.21 However, as Hibberd notes, in contrast to realist and postpositivist epistemology, “the constructionist’s rejection of an absolute concept of truth extends to a nihilism about truth, and to a quite different account of the nature of assertion.”22 As she goes on to point out: “In many cases, the critics’ charge of relativism and self-refutation against the metatheory is ignoratio elenchi; it assumes the legitimacy of concepts which constructionists explicitly reject.”23 It should be stressed, though, that the vast majority of social constructionists do not reject the existence of a material, physical reality outside language. This does not, however, mean that the language–material/physical reality debate can simply be left unaddressed in discourse analytic research. Indeed, many previously established discourse analytic frameworks situate themselves in relation to this debate by adopting a critical realist approach to discourse based on what could be termed a “moderate” or “contingent” form of social constructionism and which distinguishes between construal and construction in the social functioning of discourse. For example, the critical realist approach of

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Fairclough24 recognizes the existence of an external reality, a “real world,” outside language, “which exists irrespective of whether or how well we know and understand it.”25 Though this approach still maintains that discourse functions to construct social reality as meaningful in particular ways, it simultaneously also recognizes that, while the world can be construed (i.e., represented) through discourse in a large variety of different ways, not all construals end up having equally strong socially constructive effects. Rather, which particular construals end up having the strongest constructive effects is contingent upon not only power relations but also the “properties of whatever parts or aspects of the world are being constructed.”26 Returning now to the concept of discourse, we might start by noting that it has been developed in a range of different directions and been used, and continues to be used, in a wide range of different and sometimes contrasting ways. Even so, when based on a general social constructionist understanding of language as thoroughly constitutive of social reality, it is possible to formulate an understanding of the concept of discourse that is sufficiently specific while simultaneously retaining sufficiently broad applicability. As Fairclough observes, in spite of the large variety of different understandings, at its most general, the concept of discourse tends to be most commonly employed in one of the three following senses: as an element of meaning-making in social processes, as the language and types of language use that are associated with particular social fields and types of social practice, and as a “way of construing aspects of the world associated with a particular social perspective.”27 When it comes to the issue of definition, and given the huge abundance of already existing definitions, it is important to recognize that any definition of discourse will inevitably constitute a scholarly analytical construct that will always be contingent upon the particular perspectives, interests, and disciplinary anchoring of particular researchers, the theoretical underpinnings of a particular study, and the particular form of discourse analytical framework that is used.28 For these reasons, an “all-purpose” definition of discourse is not only unattainable, but also undesirable. While accepting these caveats, it nevertheless remains pivotal that each study that employs the term “discourse” provides a reasonably detailed account of what discourse is taken to mean within the context of that particular piece of research. Since this study employs discourse analysis as a way of investigating changing discursive practices as one facet of broader processes of social and institutional religious change it consequently employs an understanding of discourse that is suitable for that task but that simultaneously also retains firm connections to

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established discourse analytic frameworks. The following general definition of discourse provided by Burr encapsulates most of the main properties that tend to be most commonly associated with the term: A discourse refers to a set of meanings, metaphors, representations, images, stories, statements and so on that in some way together produce a particular version of events. It refers to a particular picture that is painted of an event, person or class of persons, a particular way of representing it in a certain light.29

For the purposes of developing a definition of discourse that is more suitable for a social-analysis focused analysis of discourse, however, this general definition can usefully be complemented by the following one provided by Hall: Discourses are ways of referring to or constructing knowledge about a particular topic of practice: a cluster (or formation) of ideas, images and practices, which provide ways of talking about, forms of knowledge and conduct associated with a particular topic, social activity or institutional site in society.30

A central point that emerges from both of these definitions is an understanding of discourse as both constructive and constitutive of social and cultural reality. The basic point to note is that different discourses construct the world in different ways; each presenting a different account of a given phenomenon or state of affairs, each highlighting certain aspects or elements at the expense of others, and each purporting to articulate and present the “truth” about that given phenomenon or state of affairs.31 Discourses thus play a highly significant role in the shaping of social relationships, the positioning of subjects, and the perpetuation and reproduction of power relations and dominant ideologies and hegemonies, as well as in what counts as “knowledge” in a given wider societal and cultural context.32 In this way, discourses underpin and “hook” into normative ideas and commonsense notions, thereby creating “shortcut paths” into dominant notions about good and bad, right and wrong, normal and abnormal, etc.33 In this way, discourses serve to position subjects in a dual sense—as both producers and addressees of discourse. To engage in discursive practice thus entails not only a positioning of one’s own subject but also the subjectivities of the person/persons that are varyingly addressed by particular discursive formations, that is, sets or clusters of discourses that govern certain broader domains of thought within the particular social institutional settings of, for example, politics, economics, or religion.34 There, thus, exists a “two-way” mutually affective relationship between discourses and people’s utterances and writings.35 As such, argues Burr, a discourse

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“can be thought of as a kind of frame of reference, a conceptual backcloth against which our utterances can be interpreted.”36 The main point to note is that we enter the realm of discourse as soon as we start to speak, write, or represent in any other way.37 Discourses should therefore be understood as constituting more than just ways of representing and conveying particular accounts of certain phenomena or states of affairs:  They also constitute resources for meaning-making, that is, ways of construing certain phenomena or states of affairs as meaningful in particular ways in particular contexts.38 It is, however, important to recognize that we always base our continuous relational construals and constructions of reality on already existing construals and constructions and ways of understanding the world. Discourses, therefore, are never static, nor do they function in isolation from one another. Rather, every discourse and every discursive construal and construction will always be based on and be formulated against the backdrop of already existing construals, constructions, and representations. Indeed, discourses constantly mutate and cross-fertilize in various ways. More often than not, particular phenomena or states of affairs tend to be simultaneously surrounded by multiple, related, mutually supporting, or competing discourses.39 In this capacity, discourses also constitute resources of transformative social action and social practice. As Gergen points out, we continually reflexively form new “generative discourses . . . that simultaneously challenge existing traditions of understanding, and offer new possibilities for action.”40 The transformative properties of discourse form the basis for a set of particular approaches to discourse and the analysis of discourse that are usually referred to as “critical discourse studies” or “critical discourse analysis” (CDA). CDA denotes a particular type of normative discourse analytic research that is concerned primarily with revealing the function of discourse in underpinning, perpetuating, and sustaining various types of “social wrongs” (e.g., social inequalities, marginalization, exclusion, etc.) with the expressed aim of seeking and suggesting possibilities to mitigate these. As such, the notion of ideology, understood as “meaning in the service of power”41 is central to most CDA-grounded work.42 An equally central notion is that of hegemony. As principally developed in the social theory of Gramsci,43 hegemony can be defined as “leadership as well as domination across the economic, political, cultural and ideological domains of a society.”44 Hegemony thus refers to the struggle of the dominant classes to win the consent of subordinate classes in order to maintain the status quo, that is, their own domination, through persuasion and integration rather than direct

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coercion or force. However, as hegemony is unstable in its nature it is never absolute and always only partially and temporarily achieved. As such, hegemony can be thought of as the “focus of constant struggle around points of greatest instability between classes and blocs” and which plays out “on a broad front which includes the institutions of civil society.”45 We shall return to the notions of ideology and hegemony below. Before proceeding with outlining the approach to discourse and the analysis of discourse that is employed and operationalized in subsequent chapters, I want to make clear that this study is not motivated by CDA-related concerns to reveal or mitigate any types of “social ills.” Although the particular approach to the analysis of the social functioning of discourse that is developed and utilized in this study draws extensively on the terminological apparatus and analytical framework of Norman Fairclough,46 which constitutes one of the most widely employed frameworks in CDA, it does not share its emancipatory concerns. Therefore, although this book investigates the appropriation of market- and new media-related discourse by institutional Christian Protestant churches in a critical light, it refrains from passing judgment or providing anything by means of suggestions or advice as to how the churches studied might act differently with regard to their engagements with such discourse.

Discourse analysis as method At its most general, the analysis of discourse can be described as “the systematic and explicit analysis of the various structures and strategies of different levels of text and talk.”47 As such, discourse analysis can generally be described as a type of analysis that focuses on identifying patterns and recurring key elements in a given body of material or collection of material that appear to be central to how events, persons, phenomena, or states of affairs are construed in particular ways and how, as a consequence, particular meanings are produced.48 Typical types of material in discourse analytic research include (but are far from limited to) particular face-to-face interactions, different forms of media texts such as newspaper articles and TV shows, Web pages, and documents produced within various societal institutions or organizations. There does not, however, exist any clearly formulated set of generally agreed upon or accepted “rules” as to how a researcher exactly should go about identifying recurring patterns and key elements in any given body of material. It is also worth noting that it is quite possible for different researchers to identify different

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recurring key elements, different discourses, and different relationships between discourses in any particular body of material. These difficulties are somewhat mitigated by the ways in which discourse analysis strives to keep the entire research process as transparent as possible through forcing researchers to base their interpretations and analyses on actual excerpts of texts (e.g., transcripts of recorded talk, excerpts from official documents, etc.).49 It is important, therefore, to note at the outset that there exists no “correct” way of conducting discourse analysis.50 Instead, the form that discourse analysis takes in practice will depend on the aims and topic of a given study, its main theoretical underpinnings, its disciplinary anchoring, and the nature of the material that it draws upon.51 As such, argues Fairclough, when discourse analysis is utilized as a methodology in a transdisciplinary spirit in combination with other disciplinary perspectives, it can be thought of in terms of a “theory-driven process of constructing objects of research . . . for research topics” that cannot be adequately analyzed through a focus on discourse alone.52 It is, moreover, important to understand the relationship between discourse and research “objects” in dialectical terms. This is to say that the relations of discourse to objects are not adequately understood as being “discrete.” This point is illustrated by Fairclough in relation to state power. Whereas discourse can be, and indeed typically is, employed to enhance and underpin the legitimacy of states and their representatives, state power is not reducible to discourse. This is because state power is also embedded in institutions such as the judiciary, the police, and the military, all of which can be used to exercise various forms of coercive power (e.g., physical force, incarceration) that extend beyond and which cannot be reduced to discourse. The crucial point, therefore, is that “power is partly discourse, and discourse is partly power—they are different but not discrete, they ‘flow into’ each other; discourse can be ‘internalised’ in power and vice-versa; the complex realities of power relations are ‘condensed’ and simplified in discourses.”53 The choice of primary “objects” of research for this study (i.e., a particular set of long-established institutional Christian Protestant churches and their officially sanctioned strategic discourse) is to a considerable degree motivated by a certain set of theoretical perspectives on contemporary institutional religious change on the one hand and a certain set of theoretical perspectives on processes of marketization and mediatization as prime vectors of social institutional and organizational change on the other hand. In utilizing discourse analysis as a way of illustrating the ideational and discursive impact of processes of marketization and mediatization on the changing character of long-established institutional Christian Protestant churches, the logic is the same as in the state power

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example above. Whereas marketization and mediatization as general processes of social change both include a wide range of actual, practical dimensions, they also include important ideational and discursive dimensions. Though neither of these processes can be reduced to discourse, both are nevertheless discourse-driven to a considerable degree. In other words, the processes of marketization and mediatization are not adequately understood separately from their discursive dimensions since discourse has become “internalized” as a crucial aspect in both. Several extensive discourse analytic frameworks have been developed over the years.54 These do, however, tend to cover such an extensive breadth of themes, levels, and types of analysis so as to fall beyond the capacities of a single researcher.55 Since discourse analytic frameworks and approaches always need to be designed for specific research purposes, every new application will almost necessarily amount to a selective combination and modification of previous frameworks. The framework outlined in this chapter is no exception. Even though it draws on several previous frameworks, it is mostly based on the “three-dimensional” discourse analytic framework of Fairclough, although, as noted above, it does not share its emancipatory concerns. It needs to be noted, however, that the terminological apparatus of Fairclough’s extensive framework has developed throughout a large body of work spanning roughly three decades. Central concepts such as “order of discourse” or “discursive formation” consequently appear in somewhat different articulations throughout this body of work. The framework outlined below is thus constructed on the basis of a selection and slight modification of a set of key terms and analytic concepts drawn from this framework and which provide particularly useful tools for the study of the discursive dimensions of contemporary processes of institutional religious change. Fairclough’s “three-dimensional” framework combines the analysis of text (i.e., written and spoken language in itself), practices (i.e., the production, distribution, and interpretation of texts), and sociocultural practices (i.e., the ideational level of ideology and systems of knowledge and beliefs). In this approach, the central objective of analysis is to examine and reveal the various social and cultural effects of discourse in relation to certain social and cultural spheres, phenomena, and fields of activity.56 The three main dimensions of the framework can also be thought of in terms of three interrelated levels in the social functioning and effects of discourse which each require different forms of analysis. Though a given study may direct particular focus on one of these dimensions or levels, an adequate overall analysis needs to pay some degree of attention to all three of them.

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As this study is concerned primarily with analyzing the ways in which marketand new media-related discourse has increasingly made its way into the official discourse of long-established institutional Christian Protestant churches, it will primarily focus on the functioning of discourse at the level of church strategy, policy, organizational culture, and institutional and organizational storytelling.57 For this reason, its focus lays primarily on the ideational dimension of discourse, that is, the level of ideologies and systems of knowledge and beliefs. The analysis of discourse at this level forms part of a broader sociological analysis of the macro-level processes of marketization and mediatization and the relationships of these to the changing character of long-established Christian Protestant churches in Western societies. On a more practical note, it should be said that discourse at this level transcends language barriers and, partly, also the peculiarities of different social and cultural contexts. For example, at the level of social institutions and organizations, discourses on new public management or the social implications of the internet and digital media take very similar forms even though they are articulated in different languages. Indeed, this study investigates the official discourse of institutional Christian Protestant churches in five different countries as articulated in four different languages (English, Danish, Swedish, and Finnish). For the purposes of comparative analysis, English translations are provided for all excerpts taken from official church discourse in non-English languages. This not only considerably complicates, but effectively rules out, systematic and detailed linguistic analysis. In spite of this, linguistic elements are nevertheless considered at a more general level of analysis. In relation to all individual pieces of texts subjected to analysis, attention is paid to the use of words and vocabulary, general grammatical features, structure and cohesion, uses of metaphor, and intertextual relationships to other texts.58 Particular attention is devoted to the interdiscursive properties of texts. This involves, principally, looking into the ways that texts “draw upon and articulate together multiple discourses, multiple genres, and multiple styles.”59 In discourse analytic research, a genre is understood as “a relatively stable set of conventions that is associated with, and partly enacts, a socially ratified type of activity.”60 Examples of genres include everyday conversation, various types of meetings in organizations (e.g., boardroom meetings), different types of interviews (e.g., media interviews, job interviews), and various types of socially and culturally prescribed modes of interaction (e.g., between teacher and pupil or between doctor and patient). Genres tend to be associated with particular styles. Styles can be classified according to “tenor,” that is, on

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the basis of whether a text or activity should be considered as being primarily “informal” or “formal,” “casual” or “official,” and so on. Styles can also be classified according to “rhetorical mode,” that is, according to whether a text primarily should be regarded as “argumentative,” “descriptive,” “prescriptive,” and so on.61 It should be noted, though, that styles may also be used to denote the ways in which discourse serves to constitute various distinguishable “forms of being” or types of identities. Examples would include the “styles” of politicians, businesspeople, or religious clergy.62 It follows from the discussion so far that, as a form of social practice and social action, discourse and discursive practice should be viewed as standing in a dialectical and mutually affective relationship to social structure, meaning that any type of social and cultural “change” should be viewed as being dialectically and intimately tied to discursive change and vice versa63—a theme that was already introduced in the Introduction. The analysis of discourse at this level can be usefully divided up into a set of more specific, although closely interrelated, categories such as discursive events, discourse types, discursive formations, and orders of discourse. The term discursive event signifies any particular instance where discourse occurs. The term discourse type is akin to the terms “genre” and “style” as discussed above and is most commonly used to specify whether a particular discourse can be seen as argumentative, informative, educational, etc. Originating in the early work of Foucault,64 the term discursive formation refers to the “linguistic facets of ‘domains of thought’ ”65 or “rules of formation” that serve to determine the possibilities “for certain statements but not others to occur at particular times, places and institutional locations,” and of which discourse participants might themselves be unaware or only partly aware of.66 Discursive formations serve to construct particular “objects” of knowledge in particular ways in particular social contexts at particular points in time, such as, for example, the “objects” recognized as entities of study in various scientific disciplines (e.g., “religion”) or broader social categories such as “religiosity,” thereby also serving to signify social reality and position subjects in particular ways. In the context of this study, a discursive formation can thus be thought of as a relatively fixed, although never static, discursive frame of reference within which, and in relation to which, certain phenomena and states of affairs are represented, talked about, and understood within certain institutional locations at a certain point in time. The term discursive formation thus relates to the ways in which people, groups, organizations, and institutions alike typically produce and engage with particular texts and discourses with certain either explicit or implicit intentions, and how they do so in relation to particular “interpretative

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principles” that have become established and “naturalized” in relation to specific texts and discourses.67 Any analysis of discursive formations also needs to proceed with close attention to the character of wider orders of discourse. As defined by Chiapello and Fairclough, An order of discourse is a social structuring of semiotic difference—a particular social ordering of relationships amongst different ways of making meaning, i.e. different discourses and genres and styles. One aspect of this ordering is dominance: some ways of making meaning are dominant or mainstream in a particular order of discourse, others are marginal, or oppositional, or “alternative.”68

As orders of discourse encapsulate the “totality of discursive practices (including discourses, genres, and styles) within an institution or society, and the relationships between them,”69 the more general character as well as the more specific articulations of different orders of discourse become decisive for the constitution of and interrelationships between all discursive formations that emerge within them.

The discourse of social institutions and organizations Research into the discourse of institutions and organizations has given rise to a vast body of literature.70 What follows is an account of institutional and organizational discourse as it is understood within the context of this study. Unless indicated otherwise, in the following, the terms “institution” and “organization” are used largely interchangeably. As was noted in the Introduction, while the Christian churches in this study can clearly be viewed as social institutions in both the informal or “primary” as well as the formal or “secondary” sense,71 they have become manifest and materialized in different forms of organizations. In line with the approach to discourse and the analysis of discourse outlined above, organizational discourse can be thought of as “the structured collections of texts embodied in the practices of talking and writing (as well as a wide variety of visual representations and cultural artefacts) that bring organizationally related objects into being as these texts are produced, disseminated, and consumed.”72 On a more general level, organizational discourse can thus be thought of in terms of “struggles for meaning that occur in organizations.”73 In discourse analytic terms, an organization, or the manifestation of an institution in organizational form, can be understood as partly constituting “an apparatus of verbal interaction, or an ‘order of discourse.’ ”74 The orders of discourse of

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social institutions and organizations are, however, generally “pluralistic” in the sense that they often contain diverse and identifiable sets of what Fairclough refers to as “ideological-discursive formations” (IDFs), each of which are associated with and represented by different forces or groups within the institution or organization in question. Social institutions and organizations do, however, tend to be clearly dominated by one IDF.75 Dominant IDFs typically display a capacity to subvert and marginalize alternative IDFs and to “naturalize” their own ideologies and “win acceptance for them as non-ideological ‘common sense.’ ”76 An IDF functions to both facilitate and constrain social action among its institutional and organizational “members” as it provides them with “a frame for action, without which they could not act, but it thereby constrains them to act within that frame.”77 A study of the order of discourse and IDFs of a given institution or organization also needs to pay attention to its position within the broader social formation in which it is embedded. This involves considering its degree of integration, dependence, or autonomy in the broader social formation. In other words, one needs to consider where the institution or organization in question would be most appropriately situated “on a hierarchy of relative importance to the function of the social formation, and how this relates to influences from one institution to another on various levels, including the ideological and discoursal.”78 With reference to organizations specifically, though they are indeed partly created through discourse,79 and though discourse constitutes a “powerful ordering force”80 within organizations, the agency of organizational members are, crucially, also constrained by organizational structures, some of which are purely material, but none of which can simply be reduced to discourse.81 Organizational change should thus be seen as the result of a dialectical interplay between changes in both organizational discourse and organizational structures.82 In a discourse-focused approach to organizations, organizational structures are usefully viewed as hegemonic structures in the sense that they tend to be grounded in and reproduce particular IDFs and particular power relations between different organizational groups, individuals, and actors. The dominance of particular IDFs and their associated groups and actors usually affords organizations a high degree of stability and durability, as well as a set of means for managing disruptions and intra-organizational tensions.83 Broader external social, economic, or political changes may, often in combination with internal pressures, bring organizational structures into crisis, which might result in a realignment of organizational structures of dominance. In situations of crisis, hegemonic struggle may ensue as competing groups devise their own

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opposing strategies for resolving the crisis as part of their respective efforts to establish their own dominance within the organization. Strategies constitute a key component in the self-understanding and perception of organizations since they provide narratives (which may originate from and be “decontextualized” from other organizations) that construct particular versions of the past, present, and future of organizations. As Fairclough phrases it, strategies constitute “imaginaries for changes in the networks of social practices of organizations, changes in organizational structure, including changes in the orders of discourse of organizations.”84 Strategy discourses, argues Greckhamer, “are engulfed by their own ‘truth’ effects that make the socially constructed realities seem inevitable and taken for granted.”85 As such, strategy discourse, along with its sub-category of policy discourse, is marked by a tendency to represent desired future developments in terms of necessities, that is, in terms of developments that have to take place.86 But more than this, strategy and policy discourses also tend to be characterized by their deployment of grammatical process metaphor, whereby potential futures and “imagined states” are portrayed as if they already had come into reality.87 Applying these observations to the types of religious organizations focused on in this study entails approaching long-established institutional Christian Protestant churches as partly constituting apparatuses of verbal interaction or orders of discourse. Historically, these types of churches have not only occupied central positions in the wider social formations in which they have been embedded but also played a crucial role in providing the fundamental foundations for these very social formations themselves. The historical Protestant majority churches of Britain and the Nordic countries all constitute examples of this. In modern times, however, these churches’ degrees of integration within their wider respective social formations and their relative importance for the functioning of these social formations have undergone a range of highly significant changes. Translated into sociological language, this corresponds to the gradual and relative loss in the social position and influence of institutional majority churches following accelerating modernization and the increasing structural differentiation and rationalization of Western societies. Partly following from their historically close structural relationships to states and high degrees of integration in broader social formations, institutional Christian churches tend to have rigid, hierarchical bureaucratic structures, which have usually evolved and solidified over a long period of time. Their orders of discourse are also typically pluralistic. Although they tend to be dominated by particular groups, actors, and IDFs, institutional Christian churches are often sites of hegemonic struggle

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between opposing groups, actors, and IDFs and their respective “imaginaries” for what a particular church should be all about and the direction in which it should be heading. More concretely, the discursive dimensions of processes of religious institutional and organizational change can be investigated in relation to a set of more specific research questions.88 First, there is the question of the emergence of new discourses in institutional and organizational settings and the recontextualization of and integration of new discourses into existing discursive practices. Recontextualization generally refers to the ways in which texts become “disseminated among multiple actors and distanced from the circumstances of their original production.”89 This process involves a generalization of and abstraction of meaning away from the situated contexts in which these text were originally produced.90 Further, as Fairclough observes, as part of a process of recontextualization, a new emergent discourse may be “internalized” and “institutionalized” within an institution or organization as part of a more general effort to bring about a shift in its order of discourse.91 A second question follows from this. It has to do with the ways in which processes of recontextualization relate to the establishment of new discursive hegemonies within institutions and organizations. The establishment of new discursive hegemonies are, in turn, dependent on the successful application of new strategies. As Fairclough observes, strategies are often based in “a dominant ‘nodal discourse’ (the discourse of ‘new public management’, or ‘total quality management’ . . .) which organizes relations between other constituent discourses.”92 The relative success of strategies, however, depends on their capacities to provide new general organizing principles for already existing institutional and organizational discourses.93 Lastly, there is the question of how successful strategies entail the operationalization (i.e., the “putting into practice”) of new discourses, new discursive practices, and new institutional or organizational routines. Operationalization should be understood as a dialectical practice with three key distinctive features. First, new discourses may become enacted, that is, become dialectically transformed into new ways of acting, communicating, and interacting. Second, discourses may become inculcated as new “ways of being,” as new identities and styles. Third, discourses may become physically materialized in the form of new ways of organizing, new management and working routines, etc.94 The analytic concepts explained above (order of discourse, ideologicaldiscursive formation, emergence, recontextualization, hegemony, strategies, operationalization, enactment, inculcation, and materialization) each constitute individual, although closely interrelated, building blocks of a broader

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methodological and analytical tool kit that is highly conducive for the empirical study of the discursive dimensions of institutional and organizational change. These analytical tools can usefully be employed with particular attention to the ways in which the discourse of modern social institutions and organizations have become increasingly governed by instrumental rationality as part of more general efforts to enhance their “effectivity” and “performance.”95 The notion of the technologization of discourse provides a particularly useful framework for that type of study. As developed by Fairclough, the notion of the technologization of discourse refers to a particular form of discursive practice that has developed into an increasingly salient feature of contemporary institutional and organizational discursive practice on the whole.

The technologization of discourse The technologization of discourse is closely related to the growing centrality of discourse in several areas of working life and the increasingly discourse-driven nature of processes of social change.96 Theoretically, the notion of the technologization of discourse is inspired by the work of Foucault97 and the “technologies of government” that he identified as constituting prime mechanisms for the perpetuation of power and dominance in modern societies.98 As a particular type of discursive phenomenon, the technologization of discourse is intimately connected to the emergence and spread of what Fairclough refers to as “discourse technologies.” Coupled with a notable new emphasis on “communicative skills,” these include, most notably, discourse types such as advertising, promotion, marketing, management, and auditing—all of which have increasingly become “designed and projected as ‘context-free,’ and usable in any relevant context.”99 This has brought about a situation in which “the projection of such context free techniques into a variety of institutional contexts contributes to a widespread effect of ‘colonization’ of local institutional orders of discourse by a few culturally salient discourse types.”100 Though it is often difficult to locate their exact origins, the emergence and dissemination of these types of discourse technologies has gone hand in hand with the emergence of what Fairclough refers to as “specialist technologists,” such as “researchers who look into their efficiency, designers who work out refinements in the light of research and changing institutional requirements, and trainers who pass on the techniques.”101 Examples of discourse technologists include, most notably, management gurus and consultants and media and communication

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specialists, but also social scientists involved in various types of consulting. Contemporary discourse technologists are distinguished by their privileged access to expert knowledge. Because discourse technologists tend to be people with academic expert training (e.g., in management or business theory, communication, or the social sciences), “their interventions into discursive practices therefore carry the aura or ‘truth.’ ”102 In this capacity, discourse technologists also tend to have particular relationships to institutions, such as those of business or academia, where they tend to “hold accredited roles associated with accredited practices and routines.”103 The technologization of discourse is thus closely associated with a general extension of instrumental rationality and strategic discourse to new social institutional and organizational domains. As explained by Fairclough, the technologization of discourse can therefore be thought of as a process of intervention in the sphere of discourse practices with the objective of constructing a new hegemony in the order of discourse of the institution or organization concerned, as part of a more general struggle to impose restructured hegemonies in institutional practices and culture.104

The central objective of the technologization of discourse is to improve the “efficiency” of an institution or organization with regard to such things as its organizational culture, routines and operations, communication practices, interaction with clients, customers, or “publics,” or “the successful projection of ‘image.’ ”105 More concretely, the technologization of discourse “combines research into [the] existing discursive practices” of social institutions and organizations, “redesign of those practices in accordance with particular strategies and objectives”106 and “criteria of institutional effectivity,”107 as well as “training of institutional personnel in these redesigned practices.”108 A  technologization of discourse thus occurs when a social institution or organization, due to either perceived or actual external pressures (or a combination between the two) becomes increasingly susceptible to discourse technologies, adopts new discursive practices and context-free discourse techniques, and deliberately strives to transform its existing discursive practices so as to conform (and be seen to conform) to new criteria of institutional and organizational effectivity with regard to, for example, organizational and managerial culture. The technologization of discourse consequently tends to be “most widely experienced in the form of top-down imposition of new discursive practices by organizations upon their members.”109 As such, the technologization of discourse provides a particularly useful framework within which to explore the ways in which new discourses may emerge, become

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recontextualized, operationalized, enacted, inculcated, and materialized within particular institutional and organizational settings. The technologization of discourse tends to result in a more specific set of identifiable changes in the discursive practices of institutions and organizations. One of the most notable of these is a growing pressure toward the centralization and normalization of new general standards for discursive practice across institutional and organizational orders of discourse.110 Another type of discursive change associated with the technologization of discourse is the recontextualization of “discourse practices originating elsewhere, on the basis of strategic calculation of their effectivity.”111 It is important to note, however, that although the technologization of discourse is closely related to a general homogenization and standardization of the discursive practices of modern institutions and organizations as part of a more general struggle to establish new discursive hegemonies in their orders of discourse, hegemonic projects are typically contested. This equally applies to the technologization of discourse. Since the introduction of new discourses and discursive practices into institutions and organization tends to be differently received, recontextualized, and appropriated depending from one context to another, such processes are best understood in terms of a “colonisation/appropriation dialectic.”112 As will be explored in relation to several concrete examples in Chapters 4 and 5, this is not least the case in religious institutional and organizational settings where technologization of discourse projects often end up producing “hybrid combinations of exiting and imposed discursive practices.”113

Concluding remarks When further developed in a more systematic way, discourse analysis provides the sociological study of religion with valuable additional tools for the study of ongoing processes of institutional religious change. As Fairclough points out, through its emphasis on the constitutive function of language and other modes of representation (e.g., images, symbols), discourse analysis “has the capacity to put other sorts of social analysis into connection with the fine detail of particular instances of institutional practice in a way which is simultaneously oriented to textual detail, the production, distribution and interpretation/consumption of texts, and wider social and cultural contexts.”114 More specifically, it provides researchers with a particular text- and language-focused way of more concretely pinning down and tracing changes

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in the wider order of discourse in a certain social domain, such as institutional religion. When it comes to the changing character of long-established traditional Christian Protestant churches, which still make up virtual, albeit increasingly crumbling, religious “establishments” in many Western societies, a more systematic investigation of ongoing processes of the technologization of discourse within such contexts provides researchers with a highly useful and firmly empirically grounded framework for exploring the complex ways in which processes of broader social and cultural change relate to, as well as translate into, processes of religious change.

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3

Marketization, Mediatization, and Institutional Religious Change

This chapter focuses on the twin processes of marketization and mediatization as prime vectors of social institutional and organizational change, focusing in particular on their discursive dimensions. Although the processes of marketization and mediatization are dealt with in their own respective main parts of the chapter, they are not to be understood as separate, but rather as intimately interrelated processes in both their social and cultural and their discursive dimensions. Indeed, they are often articulated together. In our discussion of these processes, we direct particular attention to the ways in which they have both served to disseminate and normalize a more specific set of discourses and discursive formations, which have served to spur and increasing technologization of discourse within the context of traditional institutional Christian churches.

Marketization and social, cultural, and religious change Since early modern times, the various meanings attached to the concept of the “market” have undergone a range of notable shifts and transformations. In premodern times, the “market” primarily denoted a more specific mode, physical space, and event for the actual exchange of goods. Since the advent of the early modern era, however, the concept of the market has gradually taken on entirely different meanings and instead came to be understood as a primary organizing principle for social life on the whole. Although this understanding of the market has gained increasing prominence through the global spread of neoliberalism since the early 1980s, its origins can be traced back to the early modern social thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that, to no small degree, emerged as a “response to the complex transformations that produced the conditions of modernity,” including (but not limited to) rapid advances in science;

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accelerating industrialization and rationalization; the increasing social and technical division of labor; the rise of capitalism, commodification, and monetarization; and the emergence of the nation-state and democracy.1 The modern view of the market as an organizing principle of the social originates in liberal-utilitarian thought as developed and refined throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries by thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, Smith, Bentham, and Mill. Liberalism, in its standard definition, takes individual liberty as the supreme “normative foundation of social life and looks for mechanisms—like the market and representative democracy—that will ensure order while not compromising freedoms.”2 As much a philosophical as a political project, liberalism thus sought to identify general independent mechanisms that would be able to function as a basis for the establishment of a “political zero-sum game between citizens and states.”3 As part of this project, liberalism developed a particular understanding of the individual according to which individual social agency essentially boiled down to the rational and selfinterest oriented pursuit of individual wants and desires. The “market,” in turn, provided the key independent social coordination mechanism that functioned to facilitate individuals’ rational pursuit of their self-interest “without compromising the autonomy of their choices.”4 This view of the individual, write Slater and Tonkiss, “was not only drawn from the emerging centrality of market behaviour, but made market behaviour the model and mechanism for achieving order and ethical life throughout society.”5 These ideas found their most forceful and influential expression in the political economy and classical economics of Adam Smith. In The Wealth of Nations,6 Smith presented a political economic model that principally rooted the establishment of a harmonious relationship between the public good and conflicting individual interests in the civil sphere of economic interaction and exchange.7 In Smith’s view, the advanced division of labor of modern society “gives rise to a dense system of economic interdependence, such that the pursuit of private interests in a market setting leads to mutual advantage.”8 In this context, the market appears as the principal non-political, non-coercive, impartial, and impersonal coordinating mechanism and regulator of conflicting individual desires. In this way, the “hidden hand” of the market “allows social order to emerge from the anarchy of diverse individual desires” while simultaneously also enhancing the general level of welfare “as the unintended outcome of intentional individual acts.”9 This is because, when exchange between individuals is allowed to unfold though unfettered free competition, the impartial mechanism of the market produces a state of equilibrium between supply and demand through

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the medium of relative price.10 “Price” in this context does not, however, refer to the actual use-value of goods as such, but is rather understood as “a metaphysical concept” denoting the “social compromise” that emerges as a result of the diverging private agendas and interests of each individual in the marketplace.11 The liberalist view of the individual and the market contrasted sharply with other currents in modern social thought as represented by influential thinkers such as Marx12 and Durkheim.13 It arguably contrasted the sharpest with the political economy of Marx where the market appeared not as an impartial mechanism of social ordering but rather as a key component of a repressive regime of class domination. In spite of such opposition, however, the liberalist understanding of the market as an essentially impartial and self-regulating social ordering mechanism continued to occupy center stage in classical and neoclassical economics.14 The development of classical and neoclassical economics also coincided with the establishment of economics as an independent academic discipline that largely came to understand the market in terms of an autonomous and purely economic mechanism that could be studied and analyzed separately from its social, cultural, and institutional dimensions.15 Although the idea of separating the purely economic dimensions of the market from its social and cultural dimensions was forcefully challenged in the work of anthropologists such as Mauss,16 Sahlins,17 and Lévi-Strauss18 and economic sociologists such as Polanyi,19 it has continued to exercise an enduring influence on both scholarly and popular “common sense” notions about the nature and workings of markets and the economy. As illustrated by the above discussion, different approaches to the “market” have historically always been “bound up with competing modern projects—both intellectual and political—aiming to explain and govern the social.”20 Liberal thought thus provided the philosophical foundation for the subsequently developed notion of “market society.” As Slater and Tonkiss explain: The notion of market society particularly marks a transition from an older, literally an ancient regime, regulated by traditional rights and obligations rooted in ascribed status and a cosmological order (the “great chain of being”), to one in which social order emerges from the independent actions of autonomous individuals.21

Following Slater and Tonkiss, there are, however, important distinctions to be made “between the complex range of transactions that take place in actual market settings and the market ideal” that constitutes a central aspect of liberalist market society thinking.22 As they highlight in connection to Carrier’s23 notion

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of “the Market Idea,” a set of more particular conceptualizations of the market and its meaning have played “a central role in organizing the modern West’s conceptual and normative universe.”24 Although most modern understandings of the market continue to center on the notion of exchange, and while the notion of market exchange as such can be, and indeed has been, used to denote a wide range of different types of exchange, “thinking about modern social order in terms of ‘market society’ implies the primacy of one mode of exchange—based on market transactions—which has come to dominate, restructure or marginalize all others.”25 Such an understanding of exchange is, moreover, fundamentally underpinned by instrumental means-to-ends rationality.26 It is one where the market appears as the “impersonal and unsentimental” process or activity that subsumes every social and cultural activity under logics of rational calculation and aims to quantify “all possible courses of action and their outcomes . . . in terms of a single measure of costs and gains” such as, typically, that of money.27

Markets and socioeconomic change in the post–World War II era The “macro-economic orthodoxy” of liberal classical and neoclassical economics, which had dominated Western economic thought and economic organization since at least the late nineteenth century, crumbled fast in the wake of the economic turmoil of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The lessons of the period did, however, lead to the establishment of a new economic orthodoxy based on the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes. While remaining firmly committed to capitalism, as part of a more general effort to ensure long-term market stability, Keynesian economics brought notable expansions in the regulating and interventionist functions of governments coupled with an increasing emphasis on fiscal and monetary policy.28 The Keynesian model of “managed capitalism” or “mixed economy” rose to great prominence and became widely adopted by governments throughout the world, especially following the end of World War II when it also served to inspire the creation of corporatist welfare states in several Western capitalist democracies.29 These developments also need to be understood against the backdrop of the broader post-war “new world order” that emerged as a result of new transnational agreements such as the Bretton Woods Agreement and the establishment of transnational institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as well as the series

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of political-economic agreements that eventually resulted in the formation of the European Union.30 The post-war period also witnessed the gradual transition from a “Fordist” economy based on the industrialized and standardized mass production of goods toward a “post-Fordist” economy based on more flexible and specialized modes of production. This shift played a central role in spurring the rise and establishment of consumerism and consumer culture throughout the Western world, and indeed beyond. As discussed by Lury, consumer culture emerged as the result of a series of closely interrelated phenomena, including (but not limited to) a considerable expansion in and increased availability of different types of goods for sale, the emergence of shopping as a leisure activity, the proliferation of new modes, spaces, and sites of consumption (e.g., shopping malls), the proliferation of retail chain stores, and the increasing availability of consumer credit.31 These developments were, in turn, closely related to the proliferation of advertising, promotion, and marketing. Perhaps the most notable innovation of the new marketing practices that developed in the post-war era was the idea that the ultimate value of products and commodities resided not in their utility value, but rather in their symbolic value. There emerged a growing realization among marketers that products could communicate immaterial, cultural meanings and function as identity markers and indicators of lifestyle. Coupled with an increasing emphasis on promotion and advertising, marketing thus emerged as the key practice through which markets and customers were “made.”32 This led to the invention and proliferation of branding, described by Kornberger as the conscious effort to turn “faceless commodities into personal and emotional goods” through the successful association of particular products with particular symbolic cultural meanings or a “personality.”33 As part of these developments, the consumer emerged as a “master category of collective and individual identity.”34 As consumer culture proliferated throughout the Western world and beyond, the “consumer” gradually ceased to be considered a “passive dupe” and instead “reappeared as a ‘coactor’ or ‘citizen consumer’ in a variety of settings in state, civil society and market.”35 As explored in detail by scholars such as Bell36 and Lyotard,37 the rise of consumer culture and the notion of the “citizen consumer” coincided with a general process of market “enculturation” and “dematerialization” that chiefly involved a “shift from the production of material to non-material goods” and a “greater non-material composition of even material goods, in the form of ‘commodity aesthetics’ and ‘sign values’ constructed through

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design and promotion.”38 The dematerialization of markets and the increasing centrality of brands, commodity aesthetics, and sign values also entailed a notable expansion in the “language of the consumer” which has, increasingly, “managed to absorb diverse practices of consumption as commensurate activities.”39 Although consumerism has continued to proliferate unabated since the early 1950s, by the 1970s corporatist structures were facing mounting challenges due to a combination of a range of political, economic, and social factors. The most notable among these included the reorganization of global structures of competition and trade following the rise of new economic powers (especially in South East Asia), the demise of the Bretton Woods Agreement, the globalization of finance capital and the accelerating general financialization of the global economic system, soaring costs for the maintenance of comprehensive welfare systems, and the re-emergence of unemployment as a social and economic problem.40 Keynesian economics, which had provided the dominant model of economic organization throughout the so-called developed world since the end of World War II now also came under increasing ideological attack from proponents of liberal and freer market models.41 Taken together, these developments paved the way for the emergence and subsequent establishment of neoliberalism as the new dominant global political economic order.

Neoliberalism Following Harvey,42 the rise of neoliberalism as a political project can be traced to a series of political events between 1978 and 1980. In 1978, Chairman Deng Xiaoping introduced a package of wide-ranging socioeconomic reforms (resulting in what came to be known as “socialism with Chinese characteristics”) which paved the way for the gradual liberalization of the economy in communist China. In 1979, Paul Volcker took over as chair of the US Federal Reserve and introduced a range of reforms that radically changed US monetary policy. Meanwhile, Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister of Britain with a strong mandate to end the “inflationary stagnation” of the British economy and curtail trade union power. In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States on a political platform that promised to “revitalize” the US economy through a series of deregulatory policies, dramatic reductions in corporate taxes, and a set of other measures designed to advance the liberation of finance on both a national and global scale. In their political economic visions these political figures, writes Harvey, “plucked from the shadows of relative obscurity a particular

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doctrine that went under the name of ‘neoliberalism’ and transformed it into the central guiding principle of economic thought and management.”43 As a general theory of political economy, neoliberalism centers on a firm belief in a very particular “Market Idea,” namely, the supremacy, efficiency, and rationality of the free, non-regulated market. Neoliberalism holds that social and individual freedom and well-being is best achieved when as many social functions and spheres as possible are subjected to market conditions and are subsumed under one single, all-encompassing market logic. A central tenet of neoliberal thought is thus the idea that, where markets do not already exist, the state must play an active role in creating them.44 Conversely, societal sectors administered or regulated by the state must be deregulated, privatized, and subsumed under a general logic of competition and enterprising. Once sectors previously controlled and regulated by the state have been deregulated and privatized, and once new spheres have thus been brought into the domain of the market, state intervention should be kept at a minimum.45 In theory, neoliberalism thus promotes a minimalist “night watchman” model of the state, according to which the function of the state should be limited to upholding and safeguarding only those social conditions and institutions that are required for the maintenance of laissez-faire capitalism, such as the police, the military, the judiciary (especially for the sake of securing private property rights), and emergency departments. The neoliberal approach to macroeconomics is marked by a strong emphasis on open competition and the free global movement of capital. Consequently, neoliberalism strongly opposes all and any policies and practices (e.g., central planning, tariffs, progressive and punitive taxation schemes) that serve to restrict or otherwise hamper the free movement of capital. In the neoliberal vision, the “ideal nation state” is thus “required to masquerade as an entrepreneurial corporation.”46 When it comes to its view of the relation between the individual and wider society, neoliberalism constitutes a direct continuation of liberalist thought in that it “proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.”47 In theory, the idea of a neoliberal society is thus premised on a particular notion of individual freedom and consumer choice as a supreme social good.48 In this way, neoliberalism also greatly aided the definitive establishment of consumerism as the dominant cultural ethos of late-modernity.49 The spread and establishment of neoliberalism was in large part a discoursedriven process.50 Before neoliberalism could come to function as a viable basis

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for actual policies, its basic tenets and values first needed to be established, popularized, and normalized through discourse. Beginning several decades prior to neoliberalism’s first incursions into British and American politics in the late 1970s, efforts to construct wider consent for a “neoliberal imaginary” were made on a wide range of fronts and included, most notably, the establishment of neoliberal think tanks, the forming of alliances with influential segments of the business media, and the increasing penetration of neoliberal theory into the curricula of business schools and university economics departments.51 Today, neoliberalism has spread throughout virtually every corner of the world, ranging from countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc to Latin America to the corporatist welfare democracies of the Nordic countries.52 Advocates of neoliberal theory and political economy now occupy influential positions within institutions of higher education, the media, the hierarchies of corporations and financial institutions, key state institutions such as central banks and treasury departments, and international financial regulatory institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF.53 The many multilateral international trade agreements between states that have been formed under the auspices of institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) have also played a key role in the further global dissemination and normalization of neoliberal ideals.54 In societies with robust corporatist structures the implementation of neoliberal policies have mainly taken the form of (sometimes highly) notable public sector deregulations coupled with the privatization and outsourcing of public services. Such restructurings have typically been experienced in terms of a “rolling back” or “dismantling” of the welfare state as corporatist structures have increasingly become replaced by new types of “public-private partnerships” as part of a more general shift from “government” (in terms of state power on its own) to “governance” (a broader configuration of state and other key actors, organizations, and elements in wider civil society).55 However, neoliberal restructurings have at the same time also resulted in a general process of “re-regulation” through the establishment and proliferation of new quasi-autonomous, non-governmental organizations (or so-called quangos) such as new industry regulatory agencies, auditors, and “watchdog” bodies.56 Neoliberalism has thus played a central role in bringing about a general process of social transformation whereby previous hierarchical, bureaucratic, and centralized nation-statist models of social organization and regulation increasingly have become replaced by a market model that foregrounds horizontal and decentralized network-types of organization.57 The hold of neoliberalism on the global economy was further strengthened in the late 1990s through the emergence of the so-called new economy (i.e.,

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marking a general transition from a manufacturing-based to a service-based economy), followed by the information and communication technology-driven so-called knowledge or information economy and the exponential growth of the global financial sector in the first years of the twenty-first century—all of which have “left an enduring trace on non-business institutions, particularly institutions of the welfare state” as “the values of the new economy have become a reference point for how government thinks.”58 As Sennett observes, although the new economy still only makes up a small part of the global economy as a whole, it has come to “exert a profound moral and normative force as a cutting-edge standard for how the larger economy should evolve.”59

Marketization and discursive change As illustrated by our discussion so far, the global triumph of neoliberalism has, in the words of Gauthier,60 served to put in motion a “complex and multifarious set of processes through which economics has dislodged politics as a structuring and embedding force.” Indeed, following the global spread of neoliberalism, the science of economics has become elevated to a status of “master science” that has increasingly come to eclipse all other social science disciplines in terms of social, cultural, and political influence.61 However, following Slater and Tonkiss, it is important to recognize that economic theory, whether in the form of academic theorizing, government policy statements, or popular lay discourse, “is not simply a commentary upon ‘real’ economic processes that are external to it; it is part of the constitution and operation of markets.”62 Markets, therefore, are created through “discourses that construct things like markets, economizing individuals and competitive relations as objects of governmental practices, and largely do so through governmental practices.”63 As Slater and Tonkiss go on to argue, economics as culture is a powerful element within modern social life and governance precisely by virtue of the way it provides actionable and convincing representations of social actions, flows and networks. This is reflected in the forms of rhetoric and linguistic construction it employs and helps to maintain its prestige.64

In this perspective, then, “the very ideas of ‘an economy’ or ‘the market’ are part of a language through which the social world is represented and acted upon.”65 Similarly, Muniesa, Millo, and Callon underline how any conception of the market, older or more recent, is always and “precisely the outcome of a [social] process of ‘economization,’ ” the aim of which is to render “things more ‘economic’

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or, more precisely, at enacting particular versions of what it is to be economic.”66 These observations point to the ways in which the spread of neoliberalism has gone hand in hand with an increasing perpetuation and normalization of market-associated language and terminology across virtually all social and cultural domains and thus served to propel a general process of marketization. The concept of marketization has been utilized in a range of different, both evocative and heuristic, capacities and generally aims to capture the extended historical and largely ideational process whereby “a market logic has come to provide a means of thinking about social institutions and individuals more generally, such that notions of competition, enterprise, utility and choice can be applied to various aspects of people’s working lives, access to public services and even private pursuits.”67 As already noted in the Introduction, in this understanding, marketization can thus be taken to denote “the permeation of market exchange as a social principle”68 and the process whereby different social and cultural domains and subsystems are gradually but increasingly visibly “subjected to a deliberate policy of economizing.”69 In terms of discourse and discursive change, marketization can consequently be understood as a process that involves the promotion and circulation of certain clusters of discourses and discursive formations centered on terms, notions, and values such as “deregulation,” “cost-effectiveness,” “privatization,” “managerialism,” “new public management,” “autonomy,” “flexibility,” “enterprise,” and “entrepreneurialism,” to name just a few. Here, such discourses and discursive formations will be collectively referred to as “marketization discourse.” In its discursive dimensions, marketization thus entails the increasing permeation of the above types of marketization discourse into new social domains, including domains which have traditionally been considered “non-economic,” such as education, health care, and religion. As was argued in the previous chapter, the dissemination and normalization of such language has been greatly aided by the emergence of specialist technologists such as management consultants and gurus who form a central part of what Thrift refers to as “an increasingly powerful cultural circuit of capital.”70 There are now ample empirical grounds for arguing that marketization discourse, understood in the above sense, has played a central role in the establishment of a “new social world”71 throughout social domains such as education,72 health care,73 voluntary and charitable organizations,74 nonprofit and ideological organizations,75 religion,76 and politics.77 This should not, however, distract us from the fact that marketization discourse tends to make its way into new social institutional and organizational domains following certain identifiable and established pathways. Indeed, the technologization

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of discourse has developed into a central means by which marketization discourse makes its way into and comes to impinge on the orders of discourse of social institutions and organizations in ways that have tangible both ideational and actual empirical effects and consequences.

Marketization and institutional and organizational change Marketization discourse comes in many different yet closely related forms. The phenomenon of so-called new public management (NPM) has played a particularly important role in the wider dissemination of marketization discourse throughout much of the social institutional and organizational field since the 1980s. A  direct product of neoliberalism, NPM is premised on the idea that the public sector will benefit from adopting the organizational cultures, routines, and practices of the private sector. The primary objective of NPM is to reform public sector bureaucracies by subjecting them to a set of instrumentalrationalist private sector measures as part of a more general effort to enhance their “effectivity” and “performance.”78 Such measures include the creation of new forms of competition between organizations and different sections within organizations, a new emphasis on strategic management and strategic planning, the promotion of an “enterprising” culture, and the introduction of new performance standards and measurements such as performance targeting and auditing. As part of the implementation of such measures, customer orientation becomes a key imperative, so that social institutions and organizations that previously had “clients,” “patients,” or “students” instead come to have “customers.”79 NPM is thus best understood as an umbrella term for a set of public organizational and leadership ideals that originate from the private business sector and the “cultural circuit of capital”80 of specialist discourse technologists. In terms of its ideational and discursive dimensions, NPM strives to promote and normalize a more specific set of ideological-discursive formations (IDFs) which all center on bringing about certain types of changes in the organizational culture and modus operandi of public social institutions and organizations. The introduction of NPM ideals into new social institutional and organizational settings typically occurs through a gradually intensifying technologization of discourse on the part of social institutions and organizations themselves, usually at least partly as a consequence of perceived external pressures. At its initial stage, this process involves the gradual introduction of a new market-associated and managerial vocabulary and terminology. Primary examples include terms, notions, and concepts such as “effectivity,” “customer,” “customer-orientation,”

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“strategic planning,” “flexibility,” “quality,” “performance goals,” “enhancement,” “skill,” “maximization,” and “core competency,” to name just a few. Through their gradual integration into new institutional and organizational strategies (as formulated in strategy and policy documents of various sorts), such terms and concepts develop into central building blocks in the construction of new institutional and organizational imaginaries. In discourse analytic terms, such terms and concepts thus come to constitute central elements of a new IDF that seeks to extend its influence and attain a position of dominance within the general order of discourse of an institution or organization. Although the actual operationalization and materialization of new NPMinspired IDFs tend to play out somewhat differently and have slightly different outcomes from one institutional or organizational context to another, they typically result in a notable new emphasis on strategic planning and an increasing preoccupation with the generation of new strategic initiatives. Again, this new extension of strategic thinking principally occurs through a gradually intensifying technologization of discourse on the part of social institutions and organizations themselves. A self-perpetuating process typically follows, whereby the generation of new strategies serve to spur the further generation of yet more strategies so that more and more areas of institutional and organizational thinking and practice gradually become subjected to and governed by strategic thinking. Indeed, as part of this process, the pace and frequency by which institutions and organizations generate new strategic initiatives might increase significantly within a relatively short period of time. As was discussed in the previous chapter, when exploring the dominant IDFs and order of discourse of a particular social institution or organization, one needs to consider its degree of integration within and relative importance to “the function of the social formation” in which it is embedded.81 This also entails considering its position within a wider framework of inter-institutional and inter-organizational relationships and flows of discursive and ideological influence. Institutions and organizations that occupy positions of higher relative importance for the functioning of a social formation tend to be dominated by IDFs that dialectically align with and underpin the “cultural dominant” of the order of discourse of that social formation as a whole. Because of their higher degree of relative importance, such institutions and organizations also tend to exercise a higher degree of inter-institutional and inter-organizational discursive and ideological influence. For example, as discussed above, following the spread and establishment of neoliberal ideology and the increasing normalization of instrumental-rationalist economistic thinking, social institutions and

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organizations charged with managing the economy (e.g., central banks and treasury departments) have become increasingly dominated by neoliberal IDFs and gained increasing relative importance for the functioning of contemporary social formations on the whole. As part of this process, these institutions and organizations have also come to exercise an ever stronger (some might say disproportionate) inter-institutional and inter-organizational discursive and ideological influence and increasingly come to determine, if not dictate, how other social institutions and organizations should think and operate. The proliferation of NPM provides an as clear as any example of this. The likelihood and scale by which social institutions and organizations become subjected to NPM ideals and marketization discourse is therefore largely determined by their relative proximity to the center of the social and political establishment. In other words, the more closely situated a social institution or organization is in relation to the core establishment of a social formation, the stronger the pressure will likely be on that institution or organization to adopt and align with the dominant IDFs of the core establishment. This also means that social institutions and organizations that strive to increase their degree of relative importance might have to adopt and align themselves more strongly than previously with the dominant IDFs of the core establishment and the institutional and organizational culture it promotes. An example of this would be when a third sector organization enters into a new partnership with the state or government as part of a broader aspiration to attain a higher degree of societal importance and influence. As part of this process, either on its own accord or in order to conform to external expectations, the organization will likely strive to align itself more closely with the dominant IDFs of the state and government and to reorganize its practices and routines in accordance with extra-institutional criteria of organizational effectivity, such as those promoted by NPM. Conversely, social institutions and organizations that have been experiencing a progressive loss of relative societal importance and influence, but who actively aspire to regain or increase it, face increasing pressures to more strongly adopt and align with dominant IDFs and to reconfigure their organizational cultures in accordance with NPM criteria of institutional and organizational effectivity.

Marketization and institutional religious change As was briefly discussed in the Introduction, long-established institutional Christian churches have traditionally occupied positions of high relative, and indeed central, importance to the functioning of the social formations in which

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they have been embedded and also excreted considerable inter-institutional and inter-organizational discursive and ideological influence. Their positions in this regard have, however, considerably weakened following modern-time social and cultural developments such as the increasing rationalization, urbanization, functional differentiation, and religious diversification of modern societies. As will be explored in more detail in following chapters, all of the institutional Christian Protestant churches explored in this book have declined sharply in terms of their social and cultural importance and influence since the early 1960s. Indeed, this is a development that these churches have all long been acutely aware of. In spite of their decline, however, these churches still typically view themselves as integral parts of the very fabric of their respective societies. Indeed, they all remain established and recognized actors in the third sector organizational field, and some still retain a range of notable structural and contractual relationships to their respective states. Even so, they are currently all struggling to either retain or regain their social and cultural positions. The new general socioeconomic environments and circumstances that have emerged following neoliberal restructurings of modern societies have brought a multifaceted set of highly significant consequences or “spillover effects on contemporary religion.”82 Martikainen outlines a set of more specific developments in the religious field that are likely to follow from this.83 First, he argues, we should expect to see “a growing role of economic reasoning among religions in the new political economy,” including an increasingly “wide use of businessoriented practices” such as different managerial techniques, advertising, marketing, branding, and different types of “organisational restructuring.”84 Indeed, as will be explored in upcoming chapters, such developments are now clearly empirically observable in the official discourse of the institutional Protestant Christian churches focused on in this book. However, as noted above, it is likely that the adoption of marketization discourses and NPM ideals and practices will be most clearly visible among religious communities with stronger historical and structural ties to the social establishment and who seek to retain or regain their societal importance and influence. Second, we should expect religious communities and organizations to not only adapt to “market rationalities” but also to increasingly “start to act as businesses” and “commercial firms.”85 Although this development has become increasingly evident in relation to the growth of mega-churches,86 Pentecostalism, and the so-called multi-site church phenomenon, it has more recently become ever more visible in the institutional religious sphere as well in the form of a growing emphasis on customer orientation, advertising, marketing, and branding.

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Third, we should expect historical structures of church-state relations based on formal legal agreements “to weaken or at least to be reformed along the lines of new public management” as new forms of governance and public-private partnerships will “bypass these by introducing networks and other means of control, such as funding and co-operation.”87 While such developments too have become increasingly discernible during past decades, they have taken different forms in different national contexts. Where such reconfigurations of relationships have taken place, they have frequently done so following a fourth general development identified by Martikainen, namely the “growing interest of public authorities in instrumentalising the charity done by religions . . . as part of broader governmental efforts to cut public spending.”88 This has brought both challenges and opportunities for religious communities and organizations. On the one hand, it has brought about a situation of “generalized religious-secular competition”89 in which religious organizations increasingly have to compete with various other non-religious social organizations in areas of social work and welfare. On the other hand, public sector deregulations coupled with the proliferation of new forms of public-private and public-third sector partnerships have also entailed a notable expansion in the “opportunity structure” of religious organizations through opening up new areas of religious/faith based-secular partnerships and modes of cooperation.90 Overall, however, these developments have clearly resulted in mounting pressures on religious organizations “to conform to a new role as participants in the creation of welfare.”91 Again, these developments have taken different forms in different national and social and cultural contexts. In Britain, previous church-state relations have been somewhat altered following the more recent “re-admittance” of religious actors into the area of welfare and the establishment of a range of new forms of religious/faith based-public partnerships and initiatives.92 In the United States, where state and religion have been firmly legally separated for centuries, the long-established mainline Protestant churches remain firmly committed to the “Social Gospel” and continue to be involved in a range of “extra-denominational partnerships”93 in the areas of social work and welfare. In the Nordic countries, the Lutheran majority “folk” churches continue to function as central thirdsector actors in the area of welfare as well.94 As strong traditional supporters of the Nordic welfare model, the Nordic churches have, however, traditionally fashioned their social work and welfare provision in close consultation and collaboration with the state and local municipalities. For the purposes of the argument advanced in this book, however, the key point to note is that the adoption of marketization discourse and NPM ideals

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and practices on the part of institutional Christian churches serve to introduce new languages and IDFs through which new church imaginaries are constructed and new church practices become possible. As will be illustrated in upcoming chapters, the institutional Christian Protestant churches explored in this book have all consciously and deliberately adopted such discourse as part of their intensifying efforts to remain “socially relevant.” Indeed, following continuing decline, the orders of discourse of these churches have become increasingly marked by a general language of crisis. In this context, marketization discourse typically appears as part of a search for solutions to the difficult situation that these churches find themselves in. It is in this sense, then, that marketization, in its discursive dimensions, can be understood as constituting an “agent” of institutional religious change. Marketization discourse does not, however, exercise any agency in and by itself. Rather, its function as an “agent” in this sense partly follows from its broader social and cultural proliferation and dominance as discussed above and partly from the ways in which it has become consciously and deliberately adopted by institutional religious organizations themselves.

Mediatization and social, cultural, and religious change In this second main part of the chapter, we turn to discuss the modern-time social and cultural position and impact of the media. Whereas a more detailed discussion would fall beyond the scope of this chapter, and indeed beyond the scope of this book, suffice to say that developments in media and their associated technologies have been completely central to the historical process of modernization. The invention of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century made possible the circulation and storage of information on an unprecedented scale.95 The invention of printing greatly aided the spread of the Protestant Reformation, revolutionized the economy, propelled the development of capitalism,96 and paved the way for the subsequent institutionalization of mass media.97 Indeed, as Graham points out: “What is often ignored in accounts of systemic capital’s development is that its herald was the first mechanically mass-produced products—books and pamphlets.”98 In this perspective, the industrial revolution and the development of capitalism “followed the ‘information revolution’ that Gutenberg sparked almost 350 years before the industrial revolution was fully realized.”99 Subsequently developed media and communication technologies such as the telegraph, radio, television, and the internet have all served to further

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accentuate the modernization process.100 Because of this, argues Graham, no comprehensive theory of contemporary social and cultural transformations or political economy “is possible without taking into account our global and instantaneous system of mediation, without which the current [social, economic, and cultural] system could not and would not exist.”101 Given the primary focus of this book, the following discussion focuses on the ways in which developments in media, underpinned by accelerating processes of marketization, have impacted on the discursive practices, organizational culture, and modus operandi of present-day social institutions and organizations, including religious institutions and organizations. Again, although our previous discussion of processes of marketization unfolded without many references to media, late-modern developments in media need to be understood in close relation to the more recent neoliberal reshaping of the global economy as discussed above. Indeed, as Harvey argues, neoliberalism’s incessant search for new products and product innovations “becomes so deeply embedded in entrepreneurial common sense . . . that it becomes a fetish belief: that there is a technological fix for each and every problem.”102 The neoliberal drive toward the maximization of “the reach and frequency of market transactions” requires the continuous development of information and communication technologies that make possible the accumulation, transfer, storage, and dissemination of ever more massive loads of information “to guide decisions in the global marketplace; Hence neoliberalism’s intense interest in and pursuit of information technologies.”103 As was also noted above, neoliberalism played a central role in propelling the emergence of the information-driven and communication technology-driven so-called knowledge or information economy in the mid-1990s. Indeed, developments in media and ICTs have always mirrored broader developments and changes in media industries and the motivations of the companies and organizations that produce, develop, and in many respects control, the production and distribution of new media technologies and ICTs.104 As has been explored in detail in several studies,105 from early on, neoliberal deregulatory policies were extended into the domain of the media, the result of which can now be seen in an increasing global concentration of corporate media ownership.106 The term “media” can, and has been, understood in a range of different ways. Following Hodkinson, as a general starting point, we should note that the term “media is the plural of the term medium, which refers, essentially, to the means by which content is communicated.”107 As defined by Hjarvard, “media,” understood in this plural sense, can be taken to refer to “technologies that expand

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communication in time, space, and modality” and which also “acquire social and aesthetic forms that structure how the media come to be used in various contexts.”108 Our concern here is not, however, with “media” in any technical sense of the term, but rather with the ways in which media have become increasingly implicated in broader processes of social and cultural change and served to motivate a range of transformations in the character, organization, and practices of social institutions and organizations, including religious institutions and organizations. More specifically, our primary concern will be with the discursive dimensions of these changes. In other words, rather than focusing on the impact of media and media technologies on social institutions and organizations, we shall instead primarily focus on present-day institutional and organizational talk and discourse about media. Hence, we shall mainly concentrate on more recent developments in the present-day media environment as brought about by the accelerating development and increasing proliferation and democratization of the internet and so-called digital new media coupled with continuous advances in ICTs.109 In contrast to earlier historical times, our present-day media and communicational environment is a progressively institutionalized and integrated one in which the internet and digital media have increasingly come to supplant most other forms of media. As Hodkinson phrases it, the internet constitutes “an integrated network of different communicative options:  mass and interpersonal, one-directional and interactive, synchronous and asynchronous and image, sound, video and text-based.”110 Following developments in digital ICTs, our present-day media and communicational environment has also become an increasingly interactive, mobile, and convergent one that is characterized by synchronous media that operate in real-time and intensified processes of “remediation,” that is, “the representation of one medium in another.”111 In order to make sense of the social and cultural implications of these developments, our exploration will unfold in relation to the theoretical concept of mediatization.

Mediatization: concept and theory Media and communication studies have traditionally been dominated by two main research paradigms:  the so-called effect-paradigm and the audience research paradigm. Studies within the effects paradigm have tended to approach media separately from society and culture and mainly focused on the communication process itself and the degree to which the mediated communication of messages have been able to bring about certain desired effects among its

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recipients. As Hjarvard puts it, studies in this tradition have thus foregrounded the impact of media on society and culture or “what media do to people.”112 Studies in the audience research paradigm have, by contrast, focused on the ways in which people actively engage with and interpret media and media messages and thus instead foregrounded what “people do with media.”113 Despite their differences, both of these traditions have been concerned with the study of “mediation” or the use of “media in the communication of meaning.”114 At its most general, writes Hjarvard, the concept of “mediation” refers to “communication via a medium, the intervention of which can affect both the message and the relationship between sender and recipient.”115 “Mediation” thus “describes the concrete act of communication by means of a type of media in a specific social context.”116 The concept of mediatization, by contrast, shifts “the focus of interest from the particular instances of mediated communication to the structural transformation of the media in contemporary society.”117 Mediatization research thus focuses on the broader social and cultural impact of media rather than the content of specific media messages or particular instances of media use. As discussed in detail by Carneiro118 in specific relation to the employment of mediation and mediatization perspectives in the study of media and religion, the differences between the two concepts in large part derive from their respective different understandings of the meaning of technology. Mediation approaches tend to be based on “broader” understandings of technology as including not only devices and machines, but also things, artifacts, instruments, tools, and the like. In this perspective, technology has always existed and consequently always shaped human experience, activity, and practice. Religion, in this perspective, is seen as an inherently mediated phenomenon or, indeed, as a “practice of mediation . . . to which media are intrinsic.”119 While not rejecting such perspectives, mediatization perspectives instead tend to be based on “narrower” understandings of technology as modern devices that have developed at an accelerating pace since the early nineteenth century in tandem with developments in industrial manufacture and commodity production. While remaining wary of technological determinism (discussed in more detail below), mediatization perspectives thus view technology as having played a central role in propelling distinctively modern phenomena such as industrialization, urbanization, globalization, marketization, and mediatization. Although mediation and mediatization perspectives are by no means incompatible, mediatization perspectives are nevertheless based on the firm contention that there is a qualitative difference to be observed between the media environment of premodern times compared to that of modern and late-modern times, particularly

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following post–World War II developments in communication technologies. As such, mediatization perspectives provide us with a better heuristic framework within which to approach and understand the interrelation between moderntime developments in media and media technologies and broader processes of social and cultural change. The concept of mediatization generally refers to the central element of modernity and process of social and cultural change whereby the influence of the media (understood broadly as institutions, technologies, infrastructures, environments, and commercial enterprise) has gradually expanded within virtually every domain of society and culture and public and private everyday life.120 At a general level, mediatization can thus be thought of in terms of a gradual longterm process of social and cultural change comparable to and intertwined with other macro-level processes such as globalization, marketization, individualization, etc.121 Mediatization is thus best understood as an uneven and historically contingent process that plays out differently across different social and cultural contexts and that tends to be most easily identified and studied in modern liberal democratic societies with extensive and long-established media institutions and infrastructures.122 More specifically, mediatization denotes a dual process whereby the media (especially mass media) have become ever more “integrated into the operations” of most modern social and cultural institutions and organizations while they have simultaneously also attained the position of social institutions in their own right.123 Whereas media in earlier historical periods primarily constituted “instruments in the hands or other institutions,”124 in contemporary society “the media not only get between any and all participants in society but also, crucially, annex a sizeable part of their power by mediatizing—subordinating—the previously powerful authorities of government, education, the church, the family, etc.”125 Processes of mediatization have thus also contributed to a more general “virtualization of social institutions,”126 whereby social institutions have become increasingly detached from specific physical locations. When it comes to the analysis of the social and cultural effects of mediatization, a general distinction can, following Mazzoleni, be made between the mediatization of society as a general process of social, cultural, and technological change on the one hand, and processes of mediatization in society, as they can be empirically located and observed in relation to specific social and cultural domains on the other hand.127 Insofar as this distinction is taken to suggest that the mediatization of specific social and cultural spheres or institutional sites in society can adequately be explored in isolation, it remains problematic. It remains

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useful, however, if understood in terms of a general distinction between different levels of analysis. While processes of mediatization certainly play out differently and are differently experienced within different social domains or institutional and organizational fields, we should remain wary of adopting an understanding of mediatization as a process that necessarily affects different social spheres (e.g., politics, education, or religion) in a set of more particular and theoretically prehypothesized ways. It is more sensible to adopt a sufficiently open-ended understanding of mediatization as a process that should have similar and comparable, although by no means identical, effects and impacts across the contemporary social and cultural field as a whole. It remains the case, however, that mediatization is best understood as a theory of the middle-range and that processes of mediatization are most usefully approached and investigated on the meso level of particular social and cultural institutional spheres since it is only in relation to institutional-level investigations that it becomes possible for processes of mediatization to become concretely contextualized and empirically located and observed.128 As such, as Hepp, Hjarvard, and Lundby remind us, “Mediatization as a social process is not least about the reciprocal influences between media and other social fields.”129 Another important analytical distinction in mediatization research can also be made between what Hjarvard refers to as “direct” and “indirect” mediatization. Whereas the former denotes “situations where formerly non-mediated activity converts to mediated form,” the latter refers to cases where a “given activity is increasingly influenced with respect to its form, content, organization, or context by media symbols or mechanisms.”130 The latter also connects directly to an additional central component of processes of mediatization, namely the extension of the so-called logics of the media into ever more social and cultural domains and fields of activity. The concept of media logic has always occupied a central position in scholarly debates on mediatization. As defined by Hjarvard, media logic refers to the media’s “organizational, technological, and aesthetic functioning, including the ways in which media allocate material and symbolic resources and work through formal and informal rules.”131 As Schrott observes, when taken as involving the extension of the logics of the media into ever more social spheres, mediatization functions by the implementation of a new socially shared interpretation system that is seen as objective and true, and is therefore not questioned. Thus, media logic is established in different functional systems as a pattern of orientation and interpretation for public communication, and which thereby changes the functional spheres themselves.132

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Although the precise character of media logic remains a much debated subject, most commentators nevertheless share a view of media logic as a historically, socially, and culturally contingent phenomenon that is more adequately conceived of in the plural rather than the singular, that is, in terms of media logics rather than one single universal media logic.133 Issues pertaining to media logics (understood in the above sense) become especially pertinent when considering the ways in which especially news and current affairs media have developed into increasingly powerful and influential facilitators of public life as a whole and thus also motivated a range of new forms of media engagement on the part of religious institutions and organizations. We shall return to this issue in more detail in Chapter 5. As already discussed in the Introduction, the relationship between media and religion has developed into a vibrant area of scholarly inquiry. This scholarship has principally been motivated by the ways in which, as Hoover phrases it, “the ‘common culture’ represented by the media has . . . become determinative of the contexts, extents, limits, languages, and symbols available to religious and spiritual discourse.”134 The application of mediatization perspectives in the study of media and religion have become increasingly common following the introduction of Hjarvard’s much-debated “mediatization of religion” thesis.135 This thesis essentially highlights a set of prehypothesized and effectively secularizing challenges that the accelerating general mediatization of contemporary society and culture supposedly has come to pose for traditional institutional religion in particular. As outlined by Hjarvard, the mediatization of religion occurs when the media “as conduits, languages and environments—facilitate changes in the amount, content and direction of religious messages in society, at the same time as they transform religious representations and challenge and replace the authority of the institutionalized religions.”136 Although the mediatization of religion thesis has provided the scholarship on media and religion with interesting new research questions and avenues, its precise application and operationalization continues to be the subject of much debate.137 For present purposes it is enough to note that, as the mediatization of religion thesis concentrates on a particular set of pre-hypothesized effects of mediatization on the social and cultural sphere of religion as a whole (although mostly in the form of established institutional religion), it is less helpful for an analysis of the effects of mediatization on particular religious institutions and organizations. We therefore need to consider other analytical frameworks more suitable for that task.

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Organizational mediatization The effects of processes of mediatization on the present-day practices and modus operandi of social organizations, including religious organizations (as well as the organizational manifestations of religious institutions), can usefully be considered in relation to the concept of organizational mediatization. This concept directs particular focus at the various ways and different degrees to which organizations adapt to the logic and structures of news and current affairs mass media.138 Raupp makes a general distinction between “strong” and “weak” mediatization effects within organizations. Whereas a “weak” mediatization effect occurs “when an organization plans and implements decisions with regard to the expectations of mass media,” a “strong” mediatization effect, by contrast, “occurs when decisions would not have been taken without the anticipation of the logic of the mass media.”139 The categories of “weak” and “strong” mediatization effects as outlined by Raupp should not be confused with Hjarvard’s rather different and more general distinction between “direct (strong)” and “indirect (weak)” mediatization as discussed above. While Hjarvard’s notion of indirect or weak mediatization corresponds to Raupp’s understanding of both weak and strong mediatization effects, his notion of direct or strong mediatization refers to a level of media influence that extends far beyond its impact on organizations specifically.140 As Schillemans observes, it is important to recognize that different organizations not only mediatize for different reasons but that they also do so to different degrees. Some organizations, he suggests, are best conceived of as “becoming mediatized” in that they increasingly “suffer from the pressure of the news media and search for solutions that help to alleviate that pressure.” Others, however, “are actively mediatizing; finding and implementing ways to integrate the opportunities of the media into their everyday operations and strategies.”141 Strong mediatization effects are consequently most easily identified in actively mediatizing organizations. It is important to note in this context that social organizations of nearly all kinds have found themselves under increasing pressure to actively mediatize following the proliferation of NPM-associated new criteria of organizational effectivity.142 As outlined by Schillemans, strong organizational mediatization effects within organizations usually come about as the result of three interrelated processes. First, mediatizing organizations engage in a process of accommodation that chiefly involves “changes in organizational rules, structures and processes which are made especially for, or changed in order to, enable the organization to operate effectively in its media environment.”143 According to Schillemans,

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the most visible of all forms of media accommodating organizational changes is the introduction and establishment of new media teams and departments. As the influence of these teams and departments grows, this serves to bring about an intensified process of “intra- and inter-organizational centralization” and a stronger demand for “organizational coordination of communications that . . . elevates the communication policies of media officers to the top of the organizational pyramids.”144 Second, organizational mediatization also tends to involve processes of amalgamation—that is, “the mingling of media-related activities with essentially non-media activities”—whereby organizational units whose primary task is to work with general strategy or policy formation increasingly find themselves working with media-related issues or in ever closer collaboration with media teams.145 As Schillemans observes, the “most visible form of amalgamation occurs when the overall media strategy of an organization becomes interwoven with, or even plays a central role in, its overarching general strategy.”146 Together, processes of accommodation and amalgamation serve to foster a new organizational culture of “permanent media awareness” that typically entails “centralizing the media team within the organization” in question.147 Third, the changes that follow from accommodation and amalgamation also tend to be followed by a mutagenic effect of media logic whereby “the external media logic colonizes and subjugates the original organizational routines and logics.”148 While these processes serve to spur a range of highly notable changes in the routines and modus operandi of organizations, organizations not only mediatize for the sake of being able to maintain a positive public image or to effectively manage the communication process with mass media. Increasingly, organizations, and especially those that stand in closer proximity to the center of the social formation and social establishment, face growing pressures to mediatize so as to be able to adapt and conform to new organizational “realities” and NPM criteria of organizational effectivity. Though modern social institutions and organizations have no doubt increasingly come to adapt their organizational cultures and modus operandi to the logics of the mass media, this has also happened against the backdrop of the widespread proliferation of a more specific set of discourses and discursive formations on the nature and changing character of the present-day media environment and its purported consequences for contemporary institutional and organizational life and practice.

A discursive approach to mediatization Although previous work on organizational mediatization has greatly advanced our understanding of the present-day relationships among organizations, mass

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media, and new media technologies, it has rarely explored its ideational and discursive dimensions. Indeed, this observation applies to mediatization research more generally, as studies have tended to focus on processes of mediatization in relation to certain social or cultural spheres such as politics or religion while typically overlooking the ideational and discursive forces that, in large part, work to drive processes of mediatization in the first place. As Gruber observes, “New information technologies not only offer the appropriate technological means for meeting the needs of the globalized information society; they also symbolize all the relevant features we associate with twenty-first century society: decentralization, interactivity, multimodality, transnationality and transculturality.”149 This observation points to the ways in which modern developments in media and technology have given rise to a set of powerful imaginaries about the social and cultural implications of the present-day media and communicational environment. The establishment of these imaginaries have been accompanied by the proliferation of set of widespread discourses and discursive formations that have worked up a picture of the present-day media and communicational environment as one that is in a perpetual state of flux and that will continue to change and mutate in tandem with further technological development and the affordances offered by new media technologies.150 As DiMaggio, Hargittai, Neuman, and Robinson asserted in a widely read early article on the social implications of the internet, “technology’s effects reflect not its inherent potential, as futurists assume, but active choices that are shaped by technology owners’ perceived interests, existing organizational structures, routines, and by cultural norms.”151 They went on to argue that earlier studies of the adoption of digital technologies within firms and institutional spheres such as the health care and education sectors revealed that they “adapted the technology to specific strategies, rather than yielding to general technological imperatives.”152 Whereas the intention here is by no means to dispute that social institutions, organizations, and communities may often indeed adapt and contribute to shaping the technologies they adopt, a serious consideration of the wider ideational and discursive dimensions of the present-day media and technological environment complicates the drawing of any easy conclusions in this regard. Indeed, in an article from the same time, Graham argued quite differently when highlighting that, while modern ICTs “are most easily viewed as a collection of interconnected, objective ‘things’ that constitute the new emerging techno-social domains,” it remains important that research into new media is able to “set aside, as far as possible, the ‘things’ that comprise technical infrastructure to focus on the social processes that are conditional upon, and conditioned by, the presence and use of these new things.”153 This, he went on to

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argue, would require a more sustained focus on the language and discourse that “people produce about these things, and about the ideas, artefacts, and social circumstances evident in such language.”154 As he argued further: New media have specific and profound effects that are never quite recognizable, before, during, or perhaps even after their mass diffusion deployment. Relations and modes of production are delineated and defined in people’s language, and that is why language provides an important if not a vital focus for research into the effects of new media.155

As has already been pointed out and explicated above, since all processes of social and cultural change involve a discursive dimension, they are always to some extent discourse-driven. As is the case with the relationship of discourse to its “objects” generally, discourse is partly media and media is partly discourse; they are different but not “discrete.”156 The argument here is thus one that insists on the need for processes of mediatization to also be understood against the backdrop of, as well as in relation to, present-day institutional and organizational discourses about media. Indeed, mediatization can itself be viewed in terms of an imaginary that encompasses a more specific set of discourses on the nature and changing character of the present-day media environment which serve to encourage particular types of action on the part of social institutions and organizations.157 In close connection to wider processes of marketization, the development of the internet and rapid advances in ICTs during past decades have been accompanied by the rise of a set of widespread and influential discourses and discursive formations on the social and cultural implications of these developments for individuals, institutions, organizations, and companies alike. These discourses have increasingly come to underpin contemporary criteria of effective institutional and organizational communication and thus likewise spurred an increasing technologization of discourse on communication and ICTs across various institutional and organizational domains. These discourses and discursive formations include (but are far from limited to) discourses on the general character of the new forms of interaction and sociability that have emerged following developments in new media technologies; discourses on the consequences of increasing media saturation and information overload; and discourses on the implications of increasing media convergence and an increasingly integrated and synchronous media sphere for contemporary institutional and organizational life and practice. In the following, these types of discourses will be collectively referred to as “new media discourses.”

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The persuasive power and common-sense character of such discourses has been significantly enhanced through their continuous circulation and rearticulation by specialist technologists (e.g., researchers and communication consultancy firms) who conduct research into the types of media change depicted through these discourses and who offer advice, guidance, and training as to how various social actors such as social institutions and organizations should best respond and adapt to these changes. As with all and any types of discourse or discursive practice, the point is not whether such discourses could or should be taken to adequately represent or articulate any actual states of affairs but, rather, that they have played a hugely important role in underpinning contemporary common-sense understandings and providing “ready-made explanations (as ideologies or assumed meanings)” of what the present-day media environment is like and how institutions and organizations should act within it in order to be able to effectively realize their goals and aspirations.158 Moreover, such discourse also plays an important role in producing “an expectation of usage, complete with its own morality: ‘good’ companies [or institutions] have and use ICT.”159 Such discourses, which often include a pronounced technological determinist component, have increasingly come to provide the main ideological and conceptual backcloth in relation to which the general character of the contemporary media and technological environment typically is perceived, talked about, and understood within contemporary institutional and organizational settings. To simplify, rather than emphasizing how technology use is shaped through social processes, such discourse instead tends to emphasize technology as a shaper of social processes, and indeed of contemporary social life as a whole. As analyzed in detail by Graham, such discourse has developed into a central trope of the official policy discourse of governments, the agencies of political entities such as the EU, and transnational institutions such as the OECD.160 As such, these discourses have increasingly come to underpin contemporary criteria of institutional and organizational effectivity with regard to communication practices and motivated an increasing technologization of discourse across the social institutional and organizational sphere, including that of institutional religion. As Roderick explains, technological determinism “attributes to technology a degree of agency that makes it able to act independently upon society, remaking it in its own image.”161 Technological determinism thus “requires understanding technology through a dramaturgical analogy” that works up an image of technology as a central character and independent actor in a general “drama” of social and cultural change.162 As such, technological determinism constitutes the opposite of so-called social shaping of technology approaches in that it views

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technologies as “being autonomous to the social setting or milieu in which they are employed” while simultaneously also presuming that they still will have “the capacity to act upon that milieu.”163 Endowing technology with such agentive and “casual power” also means that “it can be as readily cast in the role of villain as it can be cast as the hero in the drama of social change.”164 In terms of discourse, technological determinism “therefore casts technology as the guiding force . . . and root of the explanation of how things have come to be as they are.”165 To adopt a discourse of technological determinism, argues Roderick, thus involves adopting an understanding that sees any new technology as a potential harbinger of social and cultural change.166 But more importantly still, when social institutions and organizations engage in such discourse, they cast themselves in the role of a passive “bystanders” or “benefactors” “of either good fortune or ill fortune depending upon the effects of the technology.”167 As already hinted at, technological determinist discourse tends to come in two main forms. On the one hand, technology may be positively constructed in terms of a “benevolent actor” that brings positive and advantageous changes and especially new opportunities.168 This type of discourse tends to situate technological development within a more general and celebratory overarching narrative of “progress.”169 On the other hand, technological determinism may also come in the form of dystopian visions of a future world where technology increasingly comes to supplant and distort previous more “genuine” forms of human sociability and community.

Religion, the internet, and modern ICTs Few would nowadays dispute that the internet has had a hugely significant impact on contemporary religious life and practice across the globe. As is routinely noted in the fast-growing scholarship on religion and the internet and digital religion, earlier “first wave” studies in the field often tended to offer farreaching predictions about how the continuous proliferation of the internet and future advances in modern ICTs would come to profoundly alter peoples’ ways of encountering and engaging with religion, religious ideas, and practices.170 The often sensationalizing predictions presented in earlier research were nevertheless subsequently proven premature in light of later research that highlighted the many ways in which people’s online engagements tended to closely mirror their offline engagements.171 In spite of the gradual establishment of such scholarly “technorealist” views,172 however, earlier utopian and dystopian representations of the social and cultural implications of the internet have had

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an enduring effect on many religious communities’ own internal discourses on the internet and its associated technologies.173 The proliferation and increasing democratization of the internet and the concomitant continuous development of new digital technologies are commonly taken to have brought a range of challenges for the maintenance and perpetuation of traditional modes of religious community,174 socialization, and authority and hierarchy structures.175 These challenges have also long been of central concern for long-established institutional Christian churches, most of which are, as already noted, currently struggling to retain or regain their societal and cultural positions. Indeed, institutional Christian church engagements with the internet increased markedly worldwide already in the mid-1990s and early 2000s following mounting concerns that they would increasingly lose touch with modern populations as a result of the continuous development and increasing democratization of the internet and rapid technological growth.176 As noted by Campbell, as a result, during the past couple of decades “Christian use of digital media has been heavily infused with a pro-technology discourse that encourages particular forms of engagement.”177 Though this general observation undoubtedly holds true, such “pro-technology” discourse needs to be approached and understood in close relation to broader discourses and discursive formations on the nature of social life and communication in a digital era as discussed above. By now there exists a wealth of research on the impact of various forms of media within various Christian contexts. A notable portion of this research178 has focused on exploring and analyzing the actual outcomes of Christian communities’ various appropriations of and engagements with the internet and digital technologies. The “religious-social shaping of technology” (RSST) approach as principally developed by Campbell179 has provided a particularly valuable contribution in this regard through highlighting the complex processes of negotiation that often underlie religious communities’ engagements with new media technologies. As outlined by Campbell, this approach “suggests that a technology is shaped by the setting in which it lives and by the agents who utilize it. The community, in turn, is changed through its adoption of the new media as it appropriates and adapts it to its culture.”180 As is further argued by Campbell, the “communal framing” of the use of a particular technology within a given religious context constitutes a central stage in the RSST process.181 As part of this stage, religious communities typically engage in either one or all of the following discursive practices: (1) a “prescriptive discourse” that serves to highlight the ways in which a given technology supports the values and practices of the religious community in question, (2) an

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“officializing discourse” that serves to set the “boundaries for a given technology” through delineating its proper uses and the potential outcomes of such uses, and (3) a “validation discourse” that highlights the affordances of a technology and its usefulness for “the ethos and mission of the community” through focusing in particular on “what kind of community practices it enables or facilitates.”182 Although their official stances toward the internet as a technology and communicative and interactional environment often remain characterized by a certain degree of ambivalence, long-established bureaucratically organized institutional Christian churches typically engage in all of these discursive practices simultaneously. Whereas previous research into RSST greatly advanced our understanding of Christian communities’ engagements with the internet, much can also be learned about the present-day character of such engagements by looking at the role that key processes of general discursive change have played in motivating and guiding them. Though the intention here is not to dispute that technologies may indeed often be variously shaped by the religious communities who adopt and utilize them, it is nevertheless useful to take a broader view and also focus on some of the key ideational and discursive characteristics of the “culture” of the internet and modern ICTs and their effects on the nature of current official Christian church discourse on the subject. As such, existing RSST approaches to Christian organizations’ and institutions’ engagements with new digital media technologies can usefully be complemented by analyses of the impact of broader contemporary discursive formations on the internet and ICTs. While this angle has not been completely overlooked in the scholarship on institutional Christianity and the internet and modern ICTs,183 it still clearly warrants more attention. Whereas the engagements of institutional Christian churches with the internet and ICTs are surely formed on the basis of their own particular aspirations and though it would certainly be misleading to claim that they simply yield “to general technological imperatives,”184 official institutional Christian church discourse on the internet and ICTs has nevertheless clearly become increasingly colonized by a set of influential discursive formations on the nature of “proper” and effective institutional and organizational communication and practice in a digital era. This has motivated an increasing technologization of discourse whereby their official discourse on the internet and ICTs has become increasingly marked by a conscious redesign of existing discursive practices in accordance with new criteria of institutional and organizational effectivity coupled with an increasing emphasis on training in these new practices.

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A more sustained focus on the broader discursive dimensions of mediatization would thus provide a much-needed complement to earlier RSST analyses. This would also entail challenging the general core assumption inherent in the RSST approach that religious communities always play an active role in shaping the technologies they adopt. As will be explored in detail in following chapters, the official discourse of many traditional Christian Protestant churches may be seen to provide a counter-example to this assumption in that their engagements with the internet and ICTs are primarily articulated through an idiom of conformity and adaption rather than reflecting an active desire to shape these technologies to suit the needs of the community. Again, a focus on the technologization of discourse allows for these developments to be explored in adequate depth and detail. But, as noted, the introduction of new discursive practices into religious organizations tend to result in new “hybrid” discourses or interdiscursive mixes between older and established and new discursive practices. In close relation to this issue, Campbell identifies a particular breed of discourse technologist that is peculiar to religious institutional and organizational contexts: the “Religious Digital Creative” (RDC).185 This term signifies “digital innovators, designers, and content producers whose new media work grants them unique status and influence within their religious communities.”186 RDCs are people with expert knowledge and specialized skills in areas such as computer coding, web and software design, digital content creation, and media literacy training who lend their services and expertise to a religious community or organization that they themselves are members or adherents of.187 As argued by Campbell, because of the widespread suspicion toward new digital media in many traditional religious circles, the work of RDCs often “requires them to evoke a technological apologetic to justify and explain their role and digital work within their religious communities.”188 As part of their efforts to legitimize their activities, RDCs tend to engage in discursive representations of religious communities and organizations as lagging behind and being “out-of-touch with contemporary culture.”189 More specifically, however, they also tend to articulate the pressing need for religious communities and organizations to adapt to new technological “realities” within a technological determinist “post-human” narrative frame. The post-human view on technology is typically expressed through a discourse that casts technology as an independent agent for social and cultural change within a broader technology-driven evolutionary process of human progress toward new forms of technology-enhanced human existence.190 RDCs often articulate their views on the need for religious communities and organizations to more actively and resolutely adapt to the present-day

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media environment in what Campbell refers to as the “technology cultured frame.”191 This frame, she writes, “highlights the way networked technologies have restructured our social realities and everyday lives.”192 As such, it echoes “convictions that the world is being cultured by technology” and that changes brought by technology need to be actively embraced and adapted to.193 RDCs also typically draw on an “enhanced-human” frame which casts technologies as extending the limits of human abilities and capabilities in, for example, areas such as church ministry and outreach.194 Lastly, RDCs also typically draw on a “human-technology hybrid” frame that highlights the ways in which the boundaries between the online and offline worlds have become increasingly blurred following developments in digital networked technologies, leading to the rise of new “hybrid” forms of sociability and social interaction.195 In line with the technological determinist understanding of the social and cultural implications of technology that underpins these discursive and narrative frames, RDCs typically tend to represent the need for religious communities and organizations to adapt to new technological “realities” in terms of an unavoidable necessity.196 The activities of RDCs, and particularly in cases where they attain formal positions within the media units of religious organizations, serve to further propel an intensifying technologization of discourse whereby new imaginaries for future engagements with new media and ICTs make their way into the strategic discourse of these religious organizations. The post-human discursive or narrative frames identified by Campbell are also easily identified in the official discourse of the institutional Christian Protestant churches explored in this book. Indeed, as we move to explore in more detail in the next chapter, these churches have increasingly come to represent their growing investments in and engagements with new media and new media technologies through a technological determinist idiom that invests technologies with independent agentive capacities to bring about social and cultural change. The main aim of this section has been to highlight how accelerating processes of mediatization have been accompanied by the rise of a set of powerful discourses and discursive formations of new media and ICTs that serve to encourage, and indeed compel, traditional long-established Christian churches to devise new ways of adapting to and engaging with new communicational and technological “realities.” It is in this sense, then, that mediatization, in its discursive dimensions, can be viewed as an “agent” of institutional religious change. As with processes of marketization, however, it is important to recognize that the capacity for technological determinist discourses

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on new media and technological realities to act as “agents” in this regard derives, partly, from their widespread diffusion and proliferation throughout the social institutional and organizational field more generally but, just as importantly, partly also from the ever greater degree and extent to which they have become appropriated and internalized in the official discourses of institutional churches themselves.

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Part Two

Application and Cases

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The Marketization and Mediatization of Institutional Christian Protestant Churches

In this second main part of the book we turn to explore the ways in which marketization- and new media associated discourse has made its way into the official strategic discourse of traditional institutional Protestant churches in three different locations around the world: in the United States, Britain, and the Nordic countries. These three regions will be explored in their own respective sections. In the case of the United States, we will be focusing on three of the so-called mainline Protestant denominations:  the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), the United Methodist Church (UMC), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). In the case of Britain we will be focusing on the Church of England (CoE) and in the case of the Nordic countries on the Church of Sweden (CoS) and the Church of Denmark (CoD) respectively. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELCF) will be subjected to a broader and more detailed investigation as a continuation of the Nordic case in Chapter 5. In spite of notable differences between them, these churches all have two important things in common. First, they have all retained close connections to the core social establishments of their respective countries. They have maintained dense bureaucratic structures, remained highly engaged in civic issues, and established a range of partnerships with governments, government agencies, and public- and third sector organizations. Since their continued active civic engagements largely take place through their bureaucratic structures, this makes it more likely for them to become subjected to stronger interorganizational ideological and discursive influence and pressures to conform to new NPM-associated values and criteria of institutional and organizational effectivity. These churches’ adoption of such discourse is thus not incidental as marketization- and new media discourses have come to provide ready-made explanations and taken-for-granted ways of talking about proper and effective institutional and organizational culture and practice.

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Second, as these churches have all been experiencing decades of continuing and progressive decline, their general orders of discourse have all become increasingly marked by a general language of crisis and calls for thoroughgoing change. This, above all else, provides the broader background against which their adoption of marketization- and new media discourse and increasing technologization of discourse needs to be understood since it typically tends to go hand in hand with a search for “solutions” to the problems that they are currently facing. So, while the aspirations of these churches to retain positions of higher relative importance to the functioning of the broader social formations in which they are embedded plays a part in making them more susceptible to marketization- and new media discourses, it is nevertheless their own calls for thoroughgoing change and reform that appears to play the most important role in determining the extent to which such discourse becomes adopted and internalized within their own official strategic discourse and imaginaries. Their increasing adoption of marketization- and new media discourses has thus occurred concomitantly with the emergence of new dominant church organizational IDFs and the construction of new church imaginaries. This does not mean, however, that all of the churches explored in this chapter have adopted such discourses on an equal scale or engaged in the technologization of discourse to an equal extent. Indeed, a thorough screening of the official strategic discourse of these churches revealed notable differences and variations between them in this regard. For example, one main reason why the Church of Norway was excluded from the analysis of this book was because the screening of its official discourse did not reveal any sustained engagement with marketizationand new media discourse (although such discourse was not totally absent). Differences also surface with regard to the extent to which these churches have internalized both marketization and new media discourse. While in some cases marketization discourse is more visible, in others new media discourse instead predominates. Each case will be devoted roughly the same amount of attention. The primary object of analysis will be publicly available official church discourse as it appears in different types of official church strategic documents and on official church Web sites. The analysis will focus on notable examples of the ways in which marketization- and new media associated discourse has made its way into the official strategic discourse of these churches as a consequence of a deliberate technologization of discourse on the part of these churches themselves. As was noted in the previous chapter, marketization- and new media discourses are closely interrelated and are thus frequently articulated together.

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The analysis of each case will be preceded by a brief general discussion of the historical development, broader social and cultural contexts, and current state of these churches. However, as a great deal has been written on both the historical and contemporary religious landscapes of these respective regions, no attempt will be made to provide anything by means of a comprehensive discussion in this regard. Rather, the preceding discussions will only focus on a smaller set of developments that are of particular relevance for an adequate understanding of the peculiarities of each case. Some general observations are nonetheless warranted already at the outset. First of all, it is important to recognize that institutional Christianity in the United States has developed along a very different historical trajectory when compared to Britain and the Nordic countries. Whereas European religious experience remains deeply marked by the historical presence of majority state churches, or religious “monopolies,” the decidedly more diverse religious landscape of the United States has instead always been organized along denominational and congregational lines. As Davie phrases it, in contrast to Europe, the religious landscape of the United States “is made up of tens of thousands of free-standing congregations that aggregate themselves into denominations, none of which has, or has had, a legally privileged position in the federal state.”1 In the United States, religion and state are separated through the so-called establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The United States, then, has never had a state church, and indeed always had a very different kind of state compared to how the state has been organized and understood in Europe.2 Although, as Davie puts it, an “increasing range of choices” have become available on the religious field in Europe during past decades, they are nevertheless largely emerging “over the top of a historically dominant church.”3 Following from these different historical experiences and arrangements, notable differences between these regions can be found across a range of areas. These include, but are far from limited to, differences in the respective ways in which the Enlightenment was received and the ways it historically interacted with religious life, differences in the relation of religion to configurations of social classes, different experiences of religious pluralism and diversification following large-scale immigration, and differences in institutional carriers of religion. As Berger, Davie, and Fokas observe, Europe largely also lacks “the massive presence of Evangelical Protestantism” which has increasingly come to mark the religious landscape of the United States as a whole.4 The differences between the regions also extend to areas such as the relationship between religion and

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politics, the legal position of religion, the relationship between religion and education, and the role of religious organizations in the provision of welfare, to name just a few. If we for a moment briefly consider the two latter of these relationships, whereas the historic majority churches have played, and in some respects continue to play, a central role the centralized educational systems of Britain and the Nordic countries, in the much more decentralized educational system of the United States religion is officially barred from public schools,5 even though the “educational institutions [continue to] serve as a major battlefield for the negotiation of religious matters.”6 When it comes to the role of religion in the provision of welfare, the welfare states of Britain and the Nordic countries have paralleled and continued the “traditional role of the majority church” whereas in the United States welfare provision largely falls within the purview of third sector voluntary organizations, including religious organizations.7 With these general observations in mind, we now proceed with the analysis, starting with the case of mainline churches in the United States.

Mainline Protestant churches in the United States The North American Christian Protestant so-called mainline is made up of what are commonly referred to as the “Seven Sisters” of American Protestantism: the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, the American Baptist Churches USA, and the Disciples of Christ. The current composition of the mainline (including the label “mainline” itself) was solidified through the formation of the Federal Council of Churches in Philadelphia in 1908.8 The historical roots of the mainline Protestant churches can ultimately be traced back to the establishment of the Church of England as part of the British colonization of North America that began in the early seventeenth century. Although the Church of England made up what could be termed a de facto religious establishment throughout many of the thirteen British colonies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was, writes Lantzer, nevertheless always “room for dissent within Christian England, which allowed for a good deal of diversity to exist on both sides of the British Atlantic.”9 Indeed, the Puritans, who sought to “purify” the Anglican Church along “more Reformed Protestant lines” constituted a major and highly influential force in North American Protestantism throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and indeed

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beyond.10 The burgeoning evangelical movement of the eighteenth century also came to play an important role in providing “a core to the wide variety of theological and doctrinal differences” of the different American Protestant churches of the time.11 The American religious climate of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries became notably influenced by the Enlightenment. However, as the American Enlightenment was never anti-clerical and always decidedly more focused on the “politics of liberty,”12 embracing a “freedom to believe” rather than a “freedom from belief,”13 it produced what Thuesen refers to as a “ ‘reasonable’ style of Christianity” that tended to avoid conflicts over belief and doctrine in favor of a stronger emphasis on “morality as religion’s chief end.”14 The United States Declaration of Independence in 1775 set in motion a movement toward the disestablishment of church and state. However, as Thuesen observes, “the official disestablishment of religion did not weaken the ‘establishment’ mentality of many Protestants, nor did it lead to the replacement of institutional forms of Protestantism with a thousand warring sects.”15 Instead, the established Protestant churches, although now reconfigured as voluntary associations, quickly developed extensive organizational infrastructures and soon developed into “powerful institutions in their own right.”16 In the first half of the nineteenth century, the democratic impulse served to further propel the “competitive nature of American denominationalism,”17 resulting in a gradual reorganization of the denominational field through the creation of new denominations and the merger of already established ones. The Second Great Awakening during the first half of the nineteenth century also served to legitimize the evangelical movement and to further establish the position of Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians as integral parts of the mainline.18 Whereas the American Civil War gave rise to a series of serious denominational schisms, most of which related to the issue of slavery, the post–Civil War decades witnessed the emergence of a “New America” following accelerating industrialization and urbanization coupled with increasing further immigration. The new socioeconomic challenges that emerged as a result of these developments helped spur the establishment and solidification of a range of new mainline Protestant institutions and hierarchies, the most notable of which was the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America (FCC) that was formed in Philadelphia in 1908.19 While the early twentieth century witnessed increasing mainline institutional and organizational consolidation, the period was also marked by a drawn-out conflict between “modernist” and “fundamentalist” factions.20 The modernists represented liberal and progressive ideals, arguing for theological and doctrinal reforms based on modern trends in biblical

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scholarship and a stronger emphasis on social issues as part of a more general effort to maintain the “relevance” of the Christian message for modern populations.21 These efforts were vehemently opposed by fundamentalists who, as Lantzer puts it, “sought to protect their faith from a transformation that would embrace the world at the expense of the Word.”22 Despite the infighting that characterized the early decades of the twentieth century, the Seven Sisters were able to retain their dominance over American Christianity throughout the early and mid parts of the twentieth century. By the 1940s, a “near consensus” started to emerge within the mainline as liberal modernists were cementing their dominance over mainline hierarchies.23 Accelerating further industrialization and urbanization in the early twentieth century gave rise to a range of new social problems such as increasing economic inequality and poverty, poor labor conditions, and racial and immigrationrelated tensions. The mainline churches responded to this new situation through a concentrated effort to “craft the Kingdom of God on Earth” that became known as the Social Gospel.24 As the Social Gospel movement developed and expanded throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century it also came to reflect many of the ideals of the contemporary Progressive political era.25 The movement was a highly diverse one, with more conservative proponents devising and supporting causes such as Prohibition, and liberals instead focusing on issues such as antitrust legislation and the fight against child labor.26 As Thuesen argues, the Social Gospel was above all a “bureaucratic phenomenon” that “partook deeply of the bureaucratic ethos of big business and the scientific ethos of the university.”27 This is aptly illustrated by how the publication of Frederick Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management in 191128—which inspired the mode of production management known as “Taylorism”—was followed by the publication of Shailer Mathews’s Scientific Management in the Churches in 1912.29 As such, through its role as the “unofficial theology of mainline church executives, the Social Gospel was thoroughly establishmentarian; its rise paralleled the emergence of religious denominations in their modern form, and its tenets reflected the predilections and prejudices of an emerging managerial class.”30 Although the Great Depression of 1929 did cause a thorough reassessment of the optimistic aims of the Social Gospel,31 as the movement developed and expanded, the churches increasingly came to adapt an “institutional model” of social activism and advocacy based on an “all-embracing conception of the church’s public role.”32 Following the implementation of Keynesian economics, the post–World War II era witnessed a considerable expansion in federal government bureaucracies.

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While the mainline churches continued to grow throughout the 1950s, the new social welfare programs that had been created as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal and further developed through Johnson’s Great Society reduced the demand for the provision of social services and welfare on the part of the churches.33 In 1950, the already firmly cemented “bureaucratic, establishment mentality of mainline Protestants” led to the establishment of the new National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America (NCC) to replace the former FCC.34

The onset of decline and the current state of the mainline The 1960s and 1970s marked a turning point in the fortunes of the mainline as the Seven Sisters faced serious challenges about how to respond to the social unease and upheavals of these decades, such as the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, debates on gender equality and the question of female clergy, racial unity, and the civil rights of gays, lesbians, and other sexual minorities.35 These decades came to mark the start of a long process of perpetual mainline decline that has continued to this day. The advent of mainline decline coincided with what Miller has termed a “revolution” in American Protestantism and dawning of a “post-denominational era.”36 Post-denominationalism emerged as a response to the fundamental cultural changes of the 1960s and became epitomized by the spread of non- or cross-denominational evangelicalism or so-called neo-evangelicalism37 and seeker sensitive “new paradigm” churches.38 Indeed, the rise of post- or nondenominational churches, argues Lantzer, constituted “a direct critique of the Seven Sisters on both a theological and an organizational level.”39 In comparing the “cultural toolkits” of modern America’s great Protestant traditions, Smith argues that, “If fundamentalism’s cultural toolkit generates the deficient subcultural orientation of distinction-without-engagement, mainline and liberal Protestantism are beset by the exact opposite tendency: engagement-withoutdistinction.”40 This is in contrast to contemporary evangelicalism’s character of “distinction-with-engagement” which has evangelicalism thriving on its confrontational, oppositional, and engagement-emphasizing subcultural identity, whereas mainline Protestantism “reflects a relative lack of oppositional engagement” or tension with mainstream society. These observations form part of a broader and by now widely established explanation for mainline decline that centers on their increasingly liberal, inclusivist, and progressive stance on doctrinal and political issues. Although the mainline has sought to grow and solidify its position in American society through embracing and making

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accommodations to modernity, being active in social reform, and supporting progressive political and social causes, the most notable growth in the Christian landscape of the United States has nevertheless occurred among the types of churches who have remained decidedly more strict on doctrinal issues and who expect higher degrees of commitment from their members.41 These developments also need to be viewed in relation to twentieth-century developments in media which, according to Lantzer, “proved largely detrimental to the Seven Sisters” as conservatives and fundamentalists were much quicker to embrace and accommodate radio beginning in the 1920s and 1930s and later television in the 1950s and 1960s.42 Because of their previous reluctance to make any significant forays into the realm of broadcasting and generally weak presence in the media sphere, the rise of the phenomenon of televangelism and the establishment of fundamentalist and conservative Christian media enterprises in the 1980s led to a further marginalization of the Seven Sisters.43 But unlike broadcast media such as radio and television, the Seven Sisters found it easier to establish a stronger presence on the internet at a relatively early stage of its development.44 The membership of most mainline denominations peaked in 1965. Thereafter, however, membership figures have declined dramatically.45 Mainline decline has continued throughout the first and second decades of the new millennium with Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study documenting a decrease in mainline membership from 18.1 percent of the adult population of the United States in 2007 to 14.7 percent in 2014.46 From a purely numerical standpoint, the Seven Sisters can thus no longer adequately be described as majority denominations.47 A new conceptualization of the “mainline” that would more adequately reflect the religious sensibilities and affiliations of American Christians would need to include Evangelicals, Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, and, most crucially, Roman Catholics who make up approximately 25 percent of the United States population and remain the largest denomination in thirty-six states.48 The continued appeal of the Seven Sisters as the mainline derives not only from history however, but also, as Lantzer notes, from “their continued dominance of local, state, and national pan-denominational groups, boards and organizations” such as the NCC.49 In spite of their numerical decline, the mainline churches have no doubt adapted well to the present-day complex political and socioeconomic environment, particularly through developing various forms of cooperation with government agencies and nonprofit organizations of various sorts.50 Mainline denominations tend to favor so-called bridging types of civic participation,

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whereby connections are built between different groups and associations rather than keeping participation within the bounds of one particular community or denomination.51 However, as Chaves, Giesel, and Tsitsos point out, “mainline civic distinctiveness is less a product of any internal features of mainline religion and more a product of the position traditionally held by mainline congregations within communities’ civic hierarchies.”52 These observations are echoed by Ammerman who points out how “a significant portion of the mainline’s public engagement takes the form of cooperative activity” in the form of “informal coalitions” with “religious and secular nonprofits” and various types of partnerships with governmental organizations.53 These observations illustrate the enduring deep connections of the mainline churches to the core social establishment and the ways in which, in the words of Wuthnow and Evans, the “model” for mainline church life increasingly has become “that of a network, or referral system.”54 As the above discussion illustrates, the mainline churches have, despite their numerical decline, retained close relationships to the core social establishment and continued to act as central participants in various forms of church-, state-, and third sector partnerships. It is important to note in this context that the social institutional and organizational field of the United States has been a decidedly more marketized one when compared to that of most European countries ever since the breakdown of the “liberal corporatism” of the Progressive and New Deal eras. The spread of neoliberalism since the early 1980s has only served to further accentuate this state of affairs. In the following we move to explore the ways and extent to which marketization- and new media discourse has made its way into the official strategic discourse of three mainline Protestant churches in the United States, directing particular focus at the areas in which their adoption of such discourse has been most evident.

The Presbyterian Church USA: the new “Way Forward” The historical origins of the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) lie in the Reformed tradition which reached North America already in the midseventeenth century through Scottish and Irish immigration.55 The first American Presbytery was established in Philadelphia in 1706.56 The PCUSA was established in 1983 through the merger of the Presbyterian Church in the United States and the United Presbyterian Church in the United States. The PCUSA is governed according to Presbyterian polity. Similar to the other mainline churches, the PCUSA has maintained an extensive bureaucratic structure,

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remained deeply engaged in a range of social justice related issues, and adopted a generally liberal and progressive stance on doctrinal matters. Mirroring similar developments in the other mainline churches, Presbyterian membership has been steadily declining over a period of several decades and more than halved since the mid-1960s. The Research Services unit of the Presbyterian Mission Agency maintains extensive and detailed databases on membershiprelated developments.57 In 2015, the PCUSA reported having 1,572,660 “active members.”58 In 2014 Pew Research Center estimated that approximately 1.4 percent of the adult population in the United States self-identified as members of the PCUSA, as compared to 1.9 percent in 2007.59 As membership projections for the future remain bleak and clearly indicate further progressive decline, the general discourse of the PCUSA has become increasingly marked by a language of thoroughgoing “change” and transformation. It needs to be noted, though, that the official discourse of the PCUSA has thus far not become as conspicuously marked by marketization- and new media discourse when compared to some of the other institutional Christian Protestant churches explored in this book. This is not to say, however, that such discourse would have remained altogether absent from its official discourse. To the contrary, a thorough screening of official PCUSA strategic documents reveals not only an increasing occupation with strategic thinking but also an increasingly evident technologization of discourse when it comes to new market-related organizational values in particular. For example, as is outlined in a document from 2011 titled “The Missional Church and the New Form of Government. Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)” that summarizes the “new form of government” of the PCUSA that was approved in 2011 states the following: With greater freedom and flexibility, the new Form of Government encourages congregations and councils to focus on God’s mission and how they can faithfully participate in this mission. In offering a structure that is more horizontal than hierarchical, the new Form of Government encourages the church to be open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit as it seeks to be Christ’s body and live out its calling as a community of faith, hope, love and witness.60

This excerpt illustrates on a more general level how strategic and managerial discourse has started to make its way into and become intermixed with already established discourses within the PCUSA. Indeed, this excerpt provides an example of a hybrid discourse that engages in a mixing of strategy genres and religious genres. Talk about “freedom and flexibility” and an organizational

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structure that is more “horizontal than hierarchical” is fused with talk about “God’s mission” and “guidance of the Holy Spirit.” A further example of an increasing openness to marketization discourse can be found in the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s “Mission Work Plan for 2013 to 2016” that was developed in 2012. Emphasizing the need for the PCUSA to maintain its “organizational integrity,” the document outlines the following main “directional goals”: Build confidence, trust and engagement in all that we do by being Collaborative, Accountable, Responsive and Excellent (C.A.R.E.). If anything is excellent and if anything is admirable, focus your thoughts on these things. Philippians 4:8a (CEB)61

The main thing to note about the discourse in this short excerpt is the way in which it represents the principal values of PCUSA organizational practice in the form of an acronym, which conveniently reads as “care.” This is revealing of marketization discourse influence, as is also the use of the word “Excellence.” In a way that is quite typical of official Christian church discourse more generally, the excerpt also includes a Bible reference. Indeed, all of the “directional goals” set out in the document from which the excerpt is taken are accompanied by Bible references, the primary function of which is to provide Scriptural justification for the types of actions encouraged by the text. As such, this excerpt provides another example of a hybrid discourse that mixes and combines strategy and policy genres with religious genres. An earlier white paper version of the same document from 2012 made significantly stronger manifest connections to marketization discourse and NPM values and ideals. The last paragraph of the General Assembly Mission Council’s “2013–2016 Mission Work Plan Strategy White Paper” read as follows: Preliminary Objectives were developed by staff based upon the directional goals to describe tangible outcome targets that can be measured, monitored and evaluated for progress. These objectives served as the basis for development of the budgets. In the fall of 2012, these will be completed, then work plans and individual goals will be set, all in alignment with the Vision, Mission and Directional Goals. Each GAMC program will be evaluated for effectiveness, impact and alignment on a four year cycle of evaluations.62

This excerpt constitutes a particularly notable example of an, at least seemingly, wholesale adoption of marketization discourse. When it comes to the vocabulary employed in this excerpt, we find several words, terms, and phrases with

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conspicuous links to market- and NPM-related organizational values such as “directional goals,” “tangible outcome targets,” as well as the “measurement,” “monitoring,” and “evaluation” of “effectiveness,” “impact,” and “progress.” In terms of style, the discourse in the excerpt is highly formal and proclamatory in that it concentrates on outlining how the Mission Plan Strategy of the PCUSA was developed on a firmly rational basis so as to provide a solid foundation for the systematic planning of future practices which can subsequently be continually measured for results and evaluated for effectiveness. Indeed, as is also stated in the excerpt, all of the General Assembly Mission Council’s (GAMC) programs will be evaluated for “effectiveness” and “impact” on a “four year cycle of evaluations.” It is certainly worth noting that this emphasis on setting “directional goals” and subjecting them to continuous “measurement” and “evaluation” for “effectiveness” and “impact” constitutes a central trait of NPM values and criteria of institutional and organizational effectivity as discussed in the previous chapter. Although the heavy employment of market- and NPM-associated vocabulary and terminology in this excerpt certainly works to obscure what exactly it is that the GAMC has done, it simultaneously serves to work up a picture of the PCUSA as a modern and “effective” organization that, like any effective and well-functioning modern organization, systematically plans, executes, and evaluates its activities. The establishment of a new language of change and transformation within the PCUSA finds further illustration in the document “Assembly in Brief: 222nd General Assembly” written by Jerry Van Marter—a four-page informational leaflet complete with an elaborate layout and plenty of photos that provides a summary of the discussions and major decisions of the 2016 PCUSA General Assembly in Portland. As the document states: Some General Assemblies make their mark. Others make history. The 222nd General Assembly (2016) made so much history that it will long be remembered as one of the most significant in the life of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) . . . The assembly also created, by a vote of 547-27, a fifteen-member 2020 Vision Team to “develop a guiding statement for the denomination and make a plan for its implementation.” The hope, the Assembly Committee on “The Way Forward” said, “is that the team will help us establish and reclaim our identity as the PC(USA).”63

As is stated in this excerpt, the PCUSA is in need of a new “Way Forward.” In order for that new way forward to be found, the 2016 General Assembly appointed a “2020 Vision Team” to “develop a guiding statement for the denomination and

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make a plan for its implementation.” Another way of putting this would be to say that the 2016 General Assembly commissioned the formation of a new general imaginary for the church. Although the document does not spell out what “The Way Forward” would be exactly, it nevertheless talks about the development of a new “guiding statement” for the church as a whole. As such, the excerpt is generally illustrative of a new emphasis on the importance of strategic thinking to bring about change. When it comes to its discourse on the impact of the present-day media and communicational environment, the PCUSA has more recently increased its investments in social media. More specifically, it has started offering its employees education in social media use in the form of so-called social media SitIns. The purpose and nature of these events is outlined in a 2013 document titled “Social Media SitIns: The What, the Why, and the How” authored by Rob Fohr at the Young Adult Catalyst Office of the Presbyterian Mission Agency. As to the “what” question, the document explains that these events are intended to provide PCUSA employees with opportunities to:    

Intentionally strategize social media practices for ministry areas, Get into the habit of using social media as a ministry, Learn more about social media tools, and Collaborate with other ministry areas like congregational and mid-council committees.64

As to the “why” question, the document goes on to explain: 2) Utilizing social media is essential for connecting with young adults. Not only is it second nature to many, it is also often preferred because it is grassroots, participatory, and decentralized—principles valued by many young adults.65

This excerpt provides a fairly typical example of official institutional Christian church discourse on new media and ICTs more generally in that it is marked by a general emphasis on the opportunities offered by new media for church ministry and outreach. As such, it provides an example of a “validation discourse” in highlighting how the affordances offered by social media as a technology will prove useful for the mission of the church and enable and facilitate the forming of new forms of community. The text in the excerpt also reveals some general indicators of a technologization of discourse when it comes to the PCUSA’s current engagements with new media. For example, as is explained in the excerpt, PCUSA employees are invited to learn how to utilize social media as a component of broader ministry strategies. Engagement with social media is, moreover,

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represented as being “essential” for reaching younger age groups for whom social media, the text says, has become “second nature.” In using this phrase, the text also goes some way in saying that technological development has changed not only how people communicate, but also the way they “are.” Social media is also represented as providing a type of communicational environment that is based on active “grassroots” participation and mutual interaction. This style of communication and interaction, it is stated, is valued among young adults as opposed to, presumably, the traditional and typically authoritarian communicational styles of rigid religious hierarchies. In framing things in this way, the text, although perhaps largely inadvertently, at least partly serves to work up a somewhat exotified picture of social media as something that has proliferated “outside” the church and that the church now is compelled to engage with in order to be able to connect with younger age groups and coming generations. As such, the discourse in the above excerpt also draws on the “technology cultured frame” identified by Campbell in that it describes a world that is being “cultured by technology” and highlights the need for the church to adapt to this new reality. Although it has remained relatively modest within the order of discourse of the PCUSA as a whole, the presence of marketization- and new media discourse has more recently started to proliferate as a result of an increasing technologization of discourse on the part of the PCUSA itself. Insofar as this is illustrative of the establishment of a new reform-oriented IDF within the church, we should expect the adoption of such discourse to increase in the future.

The United Methodist Church: “church marketing” The United Methodist Church (UMC) traces its roots to the revival that John Wesley initiated within the Church of England in the eighteenth century and which gave rise to the Methodist movement. The history of organized Methodism in the United States stretches back to the establishment of the first Methodist Episcopal Church is Baltimore, Maryland, in 1784.66 The UMC was established in 1968 through a merger between the Methodist Church (USA) and the Evangelical United Brethren Church.67 The UMC ranks as the largest of the American mainline Protestant denominations and also makes up a major part of the global Methodist movement. It constitutes the second-largest Protestant denomination and third-largest Christian denomination in the United States. The UMC has a democratic structure, espouses a relatively inclusivist and tolerant approach to doctrinal and political issues, and has remained actively

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engaged in various forms of social advocacy, ranging from capital punishment to gun control. Like the PCUSA, the UMC maintains extensive and detailed databases on its membership. In 2014, Pew Research Center estimated that approximately 3.9 percent of the adult population of the United States (approximately 9 million people) self-identified as members of the UMC68 while officially registered members number slightly under 7.2  million.69 The UMC also has a larger number of overseas congregations with a combined membership of around 4.4 million people.70 Similar to the other mainline denominations, the UMC in the United States has been in a state of perpetual decline since the mid-1960s. The new millennium has only seen further decline, with Pew Research Center documenting a 1.5 percent decrease in UMC membership in the United States between 2007 and 2014.71 Like the PCUSA as discussed previously, the general order of discourse of the UMC has also become marked by a language of crisis coupled with increasing calls for change and reform. Following these developments, the UMC has devised a range of large-scale initiatives designed to stem further membership decline and attract new followers. These initiatives include the Igniting Ministry campaign that was launched already in 2001 with a budget of 22 million US dollars. Focusing on the demographic of 25–54 year-olds, this campaign was principally directed at fostering a “welcoming environment” and developing a “new kind of multimedia evangelism, comprising television, print, digital, and outdoor advertising tools.”72 Through its unprecedented purposeful and extensive use of advertising, this campaign also served to normalize advertising practices within the UMC. In 2009, the Igniting Ministry campaign was replaced by the equally extensive Rethink Church campaign, which was directed at the demographic of 18– 34 year-olds or, as Laura Buchanan, a PR specialist for UMC Communications put it, “tech-savvy seekers who wished to make a difference in the world but who might not be attending a church.”73 As Buchanan comments on the transition from the Igniting Ministry to the Rethink Church campaign:  “The wellrecognized tagline, ‘Open minds. Open hearts. Open doors.’ was examined and it remained, but the word ‘open’ became a verb, not an adjective. Reaching an audience whose attention was increasingly shifting from offline to online also meant adding mobile, social and digital channels.”74 The Rethink Church campaign has brought a stronger emphasis on communication and new media coupled with a growing emphasis on marketing. The UMC has consequently developed what it terms a “Church Marketing Plan Tool.” Under the heading “Overcoming Your ‘Fear of Flying,’ ” the rationale for

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adopting marketing practices is outlined in the following way on the official Web pages of the UMC: We take proper pride that we have learned—or can “do”—communications. And guess what? Communications is one aspect of marketing. Some consider marketing too commercial to embrace, especially within a church environment. Others fear marketing will change their church in unacceptable ways. Yet, marketing, as a discipline, can provide a framework to do our communications job better. For that reason, let us take another step outside our comfort zone to see what we can learn.75

The discourse in this excerpt highlights how marketing, despite its association with the world of business and commerce, can nevertheless prove valuable as an “aspect” of church communications. Indeed, UMC employees are encouraged to step outside their “comfort zone” and consider new ways of improving church communications. However, since church employees are likely to be suspicious toward the adoption of marketing practices if understood in the conventional sense, the text proceeds with the following discussion on the definition of marketing: Before moving forward, we need a common definition of marketing. If you look up the word in the dictionary, you find marketing is a discipline or process through which an organization structures and plans its response to meet an audience’s needs. The goal is to align the organization to meet those needs in a way that builds audience interest. Now that still sounds rather commercial, so let’s adapt it to a church setting and use the following definition: Marketing is the process of the church identifying and meeting, or contributing to, the spiritual, community (sense of belonging), and service needs of its members and surrounding neighborhoods. . . . In essence, marketing helps the church “package” its communications and activities to make it more attractive to members and prospective members because it meets their needs.76

The discourse in this excerpt provides a clear example of a legitimizing discourse that strives to establish and normalize the concept of marketing in church settings. In the process, however, it constructs an understanding of marketing that diverges so substantially from its conventional meaning or standard definition so as to become something quite different. Indeed, in the definition provided in the above excerpt, marketing largely emerges as the practice whereby the church surveys and responds to the already existing “spiritual” and

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“service” needs of its members and surrounding neighborhoods rather than striving to create a further demand for such spiritual and service needs. The use of the word “service” might also be taken to suggest that the UMC views itself as mainly constituting a utility for its members. Marketing, in this context, becomes about “packaging” church communications, activities, and services in a more “attractive” way. This excerpt thus provides an example of a quite peculiar instance of the incorporation of marketization discourse into official church discourse in that the term “marketing” as such remains in play while simultaneously becoming redefined in a way that retains few connections to its conventional meaning. This is done in order for talk about marketing in the church to be brought into closer alignment with established church discourse. This excerpt thus provides an example of a “prescriptive discourse” in that it strives to highlight the ways in which marketing as a communicative function supports the values and practices of the UMC. In terms of style, the discourse in the “Church Marketing Plan Tool” material on the whole generally retains an inspirational and rather informal tone. The “Church Marketing Plan Tool” also comes in the form of an online course that is designed to instruct UMC employees in marketing practices (as understood in the sense outlined in the above excerpt) for the purposes of enhancing the attractiveness of the activities and services of their respective parishes. The course is outlined in detail on the UMC’s official Web site. In the general “Overview” section we find a subsection titled “Theology” where a theological justification is provided for the adoption of marketing practices. The section includes the following statement: In the language of Marketing, we speak of internal and external audiences. The New Testament is full of these examples, though different language and metaphors are used. Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom is full of metaphors for those on the inside of the community (Jews) and those outside. It is clear that there is a different context for the message to be delivered but the same message of salvation for both groups.77

This excerpt provides yet another example of a hybrid discourse that engages in the mixing of marketing genres and religious genres. Marketing is construed in terms of a contemporary equivalent to the various communicational and evangelism practices recounted in the New Testament. The basic point that the text in the excerpt aims to convey, though, is simply that different communication tools need to be used for reaching different groups of people, such as inactive members or potential converts.

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Church marketing is further constructed as a collective and collaborative endeavor. Under the heading “How to Effectively Reach Your Community” it is stated that, Having the buy-in of your whole team will help ensure success at the church level. Members of your church can participate in the course as a team, enabling you to engage big ideas in a group setting, rather than the traditional top-down approach. This, combined with the Church Marketing Plan that you will build during the course, will help you make significant strides toward reaching your community through tried-and-true marketing tactics.78

This excerpt further illustrates a general extension of strategic planning into church settings. It connects to discourses of strategic management in its emphasis on the value of teamwork over the “traditional top-down approach,” thus indirectly suggesting that the top-down approach still remains common within the UMC. In contrast to such an approach, the “buy-in” of an entire team, the text says, will help “ensure success.” In the “Strategy” section of the plan it is further recommended that marketing plan teams learn and utilize SWOT analysis. SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) is a structured planning method developed in the 1960s and 1970s used to evaluate these four elements of a project or business venture. SWOT analysis has been widely adopted in fields such as strategic and corporate management and also developed into a discourse technology that has become varyingly packaged and disseminated by management gurus and consultants. The actual utility of SWOT analysis has, however, been widely criticized for overlaying “corporate diversity with generic solutions.”79 Be that as it may, the recommendation to adopt such a corporate business associated framework for strategic analysis is itself illustrative of a firmer establishment and normalization of strategic thinking within the UMC. Indeed, SWOT analysis is not the only strategic evaluation method or discourse technology recommended in the “Church Marketing Plan Tool” material. The “Articles” section includes a text titled “5 Stages Every High Performing Team Must Experience’ authored by Clay Morgan, a consultant in communications and organizational strategy. The text starts out in the following way: We celebrate great teams that accomplish amazing things. Most healthy teams share seven common elements. How can you achieve greatness while leading your own groups? Success doesn’t magically happen. While it is tempting to try to take shortcuts, teams must face the conflicts and obstacles that arise as they develop and cohere.

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It’s been just over half a century since social scientist Bruce Tuckman proposed his now famous model of the four stages groups go through. Ideally, said Tuckman, a group or team’s decision-making process should occur in four stages: forming, storming, norming and performing. Whether you are leading a team overseeing daily operations or want to create a social media volunteer team, groups, especially smaller ones, consistently follow a predictable path on the way to becoming high performing units. Successful church groups consistently follow a predictable path of forming, storming, norming & performing.80

This text advocates the employment of a model of group development first developed by psychologist Bruce Tuckman in 1965. This model, Morgan writes, will help teams become “high performing units” and achieve “greatness.” As a whole, the article from which the above excerpt is taken provides a further example of an increasing emphasis on strategic thinking and its operationalization, enactment, and materialization in new organizational routines and practices within the UMC. In terms of style, the discourse in the excerpt is largely inspirational and informal. Lastly, the UMCs current official discourse on new media and ICTs is also worth noting. The official Web pages of the UMC contain several sections which include quite detailed discussions on different aspects of new media and ICTs. Social media in particular are described as offering new opportunities for church outreach since they work to “flatten” traditional hierarchies and transcend geographic restrictions.81 The establishment of the Rethink Church campaign has also brought an increasing push toward more purposefully utilizing new media in worship settings, which provides us with further illustrations of the UMCs current views on the present-day media and technological environment. For example, as is stated in the “Media in Worship” subsection of the “Resources” section of the official UMC Web site: More churches of all sizes and styles have discovered that the use of new media is much more than a fad, or even a trend, but a fundamental way in which our culture communicates—as powerful as the printing press has been to the modern era.82

This text taps into a broader narrative of how developments in digital technologies and ICTs have brought about profound changes and revolutionized human communication. This type of discourse, although again perhaps inadvertently, at least partly serves to work up a picture of the church as a community or institution that has lagged behind and only more recently come to discover the benefits of new

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media and ICTs. Indeed, as the text states, churches of all kinds, and presumably also the UMC, have increasingly come to realize that new media is “more than a fad, or even a trend.” Discourse of this type also functions to further encourage increasing investments and use of new media on the part of the church as a whole. As such, it also draws on a “technology cultured frame” in its representation of the “fundamental” ways in which new media have changed human communication. Although UMC discourse on new media and ICTs is clearly generally protechnology in character, it simultaneously also contains some warnings about the potentially disruptive and destructive effects of new media technologies. For example, the “Social Principles: The Social Community” subsection of the broader “What We Believe” section of the official UMC Web site contains the following statement about the internet: Personal communication technologies such as the Internet  allow persons to communicate with each other and access vast information resources that can have commercial, cultural, political, and personal value. While the Internet can be used to nurture minds and spirits of children and adults, it is in danger of being overrun with commercial interests and is used by some to distribute inappropriate and illegal material. Therefore, the Internet must be managed responsibly in order to maximize its benefits while minimizing its risks, especially for children.83

This excerpt provides an example of an “officializing discourse” that works to set the boundaries for the UMCs general approach to the internet as a technology and communicational and interactional environment. The last sentence of the excerpt underlines how the benefits of the internet are “maximized” only when it is “managed responsibly.” The utility of the technology as such is not questioned, although the text does urge UMC members to remain alert when it comes to the types of content that are disseminated through the internet. Overall, we can see that the UMC has engaged with new media- and marketrelated discourse and practices on a broad front. Increasing signs of the adoption of marketization discourse are mostly evident in its creation of a church marketing program and increasing general emphasis on strategic thinking. It is also worth noting that these developments largely appear to have occurred concomitantly with the establishment of a new reform-oriented IDF within the UMC at around the turn of the new millennium. If the Rethink Church initiative is unable to generate tangible results and if membership figures continue to drop, considering developments so far, it is likely that the UMC will try out new marketization- and new media discourse-related solutions in the future.

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The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: “mission advancement” The historical roots of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) can be traced back to the arrival of larger cohorts of mainly German and Scandinavian Lutheran immigrants to North America during the first part of the seventeenth century.84 The ELCA was officially established in 1988 through the merger of The American Lutheran Church, The Lutheran Church in America, and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches. The ELCA is the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States. Like the PCUSA and UMC, the ELCA also maintains extensive databases on its members. In 2015, it reported a total of 3,668,034 baptized members.85 In 2014, Pew Research Center estimated that approximately 2.1 percent of the adult population of the Unites States selfidentified as members of the ELCA, as compared to 2.8 percent in 2007.86 The ELCA has a democratic structure and incorporates many both liberal and more conservative factions. It espouses a relatively liberal and inclusivist approach on doctrinal and theological issues. For example, it has ordained women since 197087 and LGBTQ ministers since 2010.88 It has maintained a bureaucratic structure and remained deeply involved in a wide range of social issues and civic engagement partnerships. Following its continued decline, the ELCA has more recently initiated a general process of renewal called the “Called Forward Together in Christ” process.89 As part of this process, the general order of discourse of the ELCA has also become marked by a general language of renewal. As is stated in the “Congregation-based Community Organizing” subsection of the “Publicly Engaged Church” section of the official ELCA Web site: “Many ELCA congregations today find themselves challenged with decreasing membership and dwindling budgets, confronting a culture of individualism, and tending to the effects of a consumer-driven, market economy.”90 The ELCA was an early adopter of marketization- and new media discourse, which has developed into a quite naturalized part of official ELCA discourse on a range of different topics. For example, as was stated in an official ELCA Web site news posting about the ELCA board’s acceptance of a new “Worship Plan” in 2000: The chief goals of the worship ministry team in the next five years are to develop the “critical skills” of worship leaders throughout the church; develop approaches to leadership that will help people understand that the diversity of “responsible choices” in worship is a strength of Lutheran worship; and develop a new generation of “trial use” resources which will answer the questions necessary to prepare successor resources to the Lutheran Book of Worship and other worship resources.91

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This excerpt provides an early example of the adoption of marketization discourse and the technologization of discourse on the part of the ELCA. The peculiar thing about this excerpt is that it employs terms such as “critical skills” and talks about developing a “new generation of ‘trial use’ resources” in relation to the renewal of worship practices as such. In terms of style, the discourse in the excerpt is highly formal and proclamatory in that it concentrates on simply outlining the chief future goals of the “worship ministry team.” To take a more recent example, a 2013 pre-assembly work report for the years 2011–2013 by the Mission Advancement unit titled “2013 Pre-Assembly Report: Mission Advancement” states the following: Marketing Communications supports work in strengthening the identity and mission of the ELCA through focused, strategic, and integrated communication with members and the wider society.92

This excerpt highlights the role of “marketing communications” in the activities of the ELCA. Since marketing communications constitutes a subset of the general practice of marketing, this short excerpt provides a clear example of how the core-practices of the ELCA have become directly linked to market associated practices. In what provides a further illustration of a growing emphasis on strategic thinking, market communications are also represented as supporting “integrated,” “focused,” and “strategic” both inward and outward church communication. The style of the discourse in this short excerpt is again highly formal. The document goes on to outline the following “Major Directions” and planned projects for 2013–16: A  communications audit to assess the reach, effectiveness, and coordinated articulation of all of our publications and channels/platforms, and the quantity and quality of our engagement with key audiences. Collaboration with the Research and Evaluation staff to develop a baseline survey measuring the awareness of the ELCA and the effectiveness of its communication efforts and to track growth. . . . Development of a more fully integrated digital strategy for social media including adoption of a suitable platform for a broad-based, scalable online community to provide members and congregations with a vibrant virtual space in which to collaborate and share ideas and best practices.93

This excerpt provides a particularly clear example of a very evident adoption of marketization discourse and technologization of discourse on the part of the ELCA. Indeed, the text in the excerpt is completely littered with market and

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NPM-associated vocabulary and terminology. It includes words, terms, and phrases such as “audit,” “assessment” of “reach, effectiveness, and coordinated articulation” and the “quantity and quality of engagement with key audiences,” collaboration with “Research and Evaluation staff,” “baseline survey,” “measuring,” tracking “growth,” and “scalable” online community. In terms of style, the discourse in the excerpt is again highly formal. Although the exact meaning of the text remains obscure, the discourse in the excerpt serves to work up a picture of the ELCA as an organization that systematically plans and continuously evaluates its activities. It is also worth noting that the text proposes the development of an extensive and “fully integrated” strategy for social media. When it comes to its engagement with the present-day media environment, the ELCA has become particularly focused on digital and social media, as is also illustrated in the previously quoted excerpt. It has consequently started putting a stronger emphasis on developing a social media strategy and formulating social media guidelines. The document “Social Media and Congregations. Strategies, Guidelines, Best Practices and Resources”—which is primarily directed toward individual parishes and employees—provides the following introductory note on the virtues of a comprehensive social media strategy: Elements of a Social Media Strategy The resource list below has a number of good references for helping you develop a comprehensive social media strategy. Ideally this strategy will be one component of an overall communication plan for your congregation that includes all the ways you interact with your members and the community. A  good strategy provides a rationale, plus some structure and foundation for this aspect of ministry.94

Though this excerpt does not illustrate the adoption of new media discourses or the technologization of discourse on new media and ICTs, it nevertheless illustrates on a more general level how the ELCA is striving to develop a strategic approach to social media. Indeed, the document goes on to recommend that ELCA employees can learn from the social media guidelines already created within other organizations, such as the Ford Motor Company.95 The ELCA has adopted marketization- and new media discourse to a notable extent. Such discourse has gradually become more visible during the past decade. On the whole, the official discourse of the ELCA remains markedly more formal when compared to that of both the PCUSA and the UMC. Insofar as the “Called Forward Together in Christ” renewal process is indicative of the

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establishment of a new reform-oriented IDF within the ELCA, we might expect its already strong emphasis on strategic thinking to become further accentuated in the future.

The Church of England in Britain: “resourcing the future” We now turn to explore the impact of marketization- and new media discourses in the context of Britain and the Church of England (CoE). A great deal has been written on religious change in Britain in the post–World War II period. In some accounts, religious change in Britain is rendered a varied, uneven, and partly contradictory process of gradual religious transformation.96 In others, however, it is instead framed in terms of a story of profound and irreversible change and radical decline.97 The following account of changes in the British religious landscape in the post-war era will only focus on a smaller set of themes that are of particular relevance given the primary focus of this book. A relative degree of religious diversity, primarily in the form of dissent, has existed in Britain since at least the mid-sixteenth century. As a consequence, British society has historically been characterized by a relative degree of religious toleration that, in turn, has played an important role in shaping the historic relationship between religion and politics and church and state. As Beckford noted, this historical “plurality and diversity of religious groups prevented British politics from being dominated by a single, major confrontation between church and state, politics and religion, or church and church.”98 Ever since the separation of the English Church from Rome in 1534, the British religious landscape has nevertheless been marked by the presence of the CoE in its capacity of state church and its territorial model of organization at the level of the nation, diocese, and parish.99 The CoE reached its modern-time high point in the 1950s, which, as Davie puts it, was primarily “an Anglican decade, in which the social role of the church was confirmatory rather than confrontational.”100 During this mainly conservative social and cultural period, she writes, the “sacred” in its Anglican forms “synchronized nicely with the secular.”101 The good fortunes of the CoE were soon to change, however, as growing numbers of people, particularly in the more industrialized parts of the country, grew increasingly indifferent to the CoE and its activities. A period of radical change set in during the 1960s when traditional institutional religion, as represented by the CoE and the other traditional churches, became challenged on virtually all fronts. Several accounts of

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religious change in Britain in the post-war era have directed particular attention at the impact of the social and cultural changes of the 1960s and highlighted the decade as the time when institutional religion in Britain set out on a path of progressive general decline.102 For example, Brown’s103 much-discussed account of the “death of Christian Britain” is principally based on the argument that the post-war period witnessed a general shift away from a previously dominant Christian moral and cultural framework toward a much more diverse cultural context in which growing numbers of people no longer identified with the old framework. Some of the most notable factors underlying this shift included significant changes in cultural understandings of family structures and the roles of women, changing views on sexuality and sexual mores, and a growing general cultural emphasis on personal autonomy and the primacy of the individual. As highlighted by Brown and Lynch, the new social and cultural mood ushered in by the 1960s also contributed to a considerable long-term weakening of traditional modes and mechanisms of religious socialization, as illustrated by increasingly widespread general religious indifference and growing numbers of people who have come to identify with the position of “non-religion.” The increasingly common wholesale “renunciation” of religious identification since the 1960s, they go on to argue, “may come to be seen as the most important process yet in cultural secularization” in Britain.104 Although traditional Christian belief and values certainly continued to circulate throughout British culture, they were now more likely to do so through forming a more general, unspecified, and “unthoughtabout backdrop of cultural meanings or, at times, a resource for defining oneself against.”105 An alternative, although related, account is provided by Brewitt-Taylor106 who, while also emphasizing the significance of the 1960s for the subsequent decline of institutional Christianity in Britain, instead argues that the “secularizing discourses” that emerged and spread during this time largely emanated from within the British churches themselves. As Davie expresses it, in this take on the issue, it was thus “a Christian, rather than secular, re-imagining of British religion that accounted for the rapid change in perspective.”107 This explanation thus connects more closely to the ways in which the established churches in Britain mainly responded to the changes of the 1960s in an accommodating spirit. Indeed, as the confusion about the new cultural mood settled in the churches, “the emphasis changed and confusion gave way to calls for an equally radical reaction” that took a variety of intellectual, liturgical, and organizational forms.108 Such efforts were largely based on a new realization that thoroughgoing changes were required in order to keep the churches a jour with cultural developments and

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remain socially relevant. As Woodhead puts it, as the churches now emerged as “willing partners rather than reactionary critics” to modernity, this ultimately resulted in a general “liberalization of Christianity which amounted to an internal secularization.”109 In addition to the cultural changes discussed above, the post-war era also witnessed the creation of the British welfare state. While Protestant majority churches have typically supported the creation of comprehensive welfare schemes as an extension of Christian social ideals,110 and while they have typically remained actively involved in different forms of care and welfare provision, there is also a sense in which the welfare state in Britain partly came to replace religion as it developed into a “recognized public utility that eclipsed much of the care delivered through the parish system.”111 As the state expanded its regulation of public service and welfare provision, the welfare ideal become increasingly secular and more firmly connected to secularist and socialist ideals.112 As part of this development, the state increasingly also started to view churches and other religious organizations as legitimate partners only insofar as they were willing to conform to regulations and act as “faithful agents of state and welfare priorities and values.”113 However, as Woodhead points out: “Once the churches had thrown in their lot with the welfare state and with secular priorities . . ., their distinctiveness was in danger. They became part of the social fabric and the reigning moral and cultural ethos.”114 When it comes to intra-church developments, the post-war era also witnessed the emergence of increasingly visible rifts between what Woodhead terms “rival ‘churchmanships,’ focused around liturgical and doctrinal differences on a spectrum from the ‘low’ and more Protestant, to the ‘high’ and more Catholic.”115 Significant as these developments were for the subsequent development of Anglicanism and the CoE, it was, argues Woodhead, nevertheless the “growing evangelical tendency” that constituted the most significant locus of “intra-Protestant tension” in the immediate post-war period.116 When considering general changes in the British religious landscape in the post-war era, it also needs to be noted that increasing immigration brought considerable additional religious diversification and pluralism through the arrival and establishment of other “faith populations,” such as the growing Muslim population in particular.117

The British religious landscape in a post-Thatcher era The social positon of the CoE was further affected by the arrival of neoliberalism in the early 1980s. By the beginning of the 1990s, the Thatcher administration

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had successfully managed to justify and implement a range of neoliberal policies which had resulted in a range of significant restructurings of the British economy, including re-configured labor market relations and a thoroughgoing deregulation of the public sector coupled with an increasing privatization and outsourcing of public services. The end result was a “rolled-back” welfare state, the effects of which were soon to be seen in rising poverty rates in less affluent urban areas. This states of affairs opened up for a robust response on the part of the CoE who strove to solidify itself as a main proponent of social justice, particularly through its widely discussed 1985 Faith in the City report.118 The social and cultural effects of neoliberal restructurings were all the more significant considering that the notion of the welfare state, in the words of Davie, had achieved “iconic status” in Britain as a major post-war achievement.119 But as Woodhead points out, “Whereas welfare utopianism sought to confine religion to a private sphere of diminished significance and expected its imminent demise, neoliberalism was much more willing to make alliance with it.”120 The Thatcher era marked not only a shift in politics, but also a shift in religion as the influence of the CoE was declining, the evangelical factions within the Protestant churches were growing in strength, and the religious landscape was rapidly diversifying through the growth of non-denominational churches, the proliferation of alternative spiritualities, and the increasing presence of non-Christian religions.121 The new model of social organization that emerged following the neoliberal policies of the Thatcher years and which were largely maintained through the “third way” policies of the New Labour Party lent considerably more room to private and independent agencies in the provision of welfare.122 Indeed, as Davie argues, during the past three or so decades, the entire field of “care as such” has become “systematically outsourced—away from the state to the forprofit sectors.”123 Following its election victory in 1992, the reconfigured New Labour Party adapted its policies to the neoliberal political and socioeconomic arrangements that had become so firmly established and cemented during the Thatcher years and accepted the “market as a legitimate means to the end.”124 New Labour policies thus further contributed to a “re-admittance” of religious actors into the field of welfare provision, leading to a notable increase in the numbers of faith-based welfare providers125—a development that has continued under Conservative government rule since 2010. When considering the general current state of institutional Christianity in Britain, it is important to recognize that public space remains dominated by the presence of the historic churches and that the whole of Britain remains divided into a nationwide structure of parishes—“a territorial model with civic as well as

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religious implications.”126 But there is now abundant evidence for considerable traditional and institutional religious decline, especially with regard to the CoE. Church attendance has dropped sharply and ever fewer people now “believe in a creedal sense.”127 The number of baptisms, confirmations, and people who participate in Sunday school have also dropped dramatically in the post-war period, especially since the 1960s.128 Indeed, between 1960 and 1985, the CoE was effectively reduced to approximately half of its previous size. Active membership figures have continued to decline since then, although at a more moderate pace.129 Even so, while active Anglicans now constitute only “a tiny minority” of the British population, research suggests that a far greater number still nevertheless continue to identify nominally as Anglicans.130 In the 2001 British Census, 72 percent of the British population still self-identified as “Christian”131 as compared to 54 percent in the 2001 British Social Attitudes Survey.132 In the 2011 census, however, the number of people who self-identified as “Christian” had dropped to 59.3 percent, with 25.7 percent reporting “no religion.”133 To make sense of these developments Davie coined the term “vicarious religion” to capture the “legacy of a historically dominant church” and the “notion of religion performed by an active minority but on behalf of a much larger number, who (implicitly at least) not only understand, but appear to approve of what the minority is doing.”134 Indeed, Davie suggests that the contemporary British religious field can be thought of as being organized along the lines of “two religious economies that run side by side.”135 Where one can be considered a “market of active churchgoers who choose their preferred form of religious activity and join the religious organization which expresses this most effectively,” the other largely “retains the features of a public utility and exists, for the most part, for those who prefer not to choose, but who are nonetheless grateful for a form of religion which they can access as the need arises.”136 Although the institutional religious “establishment” as principally represented by the CoE has undergone a range of transformations since the early post-war era “the essential link” between the CoE and the wider British social establishment “remains intact.”137

Marketization- and new media discourse within the CoE Following its own experience of progressive decline and changing social status, the CoE has engaged in a gradual and wide-ranging process of selftransformation and reform. As part of these efforts, it has increasingly come to recognize the limitations of the territorial parish system in reaching and activating its members. Since the early 1990s, the CoE has consequently devised a

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number of strategic initiatives aimed at stemming the state of perpetual decline that it finds itself in. These initiatives include the broader Anglican and ecumenical so-called Fresh Expressions initiative, the principal purpose of which is to create ways in which the church can reach beyond the parish level and “overcome the limitations of the ‘inherited model’.”138 The Fresh Expressions initiative emerged out of a series of previous large-scales strategic undertakings such as the so-called Breaking New Ground initiative in 1994 and the Mission-shaped Church:  Church Planting and Fresh Expressions of Church in a Changing Context initiative in 2004. Together, these initiatives provide apt illustrations of the ways in which the general order of discourse of the CoE has become increasingly occupied with a general need for “change.”139 Indeed, a whole web of new interconnected “renewal and reform” initiatives have been developed covering a range of different areas, from future funding formulas to future leadership and ministry development. These projects and initiatives—all of which have been designed to aid what the CoE has come to refer to as “church growth”—are all illustrative of a steadily increasing emphasis on strategic thinking and planning within the CoE. The “Report of the Task Force on Resourcing the Future of the Church of England” developed in 2015 proposes a “fundamental shift” in the CoE’s general formula for the allocation of financial resources to dioceses for the purposes of aiding “church growth.” The task force proposes “removing the current formula systems which provide mechanical, ineffective subsidy and replacing them with investment focused on fulfilling dioceses’ strategic plans for growth, and with a strong bias towards the poor.”140 The text in the document is thus not only illustrative of the extension of strategic discourse but also of its planned operationalization and materialization in actual new practices and routines. The report also noted how 





Many diocesan teams appear to lack the strategic capacity to make the significant interventions required to realise their mission and growth plans. The Church as a whole needs greater ‘institutional agility’—its legal structures and its ministry and resource patterns need to be more flexible to respond to its mission challenges. The National Church Institutions need to develop a more effective partnership with dioceses.141

As is stated in this excerpt, there is considerable room for improvement when it comes to the “strategic capacity” of “diocesan teams” to make the types of “significant interventions” that are needed for the realization of “church growth.”

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This thus illustrates how the CoE has come to put an ever stronger general emphasis on every diocese developing its own strategic plan for “church growth,” that is, for increasing their membership. It is worth noting that the report also observes that the CoE as a whole would benefit from greater “institutional agility” and “flexibility.” This is reflective of the difficulties often involved in efforts to reform long-established institutions with rigid organizational structures. In employing terms and phrases such as these, the document clearly draws on marketization discourse and NPM-associated organizational values. The excerpt thus provides an example of the technologization of discourse with regard to strategic thinking and the rethinking of organizational structures. In terms of style, the discourse in the document from which the above excerpt is taken is largely formal and prescriptive in that it outlines a set of proposals and measures that the CoE necessarily needs to adopt in order to achieve its goals and aspirations. Under the heading “Proactive Investment in Growth” the report goes on to state: 39. Our proposals about the funding stream for proactive investment in growth—and everything we recommend—are critically dependent on dioceses being strategic about their mission activity and leadership requirements. Some dioceses may, therefore, wish to apply for some development funding to help develop their strategic capacity. This will put them in a better position to make a more substantial application for funding to advance their mission and growth.142

The discourse in this excerpt further emphasizes the need for strategic thinking and planning within the CoE. In a way that is characteristic of strategy discourse more generally, all of the recommendations presented in the report are represented as being “critically dependent” on the capacities of dioceses to be “strategic” in their missionary activities and “leadership requirements.” Indeed, the report says, some dioceses might even want to apply for “development funding” to enhance their “strategic capacity” in this regard. Enhancing the “strategic capacity” of dioceses is thus represented as being of pivotal importance for a purposeful “proactive investment in growth.” The text in the excerpt draws in particular on “total-cost,” “totalquality,” and “management by objectives” discourses. This excerpt thus provides another example of the employment of market- and NPM associated vocabulary and terminology and the technologization of discourse on the part of the CoE.

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In the “Some Questions Have Been Asked” section, the document provides the following answer to the question “Is this the national church pushing an agenda on dioceses to conform mission to certain activity?”: No. There is no such agenda in the national church. These changes will help dioceses take control and pursue their own visions, whatever that may be. Dioceses will be able, in each funding stream, to receive funds which fit with their own strategic priorities. This may include support for mission enablers, administrators, prophets, pastors, evangelists, visionaries, risk-takers, apologists and pioneers.143

This excerpt provides a curious example of a hybrid discourse that mixes talk about “strategic priorities” with a range of religious terms. Whereas terms such as “administrators,” “visionaries,” “pioneers,” and especially “risk-takers” can more readily be situated within a strategic and managerial genre, terms such as “pastors,” “evangelists,” “apologists,” and “prophets” clearly form part of a religious genre. The term “mission enabler” is particularly interesting in that it constitutes an amalgam that combines elements from both strategic and managerial and religious language. This term is akin to representations of ideal managers as visionary success “enablers” in strategic management discourse.144 Further examples of the adoption of marketization discourse and the technologization of discourse can be found in the 2014 document “Talent Management for Future Leaders and Leadership Development for Bishops and Deans: A New Approach. Report of the Lord Green Steering Group.” The report offers the following views on how future senior leaders of the CoE are to be honed: The strength needed for leadership development will be underpinned by continuing spiritual formation, so that senior leaders will be filled with grace and power, both through action learning sets as an integrated part of any challenging leadership programme and through transformative spiritual exercises by engagement with contemplative communities. We intend a conscious inter-weaving of the spiritual and strategic formation of senior ordained leaders. We intend to form clergy who integrate and demonstrate strategic and spiritual gifts. “The everchanging reality in the midst of which we live should awaken us to the possibility of an uninterrupted dialogue with God. . . . A dialogue of deep wills.” (New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton, 1962). Our ability to anticipate, innovate, question, and adapt is directly related to that dialogue (Romans 8. 26–30). We want leaders so centred on God that they exhibit neither neurosis nor narcissism.145

This excerpt provides another example of a complex meshing of religious genres with inspirational, strategy, and managerial genres. Indeed, the text in the excerpt

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calls for a “conscious inter-weaving” of “spiritual and strategic formation” among its senior ordained leaders and the formation of clergy who “integrate and demonstrate” both “strategic and spiritual gifts.” This is again reminiscent of the ways in which the ideal manager is typically constructed in strategic management discourse. The excerpt also includes a quote from a widely read inspirational-theological book as well as a Bible reference. The CoE’s “ability” to “anticipate, innovate, question, and adapt” is represented as being “directly related” to the power of prayer, God’s providence, and predestination, as recounted in Romans 8: 26–30. In a way that is further illustrative of the influence of managerial discourse in particular, the report goes on to state the following: We are advocating the embrace of credible risk as an integral part of our adventure in Christ. We are proposing a radical step change in our development of leaders who can shape and articulate a compelling vision and who are skilled and robust enough to create spaces of safe uncertainty in which the Kingdom grows.146

Apart from providing yet another example of a hybrid discourse, the text in this excerpt draws heavily on the managerial concept, and indeed value, of “risk” as a central component in the shaping of a broader bold and “compelling vision” for the CoE. That vision is, moreover, to be realized by “skilled’ leaders who are able to create “spaces of safe uncertainty” that are conducive to the realization of that vision. The notion of “safe uncertainly” has been employed in various settings ranging from family therapy (mentioned in the report) to business planning and “change leadership” practices. When applied to organizations, “safe uncertainty” is based on the idea of engaging in careful strategic planning with regard to familiar core activities while simultaneously remaining open to new innovations and ideas. The discourse in the excerpt thus also serves to encourage the inculcation of a new type of professional church leader identity that takes on the characteristics of the corporate manager. When it comes to the “Programme Design Principles” of “Leadership Development for Bishops and Deans,” the report provides the following comments on the evaluation of a 2013 pilot leadership programme for bishops: The conclusion was that whilst certain elements of the pilot (e.g. action learning) delivered value, the leadership programme needed to be linked to organisational aspirations and priorities, in addition to personal development. We propose a new programme that will be capable of delivering sustainable organisational change.147

The text in this excerpt further highlights the need for the development of future CoE leadership to be more firmly connected to the strategic aspirations

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of the CoE as a whole. Indeed, the text says, although the pilot leadership program it discusses did deliver “value,” future leadership programs will need to be more firmly connected to broader “organisational aspirations and priorities.” In this way, the text in the excerpt provides another example of an ever stronger extension of strategic thinking into ever new areas and types of church practice, the ultimate goal of which is to “deliver” “sustainable organisational change.” In this way, the discourse in the excerpt also serves to encourage the operationalization of new leadership programs and the inculcation of new professional identities. The discourse in this excerpt is thus also further illustrative of the establishment of a reform- and change-oriented IDF within the CoE as a whole. The report also includes a detailed outline for the planned “Cohort Programme for Diocesan Bishops.” Some of the content of this program includes the following: 

Module One—Building Healthy Organisations. In preparation for this module, learners will be asked to work through a suite of on-line tools that will measure the effectiveness of the team they lead. They will also be asked to participate in a 360 degree feedback exercise . . . The spiritual focus of the programme will be underlined . . . The ‘healthy organisation’ will be defined as the foundation for the success of the Church in the future. Learners will work on their team and individual 360 feedback reports and construct action plans around their development needs. Time will be spent on approaches to change management and how to lead complex decentralised organisations through change . . . External perspectives will be supplied from organisations like the National Trust, BBC, NHS Health Trusts and the Armed Services. The module will conclude with examining the importance of measurement and controls, including an overview of financial and other measurement tools and techniques.148

The discourse in this excerpt provides an even more pertinent illustration of increasing efforts to redefine the nature and character of church leadership. In the future, leaders are to be assessed based on the “effectiveness” of the teams that they lead. Leaders are also to learn the art of “change management.” Change management forms part of a broader set of managerial discourse technologies (including, among others, such practices as “corporate reengineering,” “benchmarking,” and “balanced scoreboard”) designed to provide senior managers with tools to guide organizations through significant structural changes for the purposes of effectivizing the allocation of resources and enhancing general performance. It is also worth noting how the text in the excerpt strives to soften

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its strong managerial emphasis through adding that the “spiritual focus of the programme will be underlined.” In recommending that church leaders learn the practice of change management the discourse in the excerpt nevertheless makes manifest connections to the world of strategic management and NPMassociated values and criteria of organizational effectivity. Indeed, in the future, the text says, the “ ‘healthy organization’ will be defined as the foundation for the success of the Church.” It is also worth noting that the text mentions that “external perspectives” from other public institutions that have gone through structural reorganizations also will be brought into the mix. This illustrates more concretely how institutional churches with strong links to the core social establishment are more likely to become subjected to inter-institutional and organizational ideological and discursive influence. The report also offers some conclusions on the role of the archbishops in the “implementation of planning.” Under the heading “Strategic Journey,” it states the following: 

The MDR [Ministerial Development Review] process for senior clergy needs to be standardised across the Church and have more objectivity, transparency and detail. Performance management should provide the foundation for talent management and leadership development activity. If done to a high standard and on a regular basis, the steps of objective setting, review of performance and progress against objectives, the discussion of leadership behaviours and a review of learning priorities all feed into a sustainable and dynamic talent management process.149

This excerpt provides yet another example of increasing efforts toward a redefinition of the professional ethos of senior church personnel. Not only does it construct a new vision for senior clergy; it also argues for its standardization. New managerial performance assessment tools such as “performance management,” “talent management,” “leadership development,” and “progress against objectives” are to be put into practice. It is worth noting that although media does not figure prominently in the report, it does state that “there is positive evidence that church leaders can exercise considerable influence through the social media if they establish a voice” and that the “development of our personal and organisational leadership will require skill development in this area, alongside a thoughtful rationale from apologetics and pedagogy for how we engage.”150 In this way, the report engages in an “officializing discourse” that outlines the boundaries and appropriate uses for future CoE engagements with social media. In framing

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such engagements in terms of a largely future endeavor, the discourse in the excerpt at the very least seems to suggests that the CoE or church leaders have so far not engaged with social media to any notable degree. In reality, however, the CoE has indeed already established a presence on social media, although this might not be the case with the types of church leaders dealt with in the report. The above discussion highlighted the many ways in which official CoE strategic discourse has become increasingly permeated by market- and NPM-associated vocabulary and terminology as a result of an increasing technologization of discourse on the part of the CoE itself. This has mainly occurred in relation to the CoE’s current emphasis on “church growth” and strategic visions for church leadership. Considering that the many “renewal and reform” initiatives that have been created in recent years have served to spur the creation of yet more strategic initiatives and undertakings, it is likely that the CoE will continue to engage in a further, and perhaps intensifying, technologization of discourse on market values and imperatives, at least for the foreseeable future.

The Nordic context: civil service and “effectiveness” We now turn to explore the ways in which marketization and new media discourse has made its way into the official strategic discourse of the Lutheran majority churches of Sweden and Denmark. In spite of their differences, the CoS and the CoD share notable similarities with regard to their histories and historical relationships to their respective states, their contemporary outlook, and their theology and ecclesiology. They are both, moreover, embedded in broader national social and cultural climates that are marked by very similar processes of religious change and are thus currently facing some very similar types of challenges. Lutheranism has constituted a central element of the very social and cultural fabric of the Nordic countries ever since it was introduced as the official religion of the Nordic monarchies following the Nordic Reformation in the early sixteenth century. As Kasselstrand and Eltanani point out, through the Nordic Reformation, “the state took control over the church to an extent unseen” in previous Nordic history.151 Although the Nordic states tended not to interfere too much with internal church affairs, the churches nevertheless constituted central apparatuses of state control and legitimacy as well as important channels for the

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transmission of state ideology.152 During the seventeenth century, church and state in the Nordic countries increasingly solidified into a single whole, with the churches taking charge of many central social domains such as the healthcare, welfare, and educational systems. During the nineteenth century, as part of their growing concerns to remain closely aligned with the political and social establishment and the everyday concerns of the population at large, the Nordic churches grew increasingly liberal, inclusivist, and pragmatic in their general outlook. The nineteenth century also witnessed the remodeling of the Nordic churches according to democratic structures, leading to a further increase in the power of the laity. Because of this arrangement, the Nordic churches have only rarely become involved in political conflicts (although the situation in post–Civil War and post–World War II Finland provides an exception).153 The early twentieth century witnessed the start of a gradual dismantling of Lutheran uniformity culture in the Nordic countries, primarily as a result of the spread of socialism among the industrial working class, increasing urbanization, and the gradual weakening of the nation state following accelerating globalization.154 In spite of this, the Nordic countries have remained characterized by a very strong affinity between church membership and citizenship, although this has indeed started to weaken somewhat since the early 1990s. Indeed, Lutheranism has often been described as having provided, and in many ways as continuing to provide, the basis for a more loosely defined “civil religion” in the Nordic countries.155 This is also partly explained by the fact that the Nordic countries all remained highly ethnically, socially, and culturally homogenous up until at least the mid-1970s. The religious landscapes of the Nordic counties, and especially that of Sweden, have diversified considerably since the early 1970s through the arrival of non-Christian immigrant populations, a notable growth in charismatic and Pentecostal congregations, and the proliferation of alternative spiritualities. In spite of this, however, the religious landscapes of the Nordic countries still remain dominated by the Lutheran majority churches.156 Although structural relationships between church and state have been progressively weakening over a period of several decades, they too remain strong, especially at the level of administration and finances. Overall, the Lutheran churches have increasingly taken on the function of public utilities that the majority of Nordic populations engage with only occasionally, such as in relation to life-stage rites such as baptisms, weddings, confirmations, and funerals, festivities such as Christmas, or situations of crisis. The notion of “vicarious religion” thus clearly applies to

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the Nordic context as well. This is not least evidenced by the ways in which the Nordic churches, beginning with the CoS and ELCF in the early 1990s, have gradually transformed themselves into civil-service oriented institutions and increasingly come to adopt third-sector organizational models.157 Overall, the Nordic churches remain deeply socially engaged at every level of society. However, as they have traditionally been strong supporters of the Nordic welfare state model, their social work and welfare provision has traditionally been closely coordinated with that of the state and local secular municipalities. In spite of retaining very close structural connections to their respective states and core social establishments, and despite the fact that they, although perhaps not as evidently as before, continue to provide the basis for a loosely defined “civil religion,” the membership figures of the Nordic churches, including those of the CoS and the CoD, have been slowly but progressively declining since at least the early 1970s. Whereas Nordic populations have traditionally been reluctant to relinquish their church membership even though they have become increasingly alienated from the beliefs and practices of the church, this situation has also been changing in the past couple of decades. This is, among other things, reflected in the ways in which membership decline has been progressively accelerating during the past couple of decades. In addition to the above, there is also the issue of the changing religious sensibilities of the Nordic populations more generally. When measured on conventional indicators, the degrees of individual religiosity among Nordic populations has been steadily decreasing.158 This applies to the type of church religiosity as represented by the Lutheran churches in particular as active church members now only constitute a small minority. The Nordic churches have thus also become faced with a range of challenges related to increasingly widespread general religious indifference and disinterest in church teachings and activities, especially among younger generations. The churches have consequently increased their efforts to attract young people and bring them back into the fold. Following the above developments, the general orders of discourse of the Nordic churches have also become increasingly marked by a great deal of concern over the future. So far, however, the language has primarily been that of great challenges and renewal rather than outright crisis (although the order of discourse of the Finnish church as explored in the next chapter provides a slight exception to this). Because of their increasing efforts to reach and activate younger generations, past decades have seen notable new investments and engagements with the present day media environment in particular. Although the strategic discourse of the Nordic churches has also become increasingly

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marked by a growing emphasis on customer orientation, such talk has mainly remained confined within a broader ‘civil service’ idiom.

The Church of Sweden The CoS was officially disestablished on January 1, 2000. The new Church of Sweden Act officially made Sweden a secular and religiously neutral state. In spite of this change in its legal status, however, the CoS retained a range of close structural connections to the state. For example, the new Act states that the confession of the CoS must remain evangelical Lutheran, that the church must remain open to all citizens, that it must maintain activities on a nationwide scale, and that it must remain a democratic organization. In this way, as Petterson observes, the state has “indirectly set a direction for, and limits to, the identity of the Church and retains some degree of control over its development.”159 The CoS also remains subject to special legislation in a number of other areas. For example, it still provides funeral services for all Swedish citizens regardless of religious persuasion and continues to function as the official mandatory religion of the monarch.160 It is also charged with maintaining buildings and property which form part of the cultural heritage of Sweden, for which it receives financial subsidies from the state.161 The CoS maintains extensive statistical databases on its members and a range of other church developments. On December 31, 2015, the CoS had a total of 6,225,091 members.162 This equaled 63.2 percent of the Swedish population, as compared to 77.0 percent at the same time in 2005.163 The CoS has thus experienced a 13.8 percent decline in its membership in relation to the total population during the past decade alone. In needs to be noted, though, that since Sweden has accepted overwhelmingly larger amounts of immigrants since the early 1970s when compared to the other Nordic countries, this has made immigration a central factor in the reduction of the percentage of the total population who remain members of the CoS.164 Following continued decline and changing church-state relationships, the CoS has increased its efforts toward remaining socially and culturally relevant. As part of this process, the general order of discourse of the CoS has also gradually become more marked by a language of reform and renewal, leading to the development of a range of new strategic initiatives. These have, however, remained firmly based on a comprehensive ‘civil service’ ideal. In other words, the changed legal status of the CoS has not changed its self-perception as a public institution. As part of these efforts, the CoS has nonetheless become increasingly

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susceptible to marketization- and new media discourse. For example, as is stated in a 2005 meeting report by the Committee for Church life: The Church of Sweden has a shared commitment to all of its operations. The overall goal is a shared brand, the Church of Sweden, e.g. a monolithic brand hierarchy. Everything that can be contained within the commitment of the Church of Sweden should have the Church of Sweden as its source. We have a clear strategy to reduce the number of brands and work together to build the Church of Sweden brand in an as effective way as possible. Transition strategies will be developed.165

The discourse in this excerpt reveals the CoS’s concerns to reach and serve the population as a whole. At the same time, it includes a range of marketization discourse-associated vocabulary and terminology. The text emphasizes the importance of strategic planning, highlighting how existing CoS “brands” need to be consolidated into one single all-encompassing brand. The talk of brands at this point in time (2005) was significant in the first place since it signaled a general willingness on the part of the CoS to transition from a public state organization type of mindset toward that of third sector organizations or quasiautonomous non-governmental organizations. The report also includes some comments on the committees’ decision on two motions calling for the CoS to increase its ‘information and marketing efforts’ on a national level. The committee chose not to approve these motions since “information” and “marketing” “already constitute[d] prioritized areas.”166 As illustrated by the report, the strategic discourse of the CoS has long ago come to include talk about marketing and branding, although those terms have remained quite ambiguously defined. The CoS’s “Annual National Level Review for 2004” provides several additional examples of an early adoption of marketization discourse and the technologization of discourse on the part of the CoS. As the document states regarding the Information Service of the CoS: In 2004, the Information Service of the Church of Sweden received around 30,000 inquiries from the general public. New system-support has made it possible to effectivize and improve the quality of the distribution of information and materials.167

This excerpt provides a general illustration of the CoS’s efforts to increase the “quality” of its services to the “general public.” Indeed, as noted above, the CoS is obliged by law to be open to the population as a whole. On a general level it is again worth noting how the text in the excerpt talks about how new “system

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support” has “effectivized” the information services of the church as opposed to, for example, “improved” them. Regarding the consolidation of the CoS intranet, the document goes on to state that The intranet of the Church of Sweden, Kyrknätet, which encompasses 450 local networks with over 15,000 users, is an important and prioritized task as considerable quality- and effectivity gains are to be achieved through improved communication solutions.168

The discourse in this excerpt provides a clear example of an increasing adoption of NPM-associated values on the part of the CoS. When it comes to the vocabulary employed, we find terms and phrases such as “prioritized tasks,” “qualityand effectivity gains,” and “improved communication solutions.” The phrase “quality- and effectivity gains” is particularly notable in that it mirrors broader NPM ideals on the constant improvement and measurement of “quality” and “doing more with less.” In terms of style, and following largely from the general nature of the document from which they are taken, the discourse in both of the above excerpts is largely formal and descriptive. In 2011, the CoS adopted a new official communication strategy that was considerably more detailed than previous ones. The text in the document is generally characterized by a strong focus on the CoS’s “civil service.” For example, as the documents explains: The Church of Sweden directs itself towards all people—the gospel is for everyone. Contact to different target groups needs to be developed, among both members and non-members. This requires good understanding of people’s communication habits and relationship to the church . . . The web is a hub in the communication that is complemented by other channels.169

As is noted in this excerpt, the internet has evolved into a central communication channel for the church. Indeed, it is described as providing a “hub” of church communications on the whole. In a way that is once again revealing of NPM influence and its emphasis on audience and customer segmentation, there is also talk about establishing closer contact to different “target groups.” As the document goes on to explain: The communication of the Church of Sweden is to be planned in a systematic manner and be carried out in an integrated way in order to reach overall communication goals. A shared view of the main objectives increases the possibility to coordinate and utilize existing resources, and also to identify areas where additional communication support is needed.170

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One immediately noticeable feature of this statement is how it expressly draws on marketization- and NPM associated discourse to emphasize rationalized, “integrated,” “systematic planning” and the careful coordination of resources to reach pre-defined overall “goals” and objectives. This, again, is illustrative of an increasing occupation with strategic planning. It is also worth noting that the rest of the document from which this excerpt is taken does not have much to say about what such systematic planning might entail in actual practice. In spite of this, however, the discourse in the excerpt nevertheless serves to work up a general image of CoS communications, and indeed of the CoS as a whole, as a modern, effective, and well-managed organization that systematically plans and continuously evaluates its activities. However, in framing the further strategic planning of CoS communications in terms of a largely future endeavor, the discourse in both of the above excerpts also, although perhaps unintentionally, serves to work up a picture of strategic CoS communications as still being “under construction.” The document as a whole retains a largely formal style. Elaborating further on the importance of strategic planning, the document goes on to state that The communication strategy is an overarching strategy for both internal, interchurch and external communication, to which part-strategies are connected, such as a strategy for inter-church communication. The communication strategy needs to be complemented by communication plans to support daily work.171

This excerpt provides another, and quite curious, example of an increasing occupation with the constant generation and further development of strategies and plans. Indeed, as the text in the excerpt says, when applied in the context of daily work within the church, the communication strategy will itself need to be complemented by additional communication plans. As such, the discourse in the excerpt is illustrative of the ways in which an increasing emphasis on strategic planning that typically comes about through an intensifying technologization of discourse leads to a self-perpetuating process of the generation of ever more strategies.

The Church of Denmark In wider Nordic comparison, the ties between church and state have clearly remained closest and strongest in Denmark. The CoD still holds the position of official state church and lacks its own governing body and legal personality.172 The CoD remains under the authority of the Ministry of Ecclesiastical affairs,

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with the monarch serving as the official head of the church. In practice, however, the state affords the church a relatively high degree of autonomy and tends not to interfere in internal church affairs. The CoD is still charged with handling and administering several central social functions. These include handling the civil registration for the entire population as well as acting as the burial authority for the entire population, regardless of religious persuasion or belonging.173 The Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs maintains extensive statistical databases on CoD membership figures and other church-related developments. On January 1, 2016, the CoD had a total of 4,388,000 members. This represented 76.9 percent of the population in Denmark, as compared to 83.0 percent at the same time in 2006.174 The CoD has thus experienced a notable decrease in its membership during the past decade, although it has been less dramatic when compared to that experienced by the CoS and the ELCF. Following these developments, the general order of discourse of the CoD has also become increasingly marked by calls for renewal and change. However, it is important to recognize that, as the CoD remains a public institution, its official strategic discourse closely mirrors that of public administration departments, and particularly the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs. Indeed, the strategic discourse of the CoD is typically simultaneously that of both the CoD and the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs. This, above all else, explains why the strategic discourse of the CoD has become so strongly affected by marketization and NPM-associated discourse, values, and imperatives and remained so strongly focused on the notion of “civil service.” An early example of this is found in the CoD’s and Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs’ joint 2001 IT strategy titled “Church Ministry and National Church in the Network Society.” At one point, commenting on the church’s adoption of electronic civil registration, the document states: 1. Willingness and courage to change As a workplace and public administration, the ministry and the church develop along with the rest of society. The electronic church civil registration project is an example of a willingness to change. Church civil registration must be developed so that it meets society’s expectations about modern citizen service.175

A number of issues can be noted with regard to this statement. For example, when it comes to vocabulary, apart from being represented as a “workplace” like any other, the CoD is also expressly represented as a “public administration.” In this capacity, however, it is also represented in terms of a public institution that is supposed to meet certain broader expectations; in this case, “society’s

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expectations about modern citizen service.” The rest of the document from which the above excerpt is taken does not, however, provide much further clarification about what such “modern citizen service” would consist of exactly. Even so, it is nevertheless notable that the discourse in the document clearly represents the CoD and Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs as having lagged behind when it comes to developing “along with the rest of society.” Indeed, this reading is reinforced by the ways in which the text highlights the adoption of electronic church civil registration as an example of a “willingness to change” (in contrast, for example, to a willingness to “improve” or “adjust”). It would, however, most probably be mistaken to simply view this statement as an instance of pure self-reflection or self-criticism on the part of the CoD and Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs. We also need to note how the self-critical tone of the statement simultaneously also functions to signal a general openness to self-scrutiny and thus to work up a representation of the CoD and Ministry as institutions that do not (or at least do not any longer) shun change and that are always fully prepared to improve themselves, learn from previous mistakes, and “develop” concomitantly “with the rest of society.” On a more general level, this also functions to construct (and to further reinforce) a general image of the CoD and Ministry as fully integral parts of both the past and future basic structure of Danish society on the whole. The CoD and Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs have continued to produce updated and ever more elaborate IT strategies. In the IT strategy for the years 2010–12 it is stated that, Our experience shows that the operation of larger it-installations ought to happen through operating communities and on the basis of central decisions. However, in the folk church with its complex structure and division of competences this must be done in a special way. The folk church is, one the one hand, subject to the same administrative regulations as public authorities. The ITstrategy is consequently designed so that work with administrative tasks occurs on the basis of centrally governed solutions and according to the regulations and principles that apply to public administration.176

The text in this excerpt expressly states that the strategic planning of ICT use within the CoD is done in direct relation to the regulations that apply to the public administrational sector as a whole. This makes it considerably more likely for CoD discourse on media and ICTs to become influenced by NPM-associated imperatives and criteria of organizational effectivity. The document also provides the following explanation as to why “new administrative routines” should be developed:

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Effectivization is often about simplifying work flows and gathering work tasks in one place in such a way that new administrative routines are created that utilize the digital potential.177

Indeed, in a way that closely mirrors NPM discourse, the text in the excerpt effectively equates “effectivization” with the “simplification” of “work flows.” The use of the term “work flows” (as opposed to, for example work “routines” or “practices”) is also worth noting because it tends to be most commonly associated with private business and corporate sector organizations. Moreover, the text in the excerpt highlights how “new administrative routines” are to be developed in such a way that they utilize “the digital potential” (the Danish original uses the singular). This excerpt thus provides yet another example of an increasing emphasis on strategic thinking and an increasingly evident technologization of discourse on the part of the CoD and Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs. However, there is clearly a sense in which the discourse in the above excerpt frames “effectivization” in terms of a future endeavor. Indeed, the “new administrational routines” that the text talks about are, the text suggests, yet to be created. The influence of NPM values can also be seen in the document’s outlining of the following principles of “IT governance”: IT-management—also called IT-governance—is about how to manage ITprojects so that they create value and about how to ensure that IT-use supports the solving of tasks. The foundation for a well-functioning IT-support is thus closely connected to those activities that make sure that all “cogs in the machine get greased.”178

The most important aspect to note about the text in this excerpt is the way in which it highlights how IT projects need to be managed in such a way that they create “value.” This can be seen as a direct influence from marketization and NPM-associated values in that the private sector associated notion of “value” becomes recontextualized and integrated into official church discourse. Indeed, we might certainly ask ourselves what “value” should be taken to mean in this context. The currently latest joint IT strategy for 2016–20, the ninth of its kind, is particularly focused on the increasing general digitalization of the CoD. Commemorating the CoD’s thirty years of experience with digital technologies, the document explains that the CoD’s experience shows how digital technology use is most rewarding when it is done in close relation to the changing communication habits of people in general. As the document states:

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This means that the digital goals to a very high degree focus on processes and effects and to a lesser degree on technology. Put colloquially, technology has become part of the everyday and a completely natural precondition for communication and work processes. The success and effects of digitalization are therefore to a higher degree contingent upon how the technology is used than on what technology can do.179

It is worth noting how the discourse in this excerpt expressly goes against a technological determinist view of technological development. There is still, however, talk about “processes and effects,” which might be taken to be illustrative of a general emphasis on systematic planning and the measuring and evaluation of communication practices and their “effectivity.” Recent years have also seen a growing emphasis on the notion of marketing, again particularly in relation to the CoD’s and Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affair’s continuing engagements with the present-day media environment. For example, a 2009 document on the main function of the official Web pages of the CoD titled “Concepts for folkekirken.dk” states that “Folkekirken.dk is marketed and made visible in the best possible way through the means that have been made available for that purpose” and that the official Web site also can be “marketed through other websites and services, including social media such as Facebook and Twitter.”180 Though no actual definition of marketing is provided, it still illustrates the increasing permeation of marketization discourse into the official discourse on the CoD. Indeed, when terms such as “marketing,” “value,” or “effectivization” become recontextualized and integrated into official church discourse with no further explanation as to what they are taken to mean, this in and of itself constitutes a prime example of the technologization of discourse. As the above discussion illustrates, the adoption of marketization- and new media discourses within the CoS and CoD have primarily occurred in relation to their continued and indeed growing emphasis on civil service. This is illustrative of what Stolz and Usunier refer to as an increasingly common “blurring of genres,”181 whereby the pressure on traditional churches to conform to perceived external, wider cultural circumstances and expectations leads to a loosening of previously more clearly marked boundaries between the “religious,” “secular,” or other aspects of the “services” offered by religious organizations. The above discussion also provides clear examples of an increasingly evident and deliberate technologization of discourse on the part of the CoS and CoD, which plays a part in justifying the establishment of a new general modus operandi and closer alignment with broader external NPM associated criteria for institutional and

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organizational effectivity. Indeed, as the CoS and especially the CoD have both, so far, retained positions of quite high relative importance within their respective wider social formations, they have also become particularly susceptible to wider inter-institutional and inter-organizational discursive and ideological influence. This applies to the case of the CoS in particular, which, following changes in its legal position, now finds itself in the new position of state-independent organization. Though the orders of discourse of the CoS and CoD have indeed become more strongly marked by a language of reform and renewal, they appear to have mainly remained governed by the same civil service emphasizing IDFs that were already dominant in the early 1990s. However, since it is likely that these churches, and particularly the CoS, will continue to transform their organizational cultures in accordance with the modus operandi of third sector and quasi-governmental organizations, they are also likely to become ever more susceptible to marketization- and new media discourse and new trends in NPM.

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Discourse and Beyond: Marketization and Mediatization within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland

In this final chapter of the book, we move to explore the ideational and discursive effects of processes of marketization and mediatization on the current character, organizational culture, and communication practices of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELCF). The analysis unfolds in the same way as in the previous chapter. Following a brief general account of the history and current state of the ELCF, the chapter moves to analyze the ways in which the official discourse of the ELCF has become increasingly permeated by marketization- and new media discourses since the early 1990s as a result of both an increasing and an intensifying technologization of discourse on the part of the ELCF itself. In this chapter we also venture beyond the realm and discourse and also consider some notable examples of the actual, practical effects of processes of marketization and mediatization within the context of the ELCF. This chapter thus also aims to illustrate the concrete, tangible effects of changing discourses and discursive practices. The ELCF has historically maintained a strong presence across all spheres of Finnish society and culture. Similar to most other national majority churches with deep historical connections and structural relationships to their respective states, the ELCF has always developed concomitantly with the rest of Finnish society and, as such, always adapted to broader processes of social and cultural change.1 Although the ELCF was officially disestablished in 1919, it retains the position of national “folk” church with its own special legislation. It has a democratic structure and its own governing body, the General Synod. In spite of enjoying a high degree of internal autonomy, the church remains closely connected to the state at administrational and financial levels.2 The ELCF remains a nationwide and territorially organized majority church with a dense bureaucratic organizational structure.

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Lutheranism has dominated Finnish religious life ever since the Swedish Reformation of 1527. At this time, Finland was an integral part of the Swedish kingdom. Lutheranism was thus constitutionally established in Finland as it was adopted as the sole confessional state church of Sweden at the Synod of Uppsala in 1593 (prohibition of any other religious observance was introduced throughout the realm in 1617). During the seventeenth century—commonly referred to as the Period of Orthodoxy—the church extended its influence over every aspect of social and cultural life and strove, in particular, to adapt and consolidate its activities and practices with the realities of the local village community, which was the predominant form of life for the great majority of Finns at the time.3 The establishment of the Lutheran doctrine of the three estates and the resulting three-level division of society further strengthened and consolidated the relationship between church and state (or divine and secular) authority into a single whole.4 Although Finland was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1809, the Lutheran church retained its position as the state church in what then became the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. Following Finnish independence in 1917, the ELCF and the much smaller Finnish Orthodox Church were established as official national “folk,” or “peoples,” churches. Finnish independence was followed by the bitter and bloody Finnish Civil War of 1918, during which the dominant ELCF aligned itself with the nationalist side or the so-called whites. After nationalist victory in May of 1918, the ELCF was assigned an ever more central role as a uniting force in the country, providing, among other things, “a counterbalance to the ideological threat of Communism.”5 The ELCF was formally disestablished through the new constitution that was adopted in 1919 and which established Finland as a non-confessional republic. The new legal position of the church as national “folk” church was further cemented through the Act of Religious Freedom in 1923. During the period leading up to World War II, Finnish society experienced increasing social differentiation, as many social functions previously administered and overseen by the ELCF were gradually taken over by secular government and municipalities. Such developments were indeed characteristic for the Nordic countries more generally and are often taken to have played a key role in the subsequent development of the Nordic welfare state model.6 The post-war decades brought rapid industrial and service-industrial development and fast-increasing urbanization, resulting in unprecedented economic growth and fundamental changes in the social and cultural life of the large majority of Finns (at the beginning of the 1990s less than 20 percent of Finns lived in rural areas). During this period, the ELCF also strengthened its position as national

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church, particularly through emphasizing its “special task” and role as a chief institutional proponent of social solidarity. In the early 1990s, Finland was hit by a deep economic depression. During this time, the ELCF further strengthened its position as a key proponent of general social solidarity. As was reflected in many of its official statements at the time—a practice that extended way into the 2000s—the ELCF now emerged as a particularly staunch public supporter of the welfare state model. Although the church was not as deeply affected as some other societal institutions, it nevertheless had to adjust and adapt the organization of its activities to new financial realities.7 In general, the increasing public emphasis that the ELCF started attaching to issues relating to social solidarity and the perpetuation of a strong welfare society in the early 1990s has continued to this day.

The current state of the ELCF In recent decades, the religious landscape of Finland has undergone largely the same types of broader processes of religious change that have also come to mark most other Western liberal democracies. The ELCF, which still holds the status of majority national “folk” church, has experienced progressive longterm decline by all conventional sociological indicators since the early 1970s, especially among younger generations. ELCF membership rates have slowly but surely continued to decrease (from 92.6 percent of the population in 1974 to 72.8  percent of the population in 2015), church attendance has declined sharply, traditional mechanisms of religious socialization have been progressively weakening, people have become less and less interested in church teachings and activities, and so on.8 A  development is now also clearly underway whereby an ever larger portion of ELCF members who only rarely or occasionally participate in church activities increasingly tend not to participate at all9—a development that has also been documented in several other European countries and mainly been attributed to progressively weakening mechanisms of religious socialization.10 The past decade alone has seen a particularly notable decrease in membership (from 83.1 percent of the population in 2005 to 72.8 percent of the population in 2015).11 As is also the case with all of the other churches explored in the previous chapter, membership loss has consequently developed into a particularly central point of concern for the ELCF with political, cultural, and economic dimensions. The ease by which people are nowadays able to resign their church

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membership has been greatly aided by the establishment of the Eroakirkosta. fi (Leave the Church) online service in 2003 by the Freethinkers of Tampere which offers people the possibility to resign their church membership directly through the site. As we shall explore in more detail in the second main part of this chapter, the further dwindling of membership rates between 2010 and 2015 (a 5.4 percent decrease of the total population) is connected closely to a series of ELCF-related media controversies that took place between 2010 and 2013.12 All things considered, the general current state of the ELCF can clearly be described as one of slow but progressive decline. At the same time, it is important to note that even though increasing numbers of Finns have less and less contact with the ELCF, its legacy as “the” church still undoubtedly lives on in wider Finnish public discourse. The general attitudes of Finns toward the ELCF have often—using a re-formulation of Davie’s famous term “believing without belonging”13— been conceptualized in terms of a disposition of “belonging without believing,”14 or even “believing in belonging.”15 The term “vicarious religion” has also been used to describe the current character of Finnish institutional religion in that an increasingly large portion of ELCF members now view the church as a public utility that demands little of them but nevertheless provides “a form of religion which they can access as the need arises.”16 Indeed, as the church has become ever more concerned and engaged with wider social issues it has also increasingly come to be expected to serve not only its own members but also “the public at large.”17 The ELCF has not, however, stood idle in the face of these developments. To the contrary, since the early 1990s, it has consciously strived to reconfigure itself and become increasingly service and civil society oriented. As such, it can be said to have made a range of accommodations to late-modern Finnish society and culture through the growing emphasis it has begun to put on having “more interface with the concerns which people find important.”18 Indeed, the social role or “social conscience”19 that the ELCF represents remains highly appreciated by the majority of Finns, regardless of their individual religious commitments. When it comes to its approach to theological and doctrinal issues, the ELCF started relaxing it policing of doctrinal purity already in the mid-1800s and has since then come to espouse an ever more inclusivist and liberal stance on doctrinal issues. The ELCF nowadays prides itself on being a church of “many values and voices.” The ordination of women was officially instituted in 1988 and in 2016 significant openings were made for the marriage of same sex couples.

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Marketization discourse within the ELCF Although the effects of neoliberalism on Finnish society has remained relatively moderate when compared to many other parts of the world, the spread of neoliberal ideology and the gradual implementation of neoliberal policies have nevertheless brought about a range of notable restructurings in the Finnish political economy in the form of processes of decentralization and the increasing outsourcing and privatization of public services. These developments have taken place alongside a more general perpetuation of NPM values and imperatives throughout the Finnish social institutional and organizational field. Partly following from its own experience of slow but steady decline and changing societal position, the general order of discourse of the ELCF has, much like the other churches explored in this book, become increasingly marked by a language of crisis. The ELCF has consequently engaged in a general process of self-instigated change and transformation. This has entailed efforts to reform its bureaucratic structures and change its organizational culture and routines. It has also entailed a notable new emphasis on communication and investment in modern ICTs. As part of these developments, the ELCF has become increasingly susceptible to marketization- and new media discourse and NPM values and imperatives. This development is evidenced in particular by a steady increase in the development of elaborate strategic initiatives of various sorts—all of which have in one way or another been aimed at bringing about structural and organizational changes that would enable the church to counter the many challenges that it currently faces. Indeed, in the early 1990s, strategic initiatives of the type that has now become commonplace were few and far between. For example, the ELCF developed its first ever comprehensive communication strategy in 1992. This was followed, however, by a much more elaborate sixty-two-page new communication strategy in 2004 which has, in turn, been followed by several new large-scale strategic initiatives in areas ranging from marketing and advertising to organizational restructuring and effectivization. It is also worth noting that the ELCF started developing these strategic initiatives at roughly the same time as market-related terminology and NPM values and imperatives had started to spread and become more established throughout Finnish public institutional and organizational discourse more generally. The ELCFs general “change” and reform efforts are aptly illustrated in a strategic document titled “A Church in Transformation—A Communication Plan”

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that was developed in 2009. This document is directed toward internal rather than external communication. It starts out by stating the following: The overall goal of our change communication is to renew church structures and ways of operating so that the church can respond to the challenges of a changing economic and operational environment and so that the work of the church can be ever more concentrated on spiritual work. In this way we create prerequisites for the strengthening of commitment to church membership. The aim of the communication project is to make sure that the need for change is understood and accepted within the parishes and that the leadership and superiors understand the necessity for change and are committed to reform.20

Apart from providing an illustration of calls for thoroughgoing change within the ELCF, for the purposes of our discussion here, the mention of the term and practice of “change communication” deserves particular attention. Change communication constitutes a sub-discipline of the broader disciplines of corporate communication and change management that originate from fields such as management and business administration theory. In short, change communication is principally directed at improving the integration and grounding of new policies and structural changes among people working in different sectors of organizations and institutions.21 Thus, change communication is geared toward generating acceptance and minimizing resistance toward desired structural changes through a language of persuasion rather than command.22 The key point to note is that change communication itself constitutes a particular type of discourse technology that has emerged as part of the wider proliferation of NPM-associated discourses such as management by objectives and total cost management during past decades. Far from being limited to academic fields such as economics and management theory, however, the continuous development and refinement of theories and practices of change communication to a very large extent falls within the purview of commercially oriented specialist technologists such as individual communications gurus and communication consultancy firms. Indeed, in what constitutes a rare public display of the employment of professional consulting firms on the part of the ELCF, the logo of a communications consultancy firm—Kevi Consulting—is prominently displayed at the very top of the first page of the “A Church in Transformation” document. The rest of the document systematically outlines the most common main features of change communication and its planned implementation and assumed positive effects on

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the types of change sought after within the ELCF. This, then, constitutes a clear example of the recontextualization of a discourse originating from the domain of business administration and its integration and re-articulation within the official strategic discourse of the ELCF. We might certainly ask why the (unidentified) authors of this document decided not to remove the logo of the communications consultancy firm from the publicly available version of the document. One possible answer might be that it was deliberately included in order to further underline the earnestness and professionalism of ELCF efforts toward change. It is also worth noting that change communication can play an important part in institutional storytelling and the construction of institutional imaginaries. As the narrative constructed in the above example is expressly one of challenge and change, the discourse of the document also serves to position the subjects of ELCF employees as the ones who not only need to openly recognize this need for change but who will also be primarily responsible for taking the types of action necessary to bring about this change. Let us now move to consider some other examples that pertain more directly to the adoption of marketization discourse and the extension of strategic thinking within the ELCF. We shall begin by considering an early example. The following excerpt is taken from the already mentioned former official communication strategy of the ELCF, A Communicative Church: Communication Strategy of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland 2004–2010, which was developed in 2004 and was formally in effect between the years 2004 and 2010. Under the heading “Advertising and Marketing,” the document states the following: Our experiences so far indicate that even flashy media advertising can be one, and sometimes a very effective, way of communicating among others. Through advertising, it is possible to draw attention to certain things and provide more information about them. Advertising also produces an image of the church. Television advertisements in particular provide added value to a product or event . . . An essential part of advertising is that the product should live up to its promises. If church services [divine services] are advertised in a flashy way, then they also have to be planned, prepared, and carried out more carefully than before. A church service should meet the expectations of it that have been created through advertising. Otherwise a new attendee will be disappointed and is less likely to attend again.23

This excerpt is noteworthy in several respects. To begin with, it is worth noting the ways in which explicit—or in discourse analytic terms, “manifest”— connections are made to the world of marketing and advertising. It is also worth

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noting the type of vocabulary that is employed. For example, we find words and terms with conspicuous links to market terminology, such as “added value,” “product,” and “image.” We should also notice how the “products” talked about are directly linked to perceived expectations created through advertising. This excerpt thus provides an early example of the emergence of a new discourse of marketing, advertising, and customer orientation and its recontextualization within and integration into official ELCF strategic discourse. The style of the discourse in the excerpt is largely a descriptive and instructive one that strives to legitimize the use of advertising in church settings on the one hand, and explain the principles on which advertising needs to be conducted on the other hand. The discourse in the excerpt also goes some way in encouraging the inculcation of new identities or “ways of being.” In its emphasis on the capacity of advertising to provide “added value to a product or event” it serves to construct church members and potential members as customers and church activities— including core activities such as divine services—as products that can be engaged with through a framework of consumption, and therefore also appropriately be marketed and advertised, like any other product or service. Through the use of words such as “advertising” and “product,” the construction of potential attendees at specially advertised divine services as “customers” becomes the indirectly implied inference, although the word “customer” is not actually used. As such, the discourse in the excerpt is illustrative of the increasing “blurring of genres” that was already identified in our analysis of church marketing and advertising practices in the previous chapter. At a more general level, it illustrates the emergence of a new NPM-influenced IDF and thus provides an apt early example of a technologization of discourse on marketing and advertising on the part of the ELCF itself. Because of its length and detail, the A Communicative Church document also played an important role in further introducing and integrating elements of strategic discourse into official ELCF discourse on contemporary social and cultural changes on the whole—a trend that clearly has been intensifying in recent years. Let us now continue by considering a more recent and much more explicit example of the appropriation of marketization discourse on the part of the ELCF. The following excerpt is taken from a two-page informational/promotional leaflet for the general strategy of the ELCF until 2015, Our Church. A Participatory Community: Strategy of the Finnish Lutheran Church until 2015 (also available in English). One section of the leaflet, titled “Strategic Guidelines until 2015,” contains the subheading “Structures That Serve Functions.” Under this subheading, the leaflet states the following:

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We are developing inside the Church a personnel structure that will implement the strategic aims. We support the spiritual growth of our personnel. We will build the Church into an ideal participatory employer. We will maintain an efficient administration, both lightweight and effective. We will keep our active units at a human size. We will invest more in strategically appropriate areas.24

Before moving to analyze this excerpt, it is important to note that the leaflet from which it is taken was produced at a time when marketization discourse and NPM values and imperatives had already become more firmly integrated and internalized as central tropes of the official strategic discourse of the ELCF. Indeed, the excerpt is itself highly illustrative of this as it provides an as clear as any example of a seemingly wholesale adoption and integration of such discourse. All of the six points listed in the excerpt—including the second point25— employ market-related vocabulary in more or less explicit ways. There is talk of “strategic aims,” “active units,” making the church into an “ideal participatory employer,” developing an “efficient” yet slim mode of administration, and “investing” in “strategically appropriate areas.” Although the discourse of the leaflet could certainly be experienced in terms of a “top-down imposition of new discursive practices”26 by its audiences, it also contains a key characteristic of a promotional element in discourse, which functions to “soften” its general tone in this regard, namely the representation of both the source and addressees of the discourse of the leaflet as a “we.”27 This also connects to an increasing instrumentalization of discursive practices that chiefly involves “the subordination of meaning to, and the manipulation of meaning for, instrumental effect”.28 Such discursive features play a central role in the institutional imaginary and identity that is projected in the above example. Although the text in the excerpt retains a formal and official proclamatory style, it is simultaneously very much geared toward constructing a picture of the ELCF as a democratic, inclusive, and participatory community. Through the repeated use of the word “we,” church members are, in a way that is partly democratizing but equally instrumentalizing, discursively constructed as forming a vital, equally partaking, and responsible part of the collective identity and actions of the church as a whole. On a more general level, the above example is also clearly illustrative of the establishment and normalization of a broader promotional culture, which “can be understood in discursive terms as the generalization of promotion as a

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communicative function. . .—discourse as a vehicle for ‘selling’ goods, services, organizations, ideas or people—across orders of discourse.”29 One main characteristic of such promotional cultural discourse that is also clearly in evidence in this example is the increasingly ambiguous dividing line between what is to be considered information and what is to be considered promotion.30 For example, the leaflet from which the above example is taken also contains headings like “Respect for the Sacred,” under which we find statements such as “We respect the Holy Trinity,” “We acknowledge the uniqueness of Jesus Christ,” and “We see the image of God in people and their sinfulness.” As was also the case with many of the examples explored in the previous chapter, the discourse of the leaflet is thus marked by a high degree of interdiscursive complexity. It provides a clear example of a hybrid discourse in that it can be characterized as an “interdiscursive mix”31 that simultaneously articulates a variety of genres and discourses, combining religious genres with elements of promotional and managerial genres. Importantly, interdiscursively complex texts of this type also serve to position subjects in complex and sometimes rather puzzling ways. Like some other official ELCF strategic documents, the leaflet from which the above example is taken lacks an identified author or source. Although it addresses an unspecified general audience—an ambiguous “we”—the principal sender, disseminator, or source of the discourse in the leaflet remains (most probably intentionally) elusive. That said, although the leaflet is clearly directed toward as broad an audience as possible, it nevertheless positions church employees as the ones who are taking—and are supposed to be taking—the types of action that the discourse of the leaflet encourages. In other words, it positions church employees as the ones who “will” be working toward the operationalization, enactment, and materialization of the discourse of the leaflet. Indeed, on the whole, the discourse of the leaflet is very much oriented toward concerted strategic action in that it foregrounds clear intent to act in certain ways so as to produce certain desired effects and outcomes. To some extent, the discourse in the above excerpt could arguably also be viewed as an example of the grammatical employment of process metaphor in that the changes and actions envisaged are, at least partly, represented as if they had already come into reality. This interpretation seems plausible when we consider the ways in which the text emphasizes how the ELCF “will maintain an efficient administration” and “will keep . . . active units at a human size” as if the administration had already been made efficient and active unites had already been reduced to “a human size” and just needed to be kept that way.

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The above excerpt thus provides a particularly clear example of a very deliberate technologization of discourse on the part of the ELCF itself as it is directly aimed at constructing and communicating a new general imaginary for the ELCF to a wider audience. On the one hand, the leaflet forms part of a much broader set of strategic initiatives that have been generated and implemented within the ELCF during the past couple of decades. On the other hand, it also plays a part in encouraging the generation of yet more strategic initiatives and works to further normalize instrumental-rational strategic thinking within the ELCF as a whole. Indeed, in 2014 the ELCF published a comprehensive twenty-nine-page Strategy Guide for Parishes which provides detailed explanations on the nature of strategy, instructions for how strategies are to be generated and articulated in strategic documents, how they are to be implemented, how their effects are to be evaluated, and so forth. Among other things, the document also includes instructions on how parishes should conduct analyses of their broader operational environments, how they should identify areas of shared interest with other types of social organizations and associations, and, most notably, how they should employ SWOT analysis to effectivize their strategic planning and enhance their general performance.32 As was discussed in the previous chapter, originating in the world of business organization, SWOT analysis has become widely employed throughout different types of organizations, although its capacity to generate tangible results has been brought into question. As was discussed in Chapter 3, the proliferation, internalization, and normalization of NPN-associated values and imperatives across social institutional and organizational domains has served to set in motion a self-perpetuating process whereby social institutions and organizations have become increasingly occupied with the continuous generation of new strategies and strategic initiatives. Indeed, such a process has become clearly discernible within the ELCF, to the point where its own increasing occupation with strategic thinking has become noted in its own strategic discourse. As is stated in the English language version of the document “A Church of Encounter—Guidelines for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland until 2020 [Report],” commenting on the effects of the Our Church general strategy: Continuing renewal of the church:  Approximately 86 per cent of parishes feel that the strategy has had a significant or some degree of impact. About two thirds of parishes have drawn up their own strategy. A large percentage of these have drawn up a missional environment analysis. Less has been done to clarify the expectations and wishes of parish members.

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A range of operational policies and strategy documents have been drafted on the basis of the Our Church strategy. The Our Church strategy has also inspired numerous undertakings intended to support the church’s strategic and forward planning work and individual priorities.33

In terms of style, the discourse in this except could again, as strategic documents usually, be characterized as descriptive and proclamatory. It engages in what could be termed “strategic discourse on strategy” as it makes explicit interdiscursive connections to the Our Church strategic document discussed above. Indeed, as was discussed in Chapter 2, a successful new strategy needs to be able to function as a new organizing principle for already existing institutional and organizational discourses. In terms of vocabulary, this excerpt, too, includes several marketization discourse and NPM associated terms and phrases such as “operational policies,” “strategic and forward planning work,” and “individual priorities.” Although not explicitly mentioned in the text, a large portion of all of the strategies and “undertakings” that are alluded to have been explicitly focused on improving the ELCF’s ability to adapt its practices to the (perceived) demands of a changing media and communicational environment. On a more general level, we should also note that the very practice of highlighting the results of its own strategic work also constitutes a clear example of a technologization of discourse since, in engaging in this type of self-appraising discourse, the ELCF is able to represent itself as an institution that systematically plans and organizes its operations in ways that are fully in line with what is nowadays expected of modern wellmanaged institutions. Let us now finally take a look at some of the conclusions provided in the “A Church of Encounter—Guidelines for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland until 2020 [Report]” document. It offers the following conclusions regarding the implementation of its four “priority areas”: “the message,” “encounter,” “neighbourly love,” and “membership’: These priority areas will be implemented in different ways in different parishes: Instead of a detailed common strategy, A Church of Encounter offers a shared missional direction for the church. The significance of this direction and the measures required to achieve it need to be considered and formulated in accordance with specific local needs and conditions. The priority areas call for extensive cooperation: Instead of a fieldspecific or employee-oriented approach, A Church of Encounter favours a multiprofessional and comprehensive approach to strategic work. . . .

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The application of priority areas calls for courage to try as well as to fail: In a rapidly changing society new discoveries and creative applications play a crucial role. There must be a willingness to give up that which is obsolete and make room for the new.34

As the text in this excerpt clarifies, future strategic thinking within the ELCF is to be designed and implemented “in accordance with specific local needs and conditions” rather than simply be imposed from above. In stating this, however, the discourse in this excerpt nevertheless still works to impose strategic thinking from above in the sense that it highlights the pivotal need of “a comprehensive approach” to strategic thinking in the first place and thus directly compels individual parishes and other church units to develop their activities on the basis of such an approach. This is reinforced by the phrase in the last sentence of the excerpt which states that there “must be a willingness” to renew practices and routines that no longer work and to replace them with new ones. In terms of style, the discourse in this excerpt is again largely proclamatory and persuasionoriented as it is aimed at convincing its audiences, that is, various categories of church personnel, of the necessity of the changes envisaged. In terms of vocabulary, this excerpt also contains quite a few marketization discourse and NPMassociated terms and phrases. Apart from the notion of “priority areas” itself, these include “measures,” “multi-professional,” “comprehensive approach to strategic work,” “new discoveries,” and “creative applications.” Overall, the excerpt serves to illustrate with all clarity how a strong emphasis on strategic thinking has developed into a recurring trope of official ELCF discourse as a result of an increasing technologization of discourse on the part of the ELCF itself.

Beyond discourse: the practical effects of marketization discourse The changing discursive practices of the ELCF as analyzed above are not arbitrary, nor are they without their practical implications and consequences. Not only have marketization discourse and NPM-associated values, imperatives, and criteria of institutional and organizational effectivity become firmly internalized, and indeed institutionalized, in official ELCF discourse. They have also started to become varyingly operationalized, that is, “put into practice.” In discourse analytic terms, they have increasingly started to become enacted in new ways of communicating and interacting and inculcated in new professional identities. There are also signs of an increasing materialization of these new discursive practices in the form of the creation of new organizational routines. As

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ambiguous and vaguely defined terms and notions such as “product,” “flexibility,” and “strategically appropriate areas” may sometimes be when they appear in official strategic discourse, it now seems entirely plausible to argue that the ELCF has gradually started to espouse a view of its own long-term fate, survival, and regeneration as being fundamentally dependent on its own perceived ability to adapt to (presumed) new organizational-cultural demands and criteria of organizational effectivity. This development also connects to the changing expectations of individuals toward religious institutions and organizations. For one thing, as is also noted in several ELCF strategic documents, in a broader social and cultural climate marked by conspicuous consumerism, individuals increasingly expect products and services to be tailored according to individual needs and preferences. Following on from this, individuals also expect the services offered to be of “high quality” and, often, to also be enjoyable and entertaining. Perhaps most importantly, individuals increasingly expect to be able to exercise choice, or at least expect that their choices will not be too restricted or limited.35 Like many of the other churches explored in this book, the ELCF has openly recognized and consciously sought to respond to such changing attitudes and expectations by engaging in different types of market research in order to be able to identify core publics and “customers,” to gear services to niche audiences, to improve their “quality” and increase their entertainment appeal, and to reduce the demands put on (potential) customers in terms of lifestyle, belief, commitment, etc. (for example, by reducing the time spent participating in divine services or offering alternative ways of participating through the use of modern communications media).36 On a discursive level, this can also, following Stolz and Usunier, be seen in a general “avoidance of explicit obligational meanings” and the development of a discourse that marks a seeming change in the authority relations between church/institution and parishioners/customers in that the two are increasingly positioned as standing on more of an equal footing.37 Rather than producing actual goods or services for purchase, however, religious communities tend to be primarily focused on producing a range of immaterial services, often for multiple publics, including their own members, prospective members, employees, the general public, or all of these. One increasingly visible way in which marketization discourse and NPM-associated values have started to become operationalized within the ELCF can be seen in its growing actual employment of advertising and customer-orientation practices. It is one thing to talk about advertising and quite another thing to actually engage in it. So far, however, the ELCF has primarily engaged in advertising and

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customer-orientation practices for the purposes of being able to better deliver what it views as its “citizen service.” The adoption of market and customer research practices has nevertheless to some degree, although perhaps inadvertently, served to spur a gradual shift from a civil society and community-building oriented approach within the ELCF toward a service oriented approach in which members and potential members are increasingly viewed as customers and the services offered are designed to fit presumed customer needs and demands.38 Another concrete effect of the adoption of marketization discourse and NPM-associated values can be found in the ways in which such discourse and values have increasingly become enacted in new ways acting, communicating, and interacting, and inculcated as new “ways of being.” This can increasingly be seen in relation to a gradual transformation of the professional ethos and identity of church personnel that has chiefly involved a shift from a pastoral- and community-focused identity to a management- and administration-focused one. This phenomenon has also been identified in previous research and become labeled as the “de-professionalization” of the pastor, whereby a gradual shift in balance occurs from pastoral duties such as the conduction of church ceremonies and pastoral care toward administrative and management duties.39 Marketization discourse and NPM-associated values have also become increasingly visibly materialized in new organizational routines and practices. For example, as was illustrated in our discussion and analysis above, the importance of strategic thinking and the implementation of new “creative” working routines has become strongly emphasized in the official strategic discourse of the ELCF. Increasingly, the new ideals and routines encouraged by such discourse have begun to materialize at the level of actual day-to-day church operations. For one thing, it has led to the formation of new strategic units focused on generating new strategic initiatives and evaluating already existing ones. On a more general level, it has also led to a gradual but notable increase in the numbers of church personnel who either wholly or partially work with administrative and strategic issues as opposed to “traditional” parish-related work. While the permeation of marketization discourse and NPM-associated values within the ELCF has indeed been gradual, during the past couple of decades, such discourse and values have become ever more firmly established and increasingly come to provide the unquestioned and taken-for-granted language for talking about and conceptualizing church developments, aspirations, and agency across several types of official church discourse (including, for example, ecclesiology, welfare provision, diaconal work, environment and sustainability policies, etc.). What we have seen, in other words, is an increasing standardization

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of new discursive practices across the order of discourse of the ELCF as a whole following an intensifying technologization of discourse on the part of the ELCF itself. Marketization discourse and NPM values have developed into central and integral elements of a new dominant IDF within the ELCF that is committed to establishing a new reform and change oriented imaginary for the church as a whole. This provides powerful inducements for fashioning actual practices and organizational routines in accordance with this new imaginary.

Mediatization and new media discourse within the ELCF In this second main part of the chapter we now move to consider the adoption of new media-related discourses and its practical effects on the present-day practices and operations of the ELCF. We shall start with exploring the increasing technologization of discourse that has come to mark current official ELCF discourse on new media and ICTs. As will be illustrated in relation to concrete examples below, current official ELCF discourse on new media and ICTs has become increasingly marked by a notable new emphasis on the ways in which technological development has changed the working environment of the church and motivated a growing need for more goal-oriented strategic planning and further investments in the continuous education of church personnel. Like the other Nordic Lutheran majority folk churches, the ELCF was an early adopter of the internet. Its official Web page evl.fi were originally launched already in 1995 and assumed its present form in 2005. Since the late 1990s, ELCF internet use has increased exponentially at all levels. For example, the portion of parishes that reported using the internet rose from 25  percent in 1999 to 49 percent in 2003 and further to 86 percent in 2007.40 In 2011, 97 percent of all parishes reported having their own Websites, 35 percent reported that they continuously monitored online communication that concerned them, and 70 percent reported having their own Facebook pages.41 As discussed above, the general current state of the ELCF can clearly be described as one of slow but progressive decline. In order to counter this trend and retain its societal position, the ELCF has significantly increased its emphasis on communication and investments in modern ICTs. In particular, it has devised and implemented a range of large-scale initiatives aimed at improving its ability to effectively communicate and interact online. These include two nationwide extensive projects aimed at decisively improving its ability to engage with and within the virtual world: the Spiritual Life Online-project (Hengellinen

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elämä verkossa) that was carried out between 2009 and 2012 and the Parish Web Project (Seurakuntien verkkohanke) which was established in 2012 and is still ongoing at the time of writing (2016). The Spiritual Life Online-project was directly aimed at instructing ELCF personnel in internet use and literacy on a nationwide scale. The main aim of the even more extensive Parish Web Project is to gradually establish a nation-wide general approach to all matters concerning ELCF internet use that is eventually to be adopted and shared by all parishes throughout the country. Although the general organizational structure of the ELCF has largely remained unchanged following its increasing engagements with the internet and ICTs, it is nevertheless important to note that new strategic undertakings vis-à-vis the internet and ICTs have been allocated considerable amounts of financial resources and come to employ several people on a full-time basis. This has entailed some changes in the organizational structure of top-church administration as new smaller operational units have been created consisting of people who focus almost exclusively on internet and ICT related issues. The preparation of some initiatives have also involved external communication consultants. A few communication professionals have also been recruited from “outside” the church, including the former head of ELCF web communications himself who stated in an earlier interview that “the communication of the church has become strongly professionalized, it has become a vocation.”42 As noted earlier, developments of the internet and ICTs have been accompanied by a set of widespread discourses and discursive formations on the nature of effective institutional and organizational communication in a digital era. These discourses and discursive formations have played an important role in providing the general ideological and conceptual backcloth against which institutions and organizations decide how to perceive, adapt to, and act within the present-day media environment. ELCF engagements with the internet and ICTs during the past decade have generated a large amount of publicly available official strategic documents that provide us with ample material for the analysis of the effects of broader discursive changes on the changing character of official ELCF discourse on the internet and ICTs. In the following, we shall explore the technologization of discourse that has increasingly come to mark official ELCF discourse on the internet and ICTs in light of examples taken from a set of strategic documents produced between 2004 and 2014, some of which have already featured in the analysis above. Let us begin by looking at an earlier example from this set of documents. The following excerpt is taken from the ELCF’s former and previously quoted official

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communication strategy The Communicative Church which was in effect during 2004–10. Speaking of the social and cultural impact of the internet and ICTs more generally, the document states: The information network has developed into a natural environment for seeking information, engaging in commerce and communicating interactively . . . Young people and young adults especially have been forerunners with regard to the use of both information networks and mobile communications. For young people, the information network constitutes the primary source of information, and online communities have developed into an important interaction channel for them.43

The discourse in this excerpt is characteristic of early 2000s ELCF discourse on the internet and ICTs in that it primarily concentrates on presenting the basic “facts” about the social implications of the present-day media and technological environment and on outlining their possible future implications for church communication, life, and practice on a more general level. As such, it also draws on wider discursive formations on new forms of technology-influenced sociability and interaction and media convergence in its general framing of current states of affairs. In terms of style, the discourse in the excerpt is primarily descriptive and explanatory. It also draws on the “technology cultured frame” in its representation of the ways in which the internet has brought profound changes to the ways in which people communicate and interact. It is important to note that the discourse in the above excerpt was generated at a point in time when the ELCF was only just beginning to engage with the internet in a more systematic manner. In fact, the document from which the excerpt is taken was among the first to more comprehensively outline the ELCF’s own views and perceptions on how the internet and ICTs were affecting the present-day media and social environment. As is also indirectly conveyed in the above excerpt, the document as a whole frequently taps into technological determinist discourse that represent technology in terms of a force that exercises an agency of its own and thus constitutes an important independent shaper of contemporary social life. In the document as a whole, the perceived future implications of the internet and ICTs for church life and practice are generally expressed through a language of opportunity and adaption. The necessity to adapt is never questioned. Rather, the internet and developments in ICTs are represented as something that the ELCF is obliged to adapt to. For example, as the document also states: “When different church actors develop their web competence and commit themselves

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to the church’s shared web portal, then the idea of the church’s citizen service is realized in the best possible way on the net.”44 Although the continuous development of the internet is openly recognized as something that the ELCF simply cannot afford to ignore, it is still generally presented in terms of a development that requires the forming of a comprehensive strategy to guide future efforts. Signs of an increasing technologization of discourse surface most clearly in the ways in which the ELCF is keen in representing itself in terms of an up-to-date social and cultural institution that openly recognizes the ways in which new media have developed into an integral and “natural” part of daily life for younger age groups in particular. In addition, it is also represented as an institution that possesses an adequate understanding of the implications of these developments and is fully prepared to adapt to them in a systematic manner. As noted earlier, a general emphasis on continuous development, education, and training in communicative skills and the use of new media technologies constitutes a central trait of the technologization of discourse with regard to the nature of effective institutional and organizational communication in a digital era. Such an emphasis is also clearly visible in the A Communicative Church document. For example, at one point the document states: The creation of content and the maintenance of webpages require increasing investment in education. Working communities are encouraged to develop the web skills of their employees in such a way so that they can use the web as an important information channel and function in online communities . . . The primary aim is to make employees aware of the possibilities offered by online communication and to enhance the interactivity and attractiveness of the church’s online communication.45

In line with the general discourse of the document, the need for future investments in the education of personnel in internet and technology use is primarily represented in terms of an important future endeavor. But it is also worth noting how the discourse in this excerpt serves to further work up a representation of the church as a modern institution that is fully prepared to adapt to, and indeed be part of, broader social, cultural, and technological changes. Following Campbell,46 this excerpt can thus also be viewed as an example of both an “officializing discourse” and a “validation discourse” in that it highlights the potential positive outcomes of ELCF employees’ active engagements online and in online communities. From primarily having been centered on outlining the basic facts about the internet and digital ICTs and their implications for contemporary church life

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and practice in the early and mid-2000s, ELCF discourse has gradually become decidedly more focused and concrete. For example, there has occurred a gradual shift from an earlier more general emphasis on the internet toward a more sustained emphasis on social media. These developments are clearly discernible in the following example taken from the previously quoted “A Church of Encounter—Guidelines for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland until 2020 [Report]” document.47 Commenting on the social and cultural implications of the internet and digital ICTs, the document states the following: Information technology is changing our lives: Information technology has an increasingly pronounced place in many different areas of our lives. The line between human beings and technology is blurring. People increasingly live their lives online. Technological development goes hand in hand with an individualistic lifestyle. Working life demands flexibility, which technology makes possible. Social media is changing our understanding of community. Its growth has been considerable, as seen in the rapid advance of the social networking service Facebook. . . The development of social media represents both a great challenge and an opportunity for the church. It offers a range of inexpensive ways to create contacts between people and groups. To keep up with technological development requires continuous learning and an openness to new ways.48

This excerpt is notable in several respects. It differs from the examples quoted above in terms of general tone in that it clearly articulates a much more pronounced technological determinist view of modern ICTs as independent shapers of contemporary social life, with concomitantly profound consequences for contemporary church life and practice. The discourse in the excerpt clearly draws on the “technology cultured frame.” Indeed, people are represented as increasingly “living” their lives online in a world where the line between people and technology is “blurring.” It is also worth noting how talk about the internet has been substituted with talk about social media and simply “information technology.” This excerpt also expressly articulates two of the main challenges that the development of the internet is commonly perceived to have brought for traditional religious communities: a move toward increasing individualism and transformations in traditional, received understandings of community. In spite of its rather dramatic tone, however, the text is still generally pro-technology, highlighting how social media presents the church with both “great” challenges and opportunities. As such, it also constitutes another example of both an “officializing discourse” as well as a “validation discourse” in that it highlights how technological development makes possible new types of communities. On the

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whole, however, the discourse of the document is marked by a language of adaption. The present-day media and technological environment appears as an independent force that simply “is” and is able to exercise its own agency on contemporary social and cultural life as a whole. The need for further development with regards to educating and training church personnel in social media use is likewise stressed. It is also worth noting how the discourse in the above example represents keeping up with “technological development” in terms of a necessity. In addition, it also engages in a self-appraising discourse: The church’s online communication has improved. The Hengellinen elämä verkossa [Spiritual Life Online] project has enhanced the church’s online presence. As part of the project a total of 1200 parish employees were trained to do online work.49

The discourse in this excerpt is one of self-evaluation and appraisal that highlights the ways in which the ELCF has actively engaged with the internet and online world in a systematic manner that has yielded clear and strategically anticipated results. As such, in highlighting the successful operationalization of new media discourses within the ELCF, it provides yet another example of an increasing technologization of ELCF discourse on the internet and new media. The document then goes on to present the following conclusion: Communication sees ahead and responds A continuously changing missional environment requires the careful management and command of a broad range of media and content. Structures and operational methods must be actively developed in advance of oncoming changes. The church must dare to do away with any operational methods that no longer work. . . . Especially during crisis situations, the voice of the church must be present in the media. This requires a systematic approach, the ability to see what is coming, and functional internal communication. There needs to be an up-todate crisis communication plan at every level of the church’s structure.50

Like the other excerpts quoted above, this text likewise highlights the need for the ELCF to adopt an expressly proactive approach to its engagement with the present-day media environment. This engagement, moreover, is represented as having to occur on a broad front. In the process, the ELCF as a whole is also encouraged to carefully and systematically evaluate its existing media and communication practices, procedures, and routines (its “operational methods”) and to re-think and re-configure them where necessary. Indeed, the church “must dare to do away with any” practices and routines that have become obsolete. In

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terms of style, the discourse in the excerpt is again a largely proclamatory one that strives to encourage and bring about a set of particular changes in the media practices of the church. The urgent need for a proactive engagement with the present-day media environment that is highlighted in the above excerpt has become increasingly emphasized in official ELCF discourse more generally and served to motivate the creation of a range of new strategies, practices, and routines. For example, the concerns expressed in the above excerpt are echoed in another directly mediarelated strategic document from roughly the same time called “Truthfulness Is the Basis for Church Communication: The Church’s Communication Program until 2015.” The document contains the following listing of main types of media engagements: We participate actively in media debates We keep in touch with the media and bring important issues to the public debate. We inform about the church and its work in an up-to-date, varied, and interesting way. We also inform about planned and upcoming projects. We emphasize the cultural significance of the church and its centuries-long spiritual heritage. We speak bravely about God in our time. We increase our emphasis on the use of new media We participate in the creation and activities of online communities. We offer our services online. We provide our employees with the means, working time, and education needed for the use of social media. We encourage church members to act as Christians also online.51

Beginning with the latter set of points in this excerpt, we can see that they again highlight the need for the ELCF to engage more actively with the online world. Compared to the discourse of earlier documents, however, engagement with the online world is no longer represented in terms of an important future endeavor. Rather, the above text instead highlights the need for already existing engagements to be further intensified. The focus lies more firmly on social media, coupled with a repeated emphasis on the further education of church personnel in social media use. Like the previously quoted excerpt above, the first set of points in this excerpt concentrate more on highlighting the need for the ELCF to maintain a proactive engagement with the mass media and to actively participate

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in setting the agenda for wider mass media coverage of ELCF-related developments and affairs through striving to keep coverage focused on positive things. In terms of organizational mediatization, this excerpt is thus illustrative of a process of amalgamation in that active engagement with the media is represented as being of prime importance for the church to be able to realize its more general main aspirations. As noted, recent years have seen increasing overall investments in social media on the part of the ELCF. As part of these efforts, an extensive set of social media guidelines have been developed. The document “Our Church on the Web: Guidelines for Social Media” states the following: Guidelines for social media are needed as support for church employees and decision making. When we venture out into a new working-environment we need shared models for conduct and discussions about the new situation that we find ourselves in.52

Particularly notable features of this excerpt include the church talking about finding itself in a “new situation” where clear social media guidelines are needed to support “decision making.” This emphasis on shared general guidelines should be understood as part of a more general effort to streamline and manage the content of ELCF communications.

Beyond discourse: organizational mediatization within the ELCF In the following we move beyond the realm of discourse per se to explore some of the main ways in which accelerating processes of mediatization have motivated a set of identifiable, actual changes in the communication policies and day-to-day communication practices of the ELCF. This exploration is pursued in relation to the concept of organizational mediatization as discussed in Chapter 3. What follows is an account and empirical analysis of how a particular string of national religion-related media controversies between 2010 and 2013 provoked record numbers of church membership resignations and served to trigger an unprecedented and still ongoing “strong mediatization effect” within the ELCF. Following these controversies—all of which also can be viewed as highly notable examples of recent instances of the “republicization” of religion53 in Finland—the ELCF has swiftly engaged in a self-instigated mediatization process whereby it has developed a range of new communication routines and

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increasingly come to reconfigure and reorganize its communicative practices in accordance with the demands of the present-day media environment and the logic of the mass media. The account that follows draws on material gathered within a larger research project carried out in Finland between 2011 and 2014 that included a case study of mediatizing tendencies within the ELCF. This case study included a series of in-depth interviews with ELCF officials who worked in different capacities in different ELCF administrational and media units and who all played a leading role in the restructuring of the communication strategies, practices, and routines of the ELFC since 2010. This body of material allowed for an analysis of the underlying motivations and more concrete ways in which the restructuring of ELCF communication practices actually unfolded “behind the scenes.” As Schillemans observes, although there has been a shortage of empirical explorations of processes of mediatization within the contemporary social organizational field,54 and although it may often be difficult to grasp and gain a clear picture of what actually goes on inside the walls of the offices and units of organizations, these sites are nevertheless “the most important locus of mediatization.”55 This angle has rarely been explored in the scholarship on media and religion as previous empirical inquiries into the mediatization of traditional religious organizations have been guided by other research interests, focusing in particular on the impact of the internet on the working environment of churches and their personnel.56 For this reason, material gathered by means of in-depth interviews provides valuable complementary information about a range of publicly undisclosed aspects of processes of organizational mediatization within the ELCF that are virtually unattainable though other research methods. Here, we shall limit ourselves to a general analysis of the accounts of recent changes in ELCF communication practices and routines provided by two of the most high-ranking ELCF officials interviewed (the former head of the ELCFs web communications and a former member of the Church Council). In doing this, the analysis aims to highlight the insights that emerge when the mediatization of religious organizations is studied from both the “outside” and “inside.” As noted above, a more active engagement with the present day media environment on the part of the ELCF did not start in 2010, however. Rather, the entire past decade has been marked by constantly intensifying degrees of engagement as the ELCF has significantly increased its investments in ICTs and implemented a range of extensive nationwide communication initiatives, all of

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which have been based on an open recognition of the ways in which many of the most acutely pressing challenges that the ELCF currently faces (such as dwindling membership rates in particular) are intimately connected with its ability to effectively engage with the present-day media environment. As such, a “weak” mediatization effect has clearly been empirically discernible within the ELCF over a longer period of time already.57 The construction, or indeed manufacturing, of news has come to exercise considerable influence over the ways in which particular phenomena, events, persons, or states of affairs become framed and understood within broader society and culture.58 The construction of news is also to a considerable degree driven by various notions of newsworthiness or so-called news values. The most central of these when it comes to news coverage of religion include what Hodkinson terms amplitude, cultural proximity, predictability, continuity, and negativity.59 Amplitude refers to “a threshold of noticeability”60 of a given event. In short, the more dramatic an event, the more likely it is to receive and be considered worthy of extensive coverage. Cultural proximity refers to the ways in which news tends to focus on practices or phenomena that stand in closer proximity to the ordinary lives and lived experiences of national or local audiences. Predictability refers to the ways in which news tend to focus on stories that fit prevailing expectations or confirm broader social stereotypes about a given phenomenon, person, or practice in society. Continuity refers to the ways in which a story, once on the public agenda, may gain its own momentum and continue to be newsworthy for a longer period of time, sometimes even for the foreseeable future. Lastly, negativity refers to the ways in which negative stories—that is, of scandals, controversies, natural disasters, etc.—tend to be considered more newsworthy and thus receive more extensive coverage than stories of a more positive or simply neutral character. The construction and circulation of news have undergone significant transformations following the proliferation of the internet, advances in digital technologies, and the development of different types of new mobile media platforms. Technological development has also brought a notable further diversification in news providers and types of news following the proliferation of various types of social media and different forms of online citizen journalism.61 The impact of these developments on contemporary public religion and religious life has been far-reaching. Herbert has argued that recent developments in the media-sphere as a whole have played an important role in creating an environment that allows for religion to become “republicized.” As he explains:

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The term “republicisation” of religion refers to the process of religion becoming more publicly visible (and often perceived as problematic by secular publics and elites) as a result of a combination of developments in communications, media markets and socio-political factors in different contexts across the world during the last three decades.62

In spite of its intensifying engagement with the media, the ELCF was greatly affected by a string of closely related and highly notable media-induced and media-propelled religion-related public controversies which started on October 12, 2010, when the longstanding current affairs program Ajankohtainen kakkonen (on the Finnish public service network Yleisradio’s channel 2)  aired a live-broadcast debate focusing on the topic of the civil rights of gays and lesbians titled “Homoilta” (Gay Night). The debate featured eighteen discussants, among them journalists, LGBTQ activists, Church representatives (including a bishop), Christian activists, and members of parliament. During the debate, the then-leader of the Finnish Christian Democrats, Päivi Räsänen, expressed a range of critical views on the issues of marriage equality and same-sex adoption rights. Although her role in the program was that of a representative of the political establishment rather than the ELCF or any other Christian community or organization, her views provoked an unprecedented negative public reaction that principally became directed against the ELCF. Social media quickly flooded with negative reactions on the program and mainstream media quickly caught on. As a result, ELCF membership resignations almost immediately started shooting through the roof. Within just one week after the program had aired, around 30,000 people had formally resigned their church membership and by December that same year the number has risen to around 40,000. The ELCF, taken aback by the rapid escalation and increasing magnitude of the situation, was slow to react. Although it eventually publicly distanced itself from Räsänen’s views, by then it had completely lost control of a situation that had gained its own momentum and evolved into a totally unforeseen veritable crisis for the church.63 The Gay Night program and the ensuing public and media-debate clearly constitutes the single most notable instance of the republicization of religion in Finland in recent history. It is important to note that mainstream news media such as national television and major newspapers generally remained quite careful and balanced in their coverage of the controversy. While they tended to avoid getting into detailed discussions about Räsänen’s views on same-sex marriage, they instead primarily focused on the fact that her views had provoked a record number of church membership resignations, which became the big news of the day.

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To make matters worse, just when public critical debates on the program had stated to abate in the spring of 2011, the ELCF-connected Christian revivalist youth media Nuotta64 launched a campaign against homosexuality titled “Älä alistu!” (Don’t yield!). As part of the campaign, a video telling the story of a young woman called “Anni” who, having found the Christian faith, had given up her previous bisexual lifestyle was widely distributed through video-sharing Websites and social media. The video triggered a new wave of membership resignations (over 3,000 people within the first week). The campaign was publicly criticized by both the archbishop and the then Minister of Justice who wrote a public letter demanding the Church Council to cease its support for church-related associations that opposed homosexuality and the ordination of female clergy. From the perspective of the news media, the homosexuality and same-sex civil rights issue quickly became highly newsworthy for several reasons. The story corresponded to the news value of amplitude in that the event led to an unprecedented number of church resignations; cultural proximity in that it touched upon a subject that was already familiar to a large majority of Finns; predictability in that it functioned to further reinforce wider perceptions about religious intolerance and conservatism; continuity in that the story quickly went viral and gained its own momentum; and negativity in that the event led to a major crisis for the ELCF. Overall, the record number of church resignations constituted a particularly prominent theme in mainstream news media coverage in relation to both cases. A third highly notable and (subsequently) related event occurred in July of 2013, again following a speech delivered by Räsänen (who at the time held the government position of Minister of Interior) at the annual summer celebration event of the Finnish Lutheran Mission association. In her speech, Räsänen made a comparison between Finnish abortion law and animal protection law, arguing that abortion law gives less protection to humans and human fetuses than animal law gives to animals. She went on to point out how secular legislation may sometimes conflict sharply with personal religious values and conscience, such as when doctors are not allowed to refuse performing abortions on the basis of their personal religious beliefs. Therefore, she argued, there might be situations where religious conscience and the word of the Bible should hold primacy over civic law. The story spread quickly through mainstream and social media alike, generating a generally negative public response. Although this time the ELCF was quick to react and point out that the views expressed by Räsänen were those of

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her own and not those of the church, as a result, within that same month alone, 11,000 people had resigned their church membership. As previously with the Gay Night and Nuotta campaign controversies, mainstream media once again chose to highlight the large number of church membership resignations. As a result, through highlighting this common denominator, this latest controversy became firmly connected with the two previous ones. Through having played a decisive role in two of these controversies, R äsänen has thus developed into a particularly potent catalyst for church membership resignations, and especially for people who have been on the verge of leaving the church for a longer period of time. However, when considering the centrality of the news media for the ways in which all of these controversies were sparked and subsequently unfolded, R äsänen’s role should not be overstated. This is not least because, through highlighting the issue of church membership resignations in their coverage, mainstream news media themselves played a central role in creating a (potentially continuously newsworthy) new situation where virtually any Christianity-related controversial statement or event, regardless of its actual connections to the ELCF, gained the potential to provoke further waves of church membership resignations. As such, news media also arguably, although most likely unintentionally, contributed to the popularization and normalization of a new individual “default” response to Christianity-related controversies. The controversies discussed above thus gave rise to a very peculiar type of religious republicization that might be described as a republicization of institutional religious decline and the “opting out” of church membership. As was illustrated in our analysis of official ELCF discourse above, following these controversies, the ELCF has become markedly more concerned than before with engaging the present-day media environment in a proactive way and developed a range of new practices and routines for that purpose.

Strong organizational mediatization: new routines and practices In addition to official ELCF discourse and the establishment of wider projects and initiatives as discussed above, a range of additional new practices and routines have also been developed and put into practice “behind the scenes.” The most notable of these include (1)  the establishment of a social mediabased network of specialists (numbering over 100 people) to provide assistance and advice for ELCF responses to ELCF-related media coverage and content,

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(2) the establishment of a nationwide comprehensive media-monitoring system designed to alert the ELCF to ELCF-related media coverage and content as they evolve in real time, and (3) the development of a response-time routine intended to significantly enhance the ELCF’s ability to rapidly react to any ELCF-related media coverage so as to be able to actively participate in setting the agenda and influencing the future trajectory of that coverage.65 Let us consider these developments in light of the accounts of these new practices and routines provided by two high-ranking ELCF officials who both played a central and leading role in their creation, implementation, and continuous development. It is worth noting once again that, although practices and routines of this type have come to form part and parcel of the internal operations of most modern media-sensitive organizations,66 they are rarely discussed publicly. Let us begin by considering the principal reasons for their establishment within the ELCF. When asked whether the events following the Gay Night program had any impact on the media practices and routines of the ELCF, one of the high-ranking ELCF officials interviewed replied: Yes, the change was radical . . . It radically changed our readiness to respond. Then in the spring of 2011 we had Nuotta’s Anni-video and then last summer we had Räsänen and these other things as well; there has been no talk of not reacting, and not needing to react fast, anymore. As a result of this, we have developed our monitoring and analysis, and would probably have done so anyway. We have a communications planner who writes monitoring-reports and follows potentially brewing crises so that then when a crisis does develop we will already be sensitive to it and be able to respond. We have a straight line to the head of the Archbishop’s office so that we can discuss what is going on.67

In this excerpt, the official describes the effects of the Gay Night controversy on ELCF communication practices in no uncertain terms: the change was “radical.” He also explicitly identifies the Gay Night controversy as constituting a turning point in ELCF communications (while also mentioning the Nuotta campaign and alluding to Räsänen’s speech in 2013). Indeed, he says, the ELCF has developed its analysis and media monitoring as a direct “result” of these controversies. Commenting further on what new routines this new situation has motivated in practice, the official went on to say the following: If, for example, a bishop is to be interviewed on morning television, the Church Communication Centre will prepare the bishop and go through the ways in which it would be best to respond to certain questions and so on. Then after the

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interview is done, a large network of church personnel will monitor all kinds of media such as Facebook feeds, Twitter hashtags, other TV-reporting, various types of print media and so on to see whether the interview generated any reactions that the church would need to respond to.68

The views expressed by the official in both of the above excerpts can clearly be taken to be indicative, and indeed illustrative, of a strong mediatization effect currently being underway within the ELCF. The statements of the official are illustrative of all key steps in processes of organizational mediatization discussed above (accommodation, amalgamation and the mutagenic effect of media logic) in that, not only have ELCF organizational structures been altered to improve its ability to engage more effectively with the media, but media-related issues are also represented as having become of prime concern for the ELCF as a whole, as is illustrated by the official’s remark about his media team having a “straight line” to the office of the Archbishop. Moreover, when asked about the most significant changes that have taken place in ELCF communications during the past couple of decades, the official went on to say that, From a communications perspective specifically, among the biggest positive things that have happened during the past 10–15  years is that the communication of the church has become strongly professionalized, it has become a vocation.69

When viewed in relation to the two other excerpts above, in terms of strong organizational mediatization, this excerpt is further illustrative of deliberate organizational accommodation to the media. Indeed, people working with ELCF communications have increasingly started to be recruited from outside of the church, including the previously quoted official himself. Commenting on the ELCF’s development of a response-time routine, the other high-ranking ELCF official interviewed stated the following: The greatest challenge posed by the present-day media environment is its speed. As an organization we also have a social media response-time. That is, when something turns up somewhere, we have to be able to react pretty fast in the right way in the right places. When we started this whole thing, our responsetime was around two days. . . . And at this point, last time I checked our data, it was around twenty minutes. . . . And in relation to some recent cases . . . the response time has dropped to four minutes.70

As in the other excerpts quoted above, this excerpt also further illustrates the increasing professionalization of ELCF communications. When considering

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their extensiveness and the technical work that has been necessary for their realization, it is also worth noting that these new routines have all developed over a relatively short period of time. As already noted, these routines have not only been developed in order to enhance the ELCF’s ability to manage media-related crises more effectively but also to aid its efforts to preempt such crises developing in the first place through different forms of proactive engagement with and within the media environment. Commenting on the aftermath of the Gay Night controversy, the previously quoted church official stated: Since then we have done lots of things. Let’s say that we have been able to operate in such a way that, if there has been something coming up on TV that is likely to cause some discussion, then we might have been able to get a hold of the script for the program in advance, in which case we have also been able to come up with different standpoints to questions that might potentially turn up in advance. And in these cases it is best to be proactive and start the discussion ourselves.71

These words, lastly, clearly illustrate the ELCF’s efforts to both actively anticipate media reactions to ELCF-related issues as well as engaging with media and news providers directly so as to be better able to exert a degree of influence at an early stage of content production and thus to proactively participate in setting the agenda. The changing discursive practices and new routines developed within the ELCF provide ample empirical grounds for arguing that an identifiable “strong” medialization effect is currently underway within the ELCF. In terms of organizational mediatization, the creation and implementation of these new routines and practices provide apt illustrations of accelerating processes of media accommodation within the ELCF in that media logics have come to exercise an ever more formative influence on ELCF routines and practices on the whole. In addition, we also see clear signs of accelerating processes of amalgamation in that ELCF communication departments are expanding, professionalizing, and gaining increasing influence on general ELCF administration and policy. These developments are thus illustrative of the ways in which the ELCF has increasingly started to espouse a view of its own longterm fate, survival, and regeneration as being fundamentally dependent on its own perceived both present and future ability to proactively engage with the present-day media environment. In this regard, the issue of shrinking church membership numbers has taken center stage. Although the ELCF has no doubt been gradually mediatizing for a longer period of time, this process

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has clearly escalated since 2010. Although signs of accelerating processes of further mediatization have become increasingly visible in official strategic ELCF discourse as discussed above, the aim of this last section has been to illustrate the presence of many additional aspects of accelerating mediatization that have largely unfolded “behind the scenes,” that is, inside the offices of ELCF administration and media units.

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Postscript

The main aim of this book has been to highlight the ways in which processes of marketization and mediatization, in their ideational and discursive dimensions, work to affect institutional religious change. Previous chapters have aimed to illustrate this development through an empirical analysis of the official discourse of seven institutional Christian Protestant churches in the United States, Britain, and the Nordic countries. The story told of the changes and transformations that are currently occurring within the churches explored in this book has, however, only been a partial one. In focusing on the ways in which these long-established churches have more recently become increasingly susceptible to marketization- and new media discourse, this book has merely provided a ‘snapshot’ in time. The picture that has been painted of ongoing changes in the institutional religious field is, moreover, one that has primarily focused on a smaller set of developments. Although this book has indeed been based on the firm contention that processes of marketization and mediatization constitute highly significant, and indeed key vectors, of contemporary institutional religious change, it remains the case that they constitute far from the only factors shaping religion today. Indeed, the types of changes in institutional Christian church organization, communication, life, and practice that have been highlighted in this book are all still primarily discernible on the level of changing discursive practices. It is important to recognize, however, that actual, practical changes in the organizational structure, communication practices, and modus operandi of social institutions and organizations tend to be preceded by changes in discursive practices and changing institutional and organizational imaginaries. As this book has aimed to highlight, changes in the character of social institutions and organizations tend to be ‘discourse driven’ to a considerable degree, and religious institutions and organizations are not exceptions to this. Exploring the official discourse of religious institutions and organizations at a particular point in time thus provides researchers with important clues as to what actual, practical changes we might expect to see in the future. A  focus on discourse and

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discursive change also provides researchers with a particular type of material that allows for the identification and analysis of some of the main ways in which broader discursive change relates to, and often also translates into, institutional religious change. It remains clear, though, that a fuller understanding of the actual, practical consequences and effects of these developments for the future organization, life, and practice of the institutional churches explored in this book cannot be adequately assessed on the basis of an analysis of their official discourse alone. A more comprehensive analysis would require combining the analysis of official discourse with in-depth empirical explorations of how the operationalization, materialization, and enactment of marketization- and new media discourse actually plays out and is negotiated in real life situations at different levels of dayto-day church and parish operations. Future studies could, for instance, strive to identify any mutually affective relationships between the adoption, negotiation, and practical operationalization of marketization-and mediatization discourse and changing ecclesiological and practical theological thinking within institutional Christian settings. But more importantly, the study of the interrelationship between wider discursive change and religious change could usefully be extended to the study of other types of religious organizational settings and indeed other types of religions.

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Notes 1 Introduction 1 Laura Buchanan, “Outreach in Modern Times,” http://www.umcom.org/about/ outreach-in-modern-times. Accessed October 27, 2016. 2 Church of Sweden, “Kommunikationsstrategi med ansvarsfördelning för Svenska kyrkan” (Uppsala: Kyrkostyrelsen, 2011), 2. 3 PCUSA, General Assembly Mission Council, “2013–2016 Mission Work Plan Strategy White Paper,” 2012, 5. https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/ gamc/pdf/strategy_white_paper_2013_2016_strategy_5_15_12.pdf. Accessed October 24, 2016. 4 ELCA, Mission Advancement unit, “2013 Pre-Assembly Report: Mission Advancement,” 1. http://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/ 03j_Mission_Advancement_20130715e.pdf. Accessed October 27, 2016. 5 Our Church. A Participatory Community: Strategy of the Finnish Lutheran Church until 2015. http://sakasti.evl.fi/sakasti.nsf/0/ 9297F603C875C1C8C225770A002E3448/$FILE/Our_Church_Strategy2015_t.pdf. Accessed October 20, 2016. 6 The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, “Report of the Task Force on Resourcing the Future of the Church of England.” https://www.churchofengland. org/media/2139976/gs%201978%20-%20resourcing%20the%20future%20task%20 group%20report.pdf. Accessed October 28, 2016. 7 Kirkeministeriet, Folkekirkens IT, Digital Strategi 2016–2020 for kirkeministeriet og folkekirken (Copenhagen: Folkekirkens IT, 2016), 7. Author’s translation from the Danish original: Det enkelte mål rummer en række indsatsområder, som skal styrkes i de kommende år, for at strategien kan realiseres og give de effekter, som ønskes opnået ved at realisere målene. 8 E.g., Don Slater, Consumer Culture and Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), 24–5. 9 Eric W. Rothenbuhler, “Continuities: Communicative Form and Institutionalization,” in Mediatization: Concept, Changes, Consequences, ed. Knut Lundby (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 279. 10 E.g., Linda Woodhead, “Old, New, and Emerging Paradigms in the Sociological Study of Religion,” Nordic Journal of Religion and Society 22, no. 2 (2009): 103–21.

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11 Nikos Passas, “The Market for Gods and Services: Religion, Commerce, and Deviance,” in Between Sacred and Secular: Research and Theory on Quasi-Religion. Religion and the Social Order, vol. 4, ed. Arthur L. Greil and Thomas Robbins (London: Jai Press, 1994), 225. 12 Stephen R. Warner, “Work in Progress toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States,” American Journal of Sociology 98, no. 5 (1993): 1044–93. 13 E.g., Terry D. Bilhartz, Urban Religion and the Second Great Awakening: Church and Society in Early National Baltimore (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1986); Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989). 14 Wade Clarke Roof, Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 78. 15 Ibid. 16 Mara Einstein, Brands of Faith: Marketing Religion in a Commercial Age (New York: Routledge, 2008), 19. 17 E.g., Grace Davie, Religion in Britain: A Persistent Paradox (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2015). 18 Rodney Stark and Richard Finke, Acts of Faith: Exploring the Human Side of Religion (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2000). 19 E.g., Gregory D. Alles, “Religious Economies and Rational Choice: On Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith (2000),” in Contemporary Theories of Religion: A Critical Companion, ed. Michael Stausberg (Oxon: Routledge, 2009), 85, emphasis added. 20 E.g., Alles, “Religious Economies”; Steve Bruce, “Authority and Freedom: Economics and Secularization,” in Religions as Brands: New Perspectives on the Marketization of Religion and Spirituality, ed. Jörg Stolz and Jean-Claude Usunier (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 189–204. 21 François Gauthier, Tuomas Martikainen, and Linda Woodhead, “Acknowledging a Global Shift: A Primer for Thinking about Religion in Consumer Societies,” Implicit Religion 16, no. 3 (2013): 268. 22 E.g., Mark A. Noll, ed., God and Mammon: Protestants, Money, and the Market, 1790–1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 23 James B. Twitchell, Shopping for God: How Christianity Went from In Your Heart to In Your Face (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007). 24 E.g., Martyn Percy, “The Church in the Market Place: Advertising and Religion in a Secular Age,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 15, no. 1 (2000): 97–119. 25 E.g., Tom Beaudoin, Consuming Faith: Integrating Who We Are with What We Buy (Chicago: Sheed and Ward, 2004). 26 E.g., Jeremy Carette and Richard King, Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion (London: Routledge, 2005).

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27 E.g., Özlem Sandıkcı, “Researching Islamic Marketing: Past and Future Perspectives,” Journal of Islamic Marketing 2, no. 3 (2011): 246–58. 28 Gauthier, Martikainen, and Woodhead, “Acknowledging a Global Shift,” 261–2. 29 Ibid., 263. 30 François Gauthier, Linda Woodhead, and Tuomas Martikainen. “Introduction: Consumerism as the Ethos of Consumer Society,” in Religion in Consumer Society: Brands, Consumers, Markets, ed. François Gauthier and Tuomas Martikainen (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 4. 31 François Gauthier, “Religion, Media and the Dynamics of Consumerism in Globalising Societies,” in Religion, Media, and Social Change, ed. Kennet Granholm, Marcus Moberg, and Sofia Sjö (New York: Routledge, 2015), 72. 32 Gauthier, Martikainen, and Woodhead, “Acknowledging a Global Shift,” 264. 33 Gauthier, “Religion, Media,” 72, emphasis added. 34 James G. Carrier, “Preface,” in Meanings of the Market: The Free Market in Western Culture, ed. James G. Carrier (Oxford: Berg, 1997), vii–xv. 35 Gauthier, Martikainen, and Woodhead, “Acknowledging a Global Shift,” 263–4. 36 Don Slater and Fran Tonkiss, Market Society: Markets and Modern Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 25. 37 Uwe Schimank and Ute Volkmann, “Economizing and Marketization in a Functionally Differentiated Capitalist Society—a Theoretical Conceptualization,” in The Marketization of Society: Economizing the Non-Economic, ed. Uwe Schimank and Ute Volkmann. Research Network “Welfare Societies” conference papers. University of Bremen, 37. http://welfare-societies.com/uploads/file/WelfareSocietiesConferencePaper-No1_ Schimank_Volkmann.pdf. Accessed October 9, 2016. 38 Jeremy Stolow, “Religion, Media, and Globalization,” in The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion, ed. Bryan S. Turner (Chichester: Blackwell, 2010), 544; cf. Gordon Lynch, “Media and Cultures of Everyday Life,” in The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, 2nd ed., ed. John R. Hinnells (Oxon: Routledge, 2010), 543. 39 E.g., Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe. In Two Volumes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Walter Ong, The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967); Michele Rosenthal, American Protestants and TV in the 1950s (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 40 Stewart M. Hoover and Knut Lundby, “Introduction: Setting the Agenda,” in Rethinking Media, Religion, and Culture, ed. Stewart M. Hoover and Knut Lundby (London: Sage, 1997), 4–5. 41 Ibid., 8. 42 E.g., Stewart M. Hoover, Mass Media Religion: The Social Sources of the Electronic Church (London: Sage, 1988).

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43 E.g., Kim Knott, Elizabeth Poole, and Teemu Taira, eds., Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular Sacred: Representation and Change (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). 44 E.g., Heidi Campbell, When Religion Meets New Media (London: Routledge, 2010). 45 E.g., Lorne L. Dawson and Douglas E. Cowan, eds., Religion Online: Finding Faith on the Internet (London: Routledge 2004); Heidi Campbell, ed., Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds (Oxon: Routledge, 2013). 46 E.g., Hoover, Religion. 47 E.g., Knut Lundby, “Introduction: ‘Mediatization’ as Key,” in Mediatization: Concept, Changes, Consequences, ed. Knut Lundby (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 13. 48 Friedrich Krotz, “Mediatization: A Concept with which to Grasp Media and Social Change,” in Mediatization: Concept, Changes, Consequences, ed. Knut Lundby (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 25. 49 E.g., Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Reprinted Garden City : Doubleday, 1967). 50 Gauthier, “Religion, Media,” 79. 51 Norman Fairclough, “Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketization of Public Discourse: The Universities,” Discourse & Society 4, no. 2 (1993): 138. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., 140; cf. Rick Iedema, Discourses of Post-Bureaucratic Organization (Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003), 200. 54 Ibid., 141. 55 Norman Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (Oxon: Routledge, 2010), 282. 56 Nigel Thrift, Knowing Capitalism (London: Sage, 2005), 6. 57 Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, cited in Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 282. 58 Gerlinde Mautner, Language and the Market Society: Critical Reflections on Discourse and Dominance (New York: Routledge, 2010), 4. 59 Ibid., 2. 60 E.g., Titus Hjelm, “National Piety: Religious Equality, Freedom of Religion and National Identity in Finnish Political Discourse,” Religion 44, no. 1 (2014): 28–45. 61 E.g., Frans Wijsen and Kocku von Stuckrad, ed., Making Religion: Theory and Practice in the Discursive Study of Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2016). 62 Robert Wuthnow and John H. Evans, “Introduction,” in The Quiet Hand of God: Faith-Based Activism and the Public Role of Mainline Protestantism, ed. Robert Wuthnow and John H. Evans (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2002), 2. 63 Jason S. Lantzer, Mainline Christianity: The Past and Future of America’s Majority Faiths (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 27: Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 2.

159

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159

64 Douglas North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 3–5.

2 Discourse Analysis and the Study of Social and Religious Change 1 E.g., Titus Hjelm, “Disocurse Analysis,” in The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Religion, ed. Michael Stausberg and Steven Engler (London: Routledge, 2011), 136. 2 Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 168. 3 Kenneth Gergen, An Invitation to Social Construction (London: Sage, 1999), 35. 4 Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966). 5 Steven Engler, “Constructionism versus What?” Religion 34, no. 4 (2004): 292; Jonathan Potter, Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction (London: Sage, 1996), 12. 6 E.g., Vivien Burr, Social Constructionism (London: Routledge, 2003), 11–15; Gergen, An Invitation, 24–6. 7 Gergen, An Invitation, 33–5; Potter, Representing Reality, 11–13. 8 Gergen, An Invitation, 33–8. 9 Burr, Social Constructionism, 18. 10 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Tavistock, 1972). 11 Burr, Social Constructionism, 18. 12 Potter, Representing Reality, 69; 88. 13 Burr, Social Constructionism, 11–5; Engler, “Constructionism,” 292; Gergen, An Invitation, 29. 14 Tim Murphy, “Discourse,” in Guide to the Study of Religion, ed. Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (London: Cassell, 2000), 397. 15 Stephanie Taylor, “Locating and Conducting Discourse Analytic Research,” in Discourse as Data: A Guide for Analysis, ed. Margaret Wetherell, Stephanie Taylor, and Simeon T. Yates (London: Sage, 2001), 8; Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell, Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploitation (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), 62. 16 Burr, Social Constructionism, 3. 17 Ibid., 4. 18 Ibid., 5. 19 Ibid., 9. 20 Ibid., 5–7; Taylor, “Locating and Conducting,” 11–13. 21 Engler, “Constructionism,” 295–6; Fiona J. Hibberd, Unfolding Social Constructionism (New York: Springer, 2005), 29–53.

160

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22 Hibberd, Unfolding, 53. 23 Ibid. 24 Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis; Fairclough, “Discourse Analysis in Organization Studies: The Case for Critical Realism,” Organization Studies 26, no. 6 (2005): 915–39. 25 Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 4. 26 Ibid., 5. 27 Ibid., 230. 28 Martin Reisigl and Ruth Wodak, “The Discourse-Historical Approach,” in Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, 2nd ed., ed. Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer (London: Sage, 2008), 89. 29 Burr, Social Constructionism, 64. 30 Stuart Hall, “Introduction,” in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall (London: Sage, 1997), 4. 31 Burr, Social Constructionism, 65. 32 Norman Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), 3–4. 33 Jean Carabine, “Unmarried Motherhood 1830–1990: A Genealogical Analysis,” in Discourse as Data: A Guide for Analysis, ed. Margaret Wetherell, Stephanie Taylor, and Simeon J. Yates (London: Sage, 2001), 269. 34 Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change, 43. 35 Burr, Social Constructionism, 66. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., 91. 38 Ibid., 63–5. 39 Ibid., 65. 40 Gergen, An Invitation, 48–9. 41 John Thompson, Studies in the Theory of Ideology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984). 42 Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 7–11; 231. 43 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971). 44 Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 61. 45 Ibid., 61–2. 46 Ibid. 47 Theun van Dijk, cited in Ruth Wodak, “Introduction: Discourse Studies— Important Concepts and Terms,” in Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences, ed. Ruth Wodak and Michal Krzyżanowski (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 3. 48 E.g., Taylor, “Locating and Conducting,” 6. 49 Potter, Representing Reality, 106.

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50 E.g., James Paul Gee, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method (New York: Routledge, 2005), 5; Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 234. 51 E.g., Taylor, “Locating and Conducting,” 28–9; Margaret Wetherell, “Debates in Discourse Research,” in Discourse Theory and Practice, ed. Margaret Wetherell, Stephanie Taylor, and Simeon J. Yates (London: Sage, 2001), 380; Reisigl and Wodak, “The Discourse-Historical Approach,” 89. 52 Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 225–26. 53 Ibid., 4. 54 E.g., ibid.; Gee, An Introduction; Ian Parker, “Discourse Analysis,” in Qualitative Methods in Psychology, ed. Peter Banister (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1994), 92–107. 55 Cf. Marcus Moberg, “First-, Second-, and Third-Level Discourse Analytic Approaches in the Study of Religion: Moving from Meta-Theoretical Reflection to Implementation in Practice,” Religion 43, no. 1 (2013): 12; Pete Thomas, “Ideology and the Discourse of Strategic Management: A Critical Research Framework,” Electronic Journal of Radical Organisation Theory 4, no. 1 (1998): [11]. 56 Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 59. 57 Rick Iedema, Discourses of Post-Bureaucratic Organization (Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003), 30–1. 58 Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change, 75–86. 59 Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 7. 60 Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change, 126. 61 Ibid., 127. 62 Eve Chiapello and Norman Fairclough, “Understanding the New Management Ideology: A Transdisciplinary Contribution from Critical Discourse Analysis and New Sociology of Capitalism,” Discourse & Society 13, no. 2 (2002): 193–4. 63 Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change, 64. 64 Foucault, The Archeology. 65 Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change, 31. 66 Ibid., 40. 67 Ibid., 84. 68 Chiapello and Fairclough, “Understanding the New Management Ideology,” 194. 69 Ibid., 43. 70 E.g, Iedema, Discourses of Post-Bureaucratic Organization; David Grant, ed., The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Discourse (London: Sage, 2004); Andrea Mayr, ed., Language and Power: An Introduction to Institutional Discourse (London: Continuum, 2008); François Cooren, Organizational Discourse: Communication and Constitution (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015). 71 North, Institutions, 3–5.

162

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72 David Grant and Cynthia Hardy, “Introduction: Struggles with Organizational Discourse,” Organization Studies 25, no. 1 (2003): 6. 73 Ibid., 5. 74 Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 40. 75 Ibid., 30–43. 76 Ibid., 30; cf. Grant and Hardy, “Introduction,” 7. 77 Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 41. 78 Ibid., 51. 79 Dennis, K. Mumby and Robin P. Clair, “Organizational Discourse,” in Discourse as Social Interaction, ed. Theun A. van Dijk (London: Sage, 1997), 181. 80 Grant and Hardy, “Introduction,” 6. 81 Fairclough, “Discourse Analaysis in Organization Studies,” 918; Iedema, Discourses of Post-Bureaucratic Organization, 31. 82 Fairclough, “Discourse Analysis in Organization Studies,” 918. 83 Ibid., 931. 84 Ibid., 932. 85 Thomas Greckhamer, “The Stretch of Strategic Management Discourse: A Critical Analysis,” Organization Studies 31, no. 7 (2010): 844; cf. Gina Grandy and Albert J. Mills, “Strategy as Simulacra? A Radical and Reflexive Look at the Discipline and Practice of Strategy,” Journal of Management Studies 41, no. 7 (2004): 1153– 70; David Knights and Glenn Morgan, “Corporate Strategy, Organizations, and Subjectivity: A Critique,” Organization Studies 12, no. 2 (1991): 251–73. 86 Philip Graham, “Space: Irrealis Objects in Technology Policy and Their Role in a New Political Economy,” Discourse & Society 12, no. 6 (2001): 770. 87 Ibid., 767. 88 Fairclough, “Discourse Analysis in Organization Studies,” 932–4. 89 Grant and Hardy, “Introduction,” 8. 90 Ibid.; Rick Iedema and Ruth Wodak, “Introduction: Organizational Discourses and Practices,” Discourse & Society 10, no. 1 (1999): 11. 91 Fairclough, “Discourse Analysis in Organization Studies,” 932. 92 Ibid., 933. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid., 932–4; Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 233. 95 Fairclough, Critical Discoruse Analysis, 552. 96 Ibid., 131. 97 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979). 98 Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 88. 99 Ibid., 139. 100 Ibid. 101 Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change, 215.

163

Notes 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114

163

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 137. Ibid. Ibid., 126. Fairclough, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 141. Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 126. Fairclough, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 140. Ibid., 140. Ibid., 139. Ibid., 77; 283. Ibid., 127; 141. Fairclough, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 158.

3 Marketization, Mediatization, and Institutional Religious Change 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Slater and Tonkiss, Market Society, 6; 19. Ibid., 29. Ibid. Slater, Consumer Culture, 42. Slater and Tonkiss, Market Society, 31. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Overland Park, KS: Digireads.com Publishing, 2009 [1776]). Slater and Tonkiss, Market Society, 41. Ibid., 42. Slater, Consumer Culture, 41. Slater and Tonkiss, Market Society, 121. Slater, Consumer Culture, 42. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, 1867, Reprinted (New York: Dover Publications, 2011). Émile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, 1933, Reprinted (London: Macmillan, 1984). Slater and Tonkiss, Market Society, 121. Ibid., 93. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, 1925, Reprinted (New York: Norton, 1990). Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (London: Tavistock, 1974). Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, 1949, Reprinted (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1969).

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19 Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, 1944, Reprinted (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1957). 20 Slater and Tonkiss, Market Society, 2. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., 3. 23 Carrier, “Preface.” 24 Slater and Tonkiss, Market Society, 9. 25 Ibid., 8. 26 Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). 27 Ibid., 74. 28 Ibid., 122. 29 Ibid., 134. 30 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 10. 31 Celia Lury, Consumer Culture (Oxford: Polity Press, 2011), 1–3. 32 For a detailed discussion of the development of marketing, see, for example, Christian Grönroos, “On Defining Marketing: Finding a New Roadmap for Marketing,” Marketing Theory 6, no. 4 (2006): 395–417. 33 Martin Kornberger, Brand Society: How Brands Transform Management and Lifestyle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 13. 34 Frank Trentmann, “Knowing Consumers: Consumers in Economics, Law and Civil Society,” in The Making of the Consumer: Knowledge, Power and Identity in the Modern World, ed. Frank Trentmann (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 2. 35 Ibid., 3. 36 Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic Books, 1976). 37 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986). 38 Slater and Tonkiss, Market Society, 179–80. 39 Trentmann, “Knowing Consumers,” 11. 40 Slater and Tonkiss, Market Society, 135. 41 Ibid., 123. 42 Harvey, A Brief History, 1. 43 Ibid., 2. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., 65. 46 Philip Graham, “Hypercapitalism: Language, New Media and Social Perceptions of Value,” Discourse & Society 13, no. 2 (2002): 238. 47 Harvey, A Brief History, 2. 48 Slater, Consumer Culture, 37. 49 Ibid., 24–5.

165

Notes 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66

67 68 69 70 71 72

73 74 75

76 77

165

Cf. Slater and Tonkiss, Market Society, 139. Ibid., 40; 54. Ibid., 3. Ibid. Ibid., 66. Slater and Tonkiss, Market Society, 143. Ibid., 140. Gauthier, “Religion, Media,” 72. Richard Sennett, The Culture of the New Capitalism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 7–8. Ibid., 10. Gauthier, “Religion, Media,” 71–2. Tuomas Martikainen, “Towards a New Political Economy of Religion: Reflections on Marion Maddox and Nicolas de Bremond d’Ars,” Social Compass 59, no. 2 (2012): 179. Slater and Tonkiss, Market Society, 191. Ibid., 194. Ibid., 192. Ibid., 194. Fabian Muniesa, Yuval Millo, and Michel Callon, “An Introduction to Marker Devices,” in Market Devices, ed. Michel Callon, Yuval Millon, and Fabian Muniesa (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 3. Slater and Tonkiss, Market Society, 1. Ibid., 25. Schimank and Volkmann, “Economizing and Marketization,” 37. Thrift, Knowing Capitalism, 34–5. Thomas, “Ideology and the Discourse,” [10]. E.g., Fairclough,”‘Critical Discourse Analysis”; Lee D. Parker, “From Privatized to Hybrid Corporatised Higher Education: A Global Financial Management Discourse,” Financial Accountability & Management 28, no. 3 (2012): 247–68. E.g., Morten Balle Hansen, “Marketization and Economic Performance,” Public Management Review 12, no. 2 (2010): 255–74. E.g., Ian Bruce and Celine Chew, “Debate: The Marketization of the Voluntary Sector,” Public Money & Management, May (2011): 155–6. E.g, Marie-Laure Djelic, “Marketization: From Intellectual Agenda to Global Policy Making,” in Transnational Governance: Institutional Dynamics of Regulation, ed. Marie-Laure Djelic and Kerstin Sahlin-Andersson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). E.g., Mautner, Language and the Market Society. E.g., Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis.

16

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Notes

78 E.g., Christopher Pollitt, Sandra van Thiel, and Vincent Homburg, eds., New Public Management in Europe: Adaptations and Alternatives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 79 Cf. Thomas, “Ideology and the Discourse.” 80 Thrift, Knowing Capitalism, 34–5. 81 Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 51. 82 Martikainen, “Towards a New Political Economy,” 180. 83 Ibid., 177–80. 84 Ibid., 177; cf. Einstein, Brands of Faith; Marcus Moberg, “Exploring the Spread of Marketization Discourse in the Nordic Folk Church Context,” in Making Religion: Theory and Practice in the Discursive Study of Religion, ed. Frans Wijsen and Kocku von Stuckrad (Leiden: Brill, 2016). 85 Martikainen, “Towards a New Political Economy,” 178. 86 E.g., Marion Maddox, “ ‘In the Goofy Parking Lot’: Growth Churches as a Novel Religious Form for Late Capitalism,” Social Compass 59, no. 2 (2012): 146–58. 87 Martikainen, “Towards a New Political Economy,” 178. 88 Ibid., 179. 89 Jörg Stolz and Jean-Claude Usunier, “Religions as Brands: New Perspectives on the Marketization of Religion and Spirituality,” in Religions as Brands: New Perspectives on the Marketization of Religion and Spirituality, ed. Jörg Stolz and Jean Claude Usunier (Franham: Ashgate, 2014), 7. 90 Martikainen, “Towards a New Political Economy,” 180. 91 Ibid., 179. 92 Davie, Religion in Britain, 209. 93 Nancy T. Ammerman, “Connecting Mainline Protestant Churches with Public Life,” in The Quiet Hand of God: Faith-Based Activism and the Public Role of Mainline Protestantism, ed. Robert Wuthnow and John H. Evans (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2002), 153. 94 E.g., Anders Bäckström and Grace Davie (with Ninna Edgardh and Per Petterson), eds., Welfare and Religion in 21st Century Europe: Volume 1: Configuring the Connections (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). 95 Stig Hjarvard, The Mediatization of Culture and Society (Oxon: Routledge, 2013), 11. 96 Philip Graham, “ ‘Hypercapitalism: A Political Economy’ of Informational Idealism,” New Media & Society 2, no. 2 (2000): 146. 97 Hjarvard, The Mediatization of Culture, 11. 98 Graham, “Hypercapitalism: A Political Economy,” 146. 99 Ibid. 100 Hjarvard, The Mediatization of Culture, 11. 101 Graham, “Hypercapitalism: Language,” 233. 102 Harvey, A Brief History, 68–9.

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103 Ibid., 3. 104 Paul Hodkinson, Media, Culture and Society: An Introduction (London: Sage, 2011), 1. 105 E.g., Tim Dwyer, Media Convergence (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2010). 106 Ibid., 42–6. 107 Hodkinson, Media, 11–12. 108 Ibid., 19. 109 Heidi Campbell, When Religion. 110 Hodkinson, Media, 37. 111 Lundby, “Introduction,” 13; Hodkinson, Media, 34–5. 112 Hjarvard, The Mediatization of Culture, 2. 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid. 115 Ibid., 19. 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid., 2. 118 Larissa Carneiro, “The Implication of Technology in Mediatisation and Mediation Approaches to Religious Studies,” Culture and Religion 16, no. 1 (2015): 51–65. 119 Birgit Meyer and Jojada Verrips, “Aesthetics,” in Key Words in Religion, Media and Culture, ed. David Morgan (New York: Routledge, 2008), 25; cf. Jeremy Stolow, “Technology,” in Key Words in Religion, Media and Culture, ed. David Morgan (New York: Routledge, 2008). 120 Lundby, “Introduction,” 4; for a detailed discussion of the differences between the concepts of mediation and mediatization see Hjarvard, The Mediatization of Culture, 19. 121 Krotz, “Mediatization,” 25. 122 Hjarvard, “The Mediatization of Religion,” 11. 123 Stig Hjarvard, “The Mediatization of Society: A Theory of the Media as Agents of Social and Cultural Change,” Nordicom Review 29 (2008): 113. 124 Hjarvard, The Mediatization of Culture, 23. 125 Sonia Livingstone, cited in Lundby, “Introduction,” 11; cf. Andrea Schrott, “Dimensions: Catch-All Label or Technical Term,” in Mediatization: Concept, Changes, Consequences, ed. Knut Lundby (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 45; Hodkinson, Media, 3–4. 126 Hjarvard, The Mediatization of Culture, 33. 127 Gianpetro Mazzoleni, “Mediatization of Politics,” in The International Encyclopedia of Communication vol. VII, ed. Wolfgang Donsbach (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008); cf. Hjarvard, “The Mediatization of Society,” 114. 128 Lundby, “Introduction,” 5. 129 Andreas Hepp, Stig Hjarvard, and Knut Lundby, “Mediatization—Empirical Perspectives: An Introduction to a Special Issue,” Communications 35 (2010): 225.

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130 Hjarvard, The Mediatization of Culture, 20. 131 Stig Hjarvard, cited in Knut Lundby, “Media Logic: Looking for Social Interaction,” in Mediatization: Concept, Changes, Consequences, ed. Knut Lundby (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 105. 132 Schrott, “Dimensions,” 48–9. 133 E.g., Krotz, “Mediatization,” 26. 134 Hoover, Religion, 284. 135 Hjarvard, “The Mediatization of Religion”; “Three Forms of Mediatized Religion: Changing the Public Face of Religion,” in Mediatization and Religion: Nordic Perspectives, eds. Stig Hjarvard and Mia Lövheim (Gothenburg: Nordicom, 2012). 136 Hjarvard, “The Mediatization of Religion,” 14. 137 For different scholarly takes on the issue see Mia Lövheim and Gordon Lynch, eds., Culture and Religion 12, no. 2 (2011). Special issue: The Mediatization of Religion. 138 Juliana Raupp, “Mediatization of Society—Consequences for Organizational Communication,” Communicação e Sociedade 8 (2005): 201–8; Thomas Schillemans, Mediatization of Public Services: How Organizations Adapt to News Media (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012). 139 Raupp, “Mediatization,” 207. 140 Hjarvard, The Mediatization of Culture, 20. 141 Schillemans, Mediatization, 148. 142 Ibid., 13. 143 Ibid., 51. 144 Ibid., 97. 145 Ibid., 51. 146 Ibid., 116. 147 Ibid., 51. 148 Ibid., 87. 149 Helmut Gruber, “Analyzing Communication in the New Media,” in Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences, ed. Ruth Wodak and Michał Krzyżanowski (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 54, emphasis added. 150 Cf. Dana R. Fisher and Larry Michael Wright, “On Utopias and Dystopias: Toward an Understanding of the Discourse Surrounding the Internet,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 6, no. 2 (2001): no page numbers; Dwyer, Media Convergence, 8. 151 Paul DiMaggio, Eszter Hargittai, W. Russell Neuman and John P. Robinson, “Social Implications of the Internet,” Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001): 323. 152 Ibid., 324. 153 Graham, “Hypercapitalism: A Political Economy,” 132. 154 Ibid; cf. Graham, “Hypercapitalism: Language,” 233–4. 155 Graham, “Hypercapitalism: A Political Economy,” 149.

169

Notes 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170

171

172 173 174 175

176

177 178

179 180 181 182

169

Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 4. Dwyer, Media Convergence, 6. Ibid., 3. Thrift, Knowing Capitalism, 117, emphasis added. Graham, “Space: Irrealis,” 774. Ian Roderick, Critical Discourse Studies and Technology: A Multimodal Approach to Analysing Technoculture (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 117. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 118. Ibid. Ibid., 119. Ibid. Ibid., 124. Ibid., 125. E.g., Heidi Campbell, “Community,” in Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds, ed. Heidi Campbell (London: Routledge, 2013), 60–5. E.g., Lorne L. Dawson and Douglas E. Cowan, “Introduction,” in Religion Online: Finding Faith on the Internet, ed. Lorne L. Dawson and Douglas E. Cowan (New York: Routledge, 2005), 6; Heidi Campbell, “Understanding the Relationship between Religion Online and Offline in a Networked Society,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80, no. 1 (2012): 65. Fisher and Wright, “On Utopias and Dystopias”: no pages. Cf. Campbell, When Religion. Eg., Campbell, “Community.” E.g., Pauline Hope Cheong, “Authority,” in Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds, ed. Heidi Campbell (London: Routledge, 2013). Heidi Campbell, “Introduction: The Rise of the Study of Digital Religion,” in Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds, ed. Heidi Campbell (London: Routledge, 2013), 6. Campbell, When Religion, 136. E.g., Campbell, When Religion; Tim Hutchings, “Now the Bible Is an App: Digital Media and Changing Patterns of Religious Authority,” in Religion, Media, and Social Change, ed. Kennet Granholm, Marcus Moberg, and Sofia Sjö (New York: Routledge, 2015). Campbell, When Religion. Ibid., 58. Ibid., 134. Ibid., 156–7.

170

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183 E.g., ibid.; Peter Fischer-Nielsen, “Mellem sogne-og cyberkirke: En analyse af folkekirkens kommunikation på internettet” (Ph.D. thesis, Afdeling for Systematisk Teologi, Det Teologiske Fakultet, Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, 2010). 184 DiMaggio et al., “Social Implications,” 324. 185 Heidi Campbell, “Framing the Human-Technology Relationship: How Religious Digital Creatives Engage Posthuman Narratives,” Social Compass 63, no. 3 (2016): 302–18. 186 Ibid., 304. 187 Ibid., 308–11. 188 Ibid., 308. 189 Ibid., 312. 190 Ibid., 303. 191 Ibid., 305. 192 Ibid. 193 Ibid. 194 Ibid., 306. 195 Ibid., 307. 196 Ibid., 307–8.

4 The Marketization and Mediatization of Institutional Christian Protestant Churches 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14

Davie, Religion in Britain, 135. Ibid. Ibid. Peter L. Berger, Grace Davie, and Effie Fokas, Religious America, Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 11. Ibid. Ibid., 81. Davie, Religion in Britain, 135. Lantzer, Mainline Christianity, 1. Ibid., 15; cf. Peter J. Thuesen, “The Logic of Mainline Churchliness: Historical Background since the Reformation,” in The Quiet Hand of God: Faith-Based Activism and the Public Role of Mainline Protestantism, ed. Robert Wuthnow and John H. Evans (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2002), 31–2. E.g., Lantzer, Mainline Christianity, 15. Ibid., 19–20. E.g., ibid., 20; Berger, Davie, and Fokas, Religious America, Secular Europe?, 18. Davie, Religion in Britain, 22. Thuesen, “The Logic of Mainline,” 30.

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Notes 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

171

Ibid., 32. Ibid. Lantzer, Mainline Christianity, 27. Ibid., 31. Ibid., 34–5. E.g., Smith, Evangelicalism, 6–7. Lantzer, Mainline Christianity, 42. Ibid. Ibid., 49. Ibid., 37. Thuesen, “The Logic of Mainline,” 41. Ibid. Ibid. Frederick W. Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management, 1911, Reprinted (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2016). Shailer Mathews, Scientific Management in the Churches, 1912, Reprinted (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1912). Thuesen, “The Logic of Mainline,” 41. Ibid. Ibid., 27. Ibid., 45. Ibid., 44. Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks, “The Changing Political Fortunes of Mainline Protestants,” in The Quiet Hand of God: Faith-Based Activism and the Public Role of Mainline Protestantism, ed. Robert Wuthnow and John H. Evans (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2002), 162. Donald E. Miller, Reinventing American Protestantism. Christianity in the New Millennium (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1997). Smith, American Evangelicalism. Miller, Reinventing. Lantzer, Mainline Christianity, 90. Ibid., 148. E.g., ibid., 63. Ibid., 92. Ibid., 93. Ibid., 94. Wuthnow and Evans, “Introduction,” 5. Pew Research Center. 2014 Religious Landscape Study, http://www.pewforum.org/ 2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/. Accessed October 17, 2016. Cf. Lantzer, Mainline Christianity, 2; Wuthnow and Evans, “Introduction,” 5; 17. Lantzer, Mainline Christianity, 121.

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49 Ibid. 50 Wuthnow and Evans, “Introduction,” 19. 51 Mark Chaves, Helen M. Giesel, and William Tsitsos, “Religious Variations in Public Presence: Evidence from the National Congregations Study,” in The Quiet Hand of God: Faith-Based Activism and the Public Role of Mainline Protestantism, ed. Robert Wuthnow and John H. Evans (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2002), 108. 52 Ibid., 124. 53 Ammerman, “Connecting Mainline,” 153–4. 54 Wuthnow and Evans, “Introduction,” 19. 55 E.g., Russell E. Hall, “American Presbyterian Churches—a Genealogy, 1706–1982,” Journal of Presbyterian History 60, no. 2 (1982): 101. 56 Bradley J. Longfield, Presbyterians and American Culture: A History (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013), 2–3. 57 PCUSA.org, The Presbyterian Mission Agency. http://www.presbyterianmission. org/ministries/research-services/. Accessed October 24, 2016. 58 PCUSA.org, http://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/oga/pdf/2015_ comparative_summaries_.pdf. Accessed October 24, 2016. 59 Pew Research Center, “Shifting Religious Composition of Mainline Protestant Churches.” http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/18/mainlineprotestants-make-up-shrinking-number-of-u-s-adults/ft_15-05-18_rlsmainliners_ table310px/. Accessed October 24, 2016. 60 PCUSA.org, “The Missional Church and the New Form of Government Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),” 1. http://www.synodnw.org/uploads/1/5/9/7/ 15978004/the_missional_church.pdf. Accessed October 24, 2016. 61 PCUSA.org. Presbyterian Mission Agency, “Mission Work Plan for 2013 to 2016,” 1. https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/gamc/pdf/ mwpwhomdoweserve.pdf. Accessed October 24, 2016. 62 PCUSA.org. General Assembly Mission Council, “2013–2016 Mission Work Plan Strategy White Paper,” 2012, 5. https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/ gamc/pdf/strategy_white_paper_2013_2016_strategy_5_15_12.pdf. Accessed October 24, 2016. 63 Jerry Van Marter, “Assembly in Brief: 222nd General Assembly,” 1. https://www. pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/oga/pdf/assembly-in-brief-ga222-bifold.pdf. Accessed October 24, 2016. 64 Rob Fohr, “Social Media SitIns: The What, the Why, and the How,” 2013, 1. https:// www.presbyterianmission.org/wp-content/uploads/social_media_sit-ins_handout. pdf. Accessed October 24, 2016. 65 Ibid. 66 E.g., David Hempton, Methodism: Empire of the Spirit (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 90.

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67 UMC.org, “History.” http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/history. Accessed October 26, 2016. 68 Pew Research Center. 2014 Religious Landscape Study, http://www.pewresearch.org/ fact-tank/2015/05/18/mainline-protestants-make-up-shrinking-number-of-u-s-adults/. 69 UMData. The United Methodist Church Online Directory & Statistics, http://www. umdata.org/UMFactsHome.aspx. Accessed October, 26, 2016. 70 Ibid. 71 Pew Research Center. 2014 Religious Landscape Study. http://www.pewresearch. org/fact-tank/2015/05/18/mainline-protestants-make-up-shrinking-number-of-us-adults/. Accessed October 26, 2016. 72 Laura Buchanan, “Outreach in Modern Times,” http://www.umcom.org/about/ outreach-in-modern-times. Accessed 27 October 2016. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid. 75 UMC.org, “Overcoming Your ‘Fear of Flying.’ ” http://www.umcom.org/learn/ overcoming-your-fear-of-flying. Accessed October 27, 2016. 76 Ibid. 77 UMC.org, “Theology.” http://www.umcom.org/learn/market-your-church-theology. Accessed October 27, 2016. 78 UMC.org, “Effective Church Marketing.” http://www.umcom.org/learn/effectivechurch-marketing. Accessed October 27, 2016. 79 Terry Hill and Roy Westbrook, cited in Thomas, “Ideology and the Discourse,” [10]. 80 Clay Morgan, “5 Stages Every High Performing Team Must Experience.” http:// www.umcom.org/learn/5-stages-every-high-performing-team-must-experience. Accessed October 27, 2016. 81 E.g., Sophia Agtarap, “Social Media Opening New Doors to Communication.” http://www.interpretermagazine.org/topics/social-media-opening-new-doors-tocommunication. Accessed October 27, 2016. 82 UMC.org, “Media in Worship.” http://www.umc.org/resources/media-in-worship. Accessed October 27, 2016. 83 ELCA.org, “Social Principles: The Social Community.” http://www.umc.org/whatwe-believe/the-social-community. Accessed October 27, 2016. 84 E.g., Clifford E. Nelson, Lutherans in North America. Revised edition (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1980). 85 ELCF.org, “ELCA Facts.” http://www.elca.org/News-and-Events/ELCA-Facts. Accessed October 27, 2016. 86 Pew Research Center, 2014 Religious Landscape Study. http://www.pewresearch. org/fact-tank/2015/05/18/mainline-protestants-make-up-shrinking-number-of-us-adults/. Accessed October 27, 2017.

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87 ELCA.org, “ELCA Facts.” http://www.elca.org/News-and-Events/ELCA-Facts?_ga= 1.4055472.1060376057.1477595650. Accessed October 27, 2016. 88 Human Rights Campaign, http://www.hrc.org/resources/stances-of-faiths-on-lgbtissues-evangelical-lutheran-church-in-america. Accessed October 27, 2016. 89 ELCA.org, “Called Forward Together in Christ.” http://www.elca.org/FutureDirection. Accessed October 27, 2016. 90 ELCA.org, “Congregation-based Community Organizing.” http://www.elca. org/Our-Work/Publicly-Engaged-Church/Congregation-based-CommunityOrganizing. Accessed October 27, 2016. 91 ELCA.org, “ELCA Board Accepts Worship Plan.” http://www.elca.org/Newsand Events/3848?_ga=1.8768053.1060376057.1477595650. Accessed October 27, 2016. 92 ELCA.org, Mission Advancement unit. “2013 Pre-Assembly Report: Mission Advancement,” 1. http://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/ 03j_Mission_Advancement_20130715e.pdf. Accessed October 27, 2016. 93 Ibid., 5–6. 94 ECLA.org, “Social Media and Congregations. Strategies, Guidelines, Best Practices and Resources,” 1. http://search.elca.org/Pages/Results.aspx?k=OCIAL+MEDIA+A ND+CONGREGATIONS#Default=%7B%22k%22%3A%22Social%20MEDIA%20 AND%20CONGREGATIONS%22%2C%22r%22%3A%5B%7B%22n%22%3A%22 FileType%22%2C%22t%22%3A%5B%22equals(%5C%22pdf%5C%22)%22%5D%2 C%22o%22%3A%22or%22%2C%22k%22%3Afalse%2C%22m%22%3Anull%7D% 5D%7D. Accessed October 27, 2016. 95 Ibid. 96 E.g., Davie, Religion in Britain; Woodhead, “Introduction.” 97 E.g., Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularization 1800–2000 (Oxon: Routledge, 2000). 98 James A. Beckford, cited in Davie, Religion in Britain, 92. 99 E.g., ibid., xii. 100 Davie, Religion in Britain, 29. 101 Ibid.; cf. Woodhead, “Introduction,” 12. 102 E.g., Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain; Hugh McLeod. The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 103 Brown, The Death of Christian Britain. 104 Callum Brown and Gordon Lynch, “Cultural Perspectives,” in Religion and Change in Modern Britain, ed. Linda Woodhead and Rebecca Catto (London: Routledge, 2012), 338. 105 Ibid., 334. 106 Sam Brewitt-Taylor, “The Invention of a ‘Secular Society’? Christianity and the Sudden Appearance of Secularization Discourses in the British National Media, 1961–4,” 20th Century British History 24, no. 3 (2013): 327–50.

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133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140

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Davie, Religion in Britain, 32. Ibid., 31. Woodhead, “Introduction,” 13. Ibid., 14. Davie, Religion in Britain, 206. Ibid., 10. Ibid., 16. Ibid., 15. Woodhead, “Introduction,” 12. Ibid., 13. Davie, Religion in Britain, 9. Ibid., 33–4. Ibid., 206. Ibid., 11. Ibid., 19. Ibid., 207. Ibid., 26. Ibid. Ibid., 208–9. Ibid., 4. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 48–53. Ibid., 52. Woodhead, “Introduction,” 7–8. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. http://www.icpsr. umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/3900?searchSource=find-analyze-home&sort By=&q=2001+British+Social+Attitudes+Survey. Accessed October 29, 2016. Office for National Statistics. file:///C:/Users/Marcus/Downloads/Religion%20 in%20England%20and%20Wales%202011.pdf. Accessed October 29, 2016. Davie, Religion in Britain, 6. Ibid., 135. Ibid. Ibid., 53. Ibid., 146. Ibid. The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, “Report of the Task Force on Resourcing the Future of the Church of England, 2015, 1. https://www. churchofengland.org/media/2139976/gs%201978%20-%20resourcing%20the%20 future%20task%20group%20report.pdf. Accessed October 28, 2016. Ibid.

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142 Ibid., 8. 143 Ibid., 14. 144 E.g., Thomas, “Ideology and the Discourse”; Tony J. Watson, “How Do Managers Think? Identity, Morality and Pragmatism in Managerial Theory and Practice,” Management Learning 27, no. 3 (1996): 323–41. 145 The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, “Talent Management for Future Leaders and Leadership Development for Bishops and Deans: A New Approach. Report of the Lord Green Steering Group,” 2014, 3. https://www. churchofengland.org/media/2130591/report.pdf. Accessed October 28, 2016. 146 Ibid., 7. 147 Ibid., 10. 148 Ibid., 12. 149 Ibid., 23–4. 150 Ibid., 8. 151 Isabella Kasselstrand and Mor Kandlik Eltanani, “Church Affiliation and Trust in the State: Survey Data Evidence from Four Nordic Countries,” Nordic Journal of Religion and Society 26, no. 2 (2013): 105. 152 Ibid., 105–6. 153 Ibid., 44. 154 E.g., Susan Sundback, ”Medlemskapet i de lutherska kyrkorna i Norden,” in Folkkyrkor och religiös pluralism—den nordiska religiösa modellen, eds. Göran Gustafsson and Thorleif Pettersson (Stockholm: Verbum, 2000), 37. 155 E.g., Göran Gustafsson, Tro, samfund och samhälle: Sociologiska perspektiv (Örebro: Libris, 1997). 156 E.g., Sundback, ”Medlemskapet,” 34. 157 Ibid., 72–3. 158 Ibid., 48. 159 Per Petterson, “State and Religion in Sweden: Ambiguity between Disestablishment and Religious Control,” Nordic Journal of Religion and Society 24, no. 2 (2011): 124. 160 Russell Sandberg, “State-Church Relations in Europe: From Legal Models to an Inter-disciplinary Approach,” Journal of Religion in Europe 1, no. 3 (2008): 329–52; Marie Vejrup Nielsen and Lene Kühle, “Religion and State in Denmark: Exception among Exceptions?.” Nordic Journal of Religion and Society 24, no. 2 (2011): 173–88. 161 Ibid. 162 svenskakyrkan.se, Svenska kyrkan i siffror. https://www.svenskakyrkan.se/statistik. Accessed November 1, 2016. 163 Ibid. 164 Sundback, ”Medlemskapet,” 45. 165 svenskakyrkan.se, Kyrkolivsutskottets betänkande, 2005. https://www. svenskakyrkan.se/tcrot/km/2005/betankanden/Kl2005_11.shtml. Accessed October 30, 2016. Author’s translation from the Swedish original: varumärke,

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166 167

168

169

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172 173 174 175

177

Svenska kyrkan, dvs. en monolitisk varumärkeshierarki. Allt som ryms inom löftet för Svenska kyrkan bör ha Svenska kyrkan som avsändare. Vi har en tydlig strategi att minska antalet varumärken och på så sätt tillsammans bygga varumärket Svenska kyrkan på ett så effektivt sätt som möjligt. Överföringsstrategier kommer att utarbetas. Ibid. svenskakyrkan.se, Svenska kyrkan. Nationell Nivå. Årsredovisning 2004 (Uppsala: Kyrkostyrelsen, 2004), 39. Author’s translation from the Swedish original: Under 2004 tog Svenska kyrkans Informationsservice emot drygt 30 000 förfrågningar från allmänheten. Genom nytt systemstöd har det blivit möjligt att effektivisera och kvalitetsförbättra information och materialdistribution. Ibid., 39. Author’s translation from the Swedish original: Svenska kyrkans intranät, Kyrknätet, som omfattar omkring 450 lokala nätverk med drygt 15 000 användare, är en viktig och prioriterad uppgift då betydande kvalitets- och effektivitetsvinster finns att hämta i förbättrade kommunikationslösningar. Kommunikationsstrategi med ansvarsfördelning för Svenska kyrkan (Uppsala: Kyrkostyrelsen, 2011), 2. Author’s translation from the Swedish original: Svenska kyrkan vänder sig till alla människor—evangeliet är till för alla. Kontakten med olika målgrupper behöver utvecklas, både bland medlemmar och bland icke-medlemmar. Det förutsätter god kännedom om människors kommunikationsvanor och relation till kyrkan, samt förståelse för att Svenska kyrkan är en flerspråkig kyrka. Webben är ett nav i kommunikationen som kompletteras av andra kanaler. Ibid., 2. Author’s translation from the Swedish original: Svenska kyrkans kommunikation ska planeras på ett systematiskt sätt och bedrivas integrerat för att nå övergripande kommunikationsmål. Med en gemensam målbild ökar möjligheterna att bättre samordna och utnyttja befintliga resurser men också att fånga upp områden där det behövs extra kommunikationsstöd. Ibid., 1. Author’s translation from the Swedish original: Kommunikationsstrategin är en övergripande strategi för intern, inomkyrklig och extern kommunikation till vilken kopplas delstrategier, till exempel strategi för inomkyrklig kommunikation. Kommunikationsstrategin bör kompletteras med kommunikationsplaner som blir ett stöd i det dagliga arbetet. Sandberg, “State-Church Relations”; Nielsen and Kühle, “Religion and State.” Kasselstrand and Eltanani, “Church Affiliation,” 106–7. Kirkeministeriet, ”Folkekirkens medlemstal.” http://www.km.dk/folkekirken/ kirkestatistik/folkekirkens-medlemstal/. Accessed November 1, 2016. Kirkeministeriet, IT-strategi. Kirkeministeriet og folkekirken i netværkssamfundet (Copenhagen: Kirkeministeriet, 2001), 13. http://www.km.dk/fileadmin/share/ publikationer/224-folkevers.pdf. Accessed October 29, 2016. Author’s translation from the Danish original: Vilje til og mod på forandring. Som arbejdsplads, og

178

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Notes som offentlig forvaltning, skal ministeriet og folkekirken udvikle sig sammen med det øvrige samfund. DNK-projektet er et eksempel på viljen til forandring. Kirkebogsføringen skal udvikles, så den lever op til samfundets forventninger til en tidssvarende borgerbetjening. Kirkeministeriet, It-Strategi 2010–2012 for Kirkeministeriet og folkekirken (Copenhagen: Kirkeministeriet, 2010), 6. http://www.folkekirkensit.dk/fileadmin/ Kirkenettet/Dokumenter/IT-Stg/8789_IT-Strategi_2010-2012.pdf. Accessed October 27, 2016. Author’s translation from the Danish original: Erfaring viser, at drift af større it-installationer bør ske i driftsfællesskaber og på grundlag af centrale beslutninger. I folkekirken med dens komplekse struktur og kompetencefordeling må dette imidlertid udmøntes på en særlig måde. Folkekirken er på den ene side underlagt de samme regler, som man skal administrere efter i offentlige myndigheder. Som en konsekvens heraf tager itstrategien sigte på, at arbejdet med de administrative opgaver sker på grundlag af fælles centralt styrede løsninger, og efter regler og principper, som gælder for den offentlige forvaltning. Ibid., 8. Author’s translation from the Danish original: Nye administrative rutiner. Effektivisering handler ofte om at forenkle arbejdsgange og samle opgaver samme sted, således at der udarbejdes nye administrative rutiner, som udnytter det digitale potentiale. Ibid., 17. Author’s translation from the Danish original: It-styring—også kaldet itgovernance—handler om, hvordan man styrer it-projekter, så de skaber værdi, og hvordan man sikrer, at it-anvendelsen understøtter opgaveløsningen. Fundamentet for en velfungerende it-understøttelse er derfor tæt knyttet til de aktiviteter, der sikrer, at alle “tandhjulene i maskinrummet bliver smurt.” Kirkeministeriet. Folkekirkens IT, Digital Strategi 2016–2020, 11. Author’s translation from the Danish original: Det betyder, at de digitale mål i meget høj grad har fokus på processer og effekt og i mindre grad på teknik. Populært sagt er teknikken blevet hver-mandseje og en helt naturlig forudsætning for kommunikation og arbejdsprocesser. Succesen og effekten af digitaliseringen er derfor i højere grad afhængig af, hvordan teknikken bruges end af, hvad teknologien kan. Folkekirken.dk., “Koncept for folkekirken.dk,” 6. http://www.folkekirken.dk/_ Resources/Persistent/e/2/8/0/e280e9bbed7a85c4fd7c6a4ddd50f352253f2336/ Koncept%20for%20folkekirken.dk.pdf. Accessed October 29, 2016. Author’s translation from the Danish original: Markedsføring Folkekirken.dk markedsføres og synliggøres mest muligt og bedst muligt med udgangpunkt i de midler, der er til rådighet fil formålet . . . Folkekirken.dk kan markedsføres gennem andre websites og tjenester, herunder sociale medier så som Facebook og Twitter. Stolz and Usunier, “Religions as Brands,” 21.

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5 Discourse and Beyond: Marketization and Mediatization in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland 1 E.g., Peter Berger: The Sacred Canopy. 2 E.g., Kimmo Kääriäinen, “Religion and State in Finland,” Nordic Journal of Religion and Society 24, no. 2 (2011): 155–71. 3 E.g., Kimmo Kääriäinen, Kati Niemelä, and Kimmo Ketola, Religion in Finland: Decline, Change and Transformation of Finnish Religiosity (Tampere: Church Research Institute, 2005), 40. 4 Ibid., 41. 5 Ibid., 57. 6 Ibid., 56–8. 7 Harri Heino, Kari Salonen, Jaakko Rusama, and Risto Ahonen, Suomen evankelilais-luterilainen kirkko vuosina 1992–1995 (Tampere: Church Research Institute, 1997), 247. 8 E.g., Gallup Ecclesiastica 2011; Kääriäinen et al., Religion in Finland. 9 Church Research Institute, Haastettu kirkko. Suomen evankelis-luterilainen kirkko vuosina 2008–2011 (Tampere: Church Research Institute, 2012), 410. 10 E.g., David Voas and Alasdair Crockett, “Religion in Britain: Neither Believing nor Belonging,” Sociology 39, no. 1 (2005): 11–28. 11 ELCF. “Kirkkoon liittyneet ja kirkosta eronneet 1923–2015”. https://public.tableau. com/profile/kirkon.tutkimuskeskus#!/vizhome/shared/3WNRCKS4R. Accessed October 21, 2016. 12 Ibid. 13 Grace Davie, Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994). 14 David Martin, On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2005), 86. 15 Kääriäinen et al., Religion in Finland, 85. 16 Davie, Religion in Britain, 135. 17 Kääriäinen et al., Religion in Finland, 166–77. 18 Ibid., 173. 19 Ibid. 20 Sakasti.evl.fi, “Kirkko muutoksessa -viestintäsuunnitelma,” 1. http://sakasti.evl. fi/sakasti.nsf/0/4DAF211156EBB429C2257B5D0031B83C/$FILE/Kirkko%20 muutoksessa%20-viestintasuunnitelma.pdf. Accessed October 21, 2016. Author’s translation from the Finnish original: Muutosviestinnän päämäärätason tavoitteena on, että kirkon rakenteet ja toimintatavat uudistuvat, jotta kirkko pystyy vastaamaan talouden ja muuttuvan toimintaympäristön haasteisiin ja kirkon työssä pystytään panostamaan entistä enemmän hengelliseen työhön.

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22 23

24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38

Notes Näin luodaan edellytyksiä sille, että sitoutuminen kirkon jäsenyyteen vahvistuu. Viestintähankkeen tarkoituksena on varmistaa, että seurakunnissa ymmärretään ja hyväksytään muutosten tarve ja että johto ja esimiehet ymmärtävät muutosten välttämättömyyden ja ovat sitoutuneita uudistuksiin. E.g., Deborah J. Barrett, “A Best-Practice Approach to Designing a Change Communication Programme,” in Handbook of Corporate Communication and Public Relations, ed. Sandra M. Oliver (London: Routledge, 2004), 20–33. Cf. Thrift, Knowing Capitalism, 118. Kirkkohallitus, Vuoropuhelun kirkko: Suomen ev.lut. kirkon viestintästrategia 2004–2010 (Helsinki: Kirkkohallitus, 2004), 57. Author’s translation from the Finnish original: Tähänastiset kokemukset viittaavat siihen, että näyttäväkin mediamainonta on yksi, joskus hyvinkin toimiva, viestintäkeino muiden joukossa. Mainonnalla voidaan kiinnittää huomiota tiettyihin asioihin ja lisätä tietoa niistä. Mainonnalla luodaan myös mielikuvia kirkosta. Etenkin tv-mainonta antaa lisää arvoa tuotteelle tai tapahtumalle . . . Mainonnassa on olennaista, että tuote täyttää annetut lupaukset. Jos jumalanpalveluksia lähdetään mainostamaan näyttävästi, täytyy ne myös suunnitella, valmistella ja toteuttaa entistä huolellisemmin. Jumalanpalveluksen tulee vastata niitä mielikuvia, jotka siitä on mainostamalla luotu. Muuten uusi kävijä pettyy, eikä hän tule kovin helposti uudelleen. Our Church. A Participatory Community: Strategy of the Finnish Lutheran Church until 2015. http://sakasti.evl.fi/sakasti.nsf/0/ 9297F603C875C1C8C225770A002E3448/$FILE/Our_Church_Strategy2015_t.pdf. Accessed October 20, 2016. Cf. Thrift, Knowing Capitalism. Fairclough, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 140. Ibid., 146–7. Ibid., 141. Ibid. Ibid., 150–1. Ibid., 146. Kirkkohallitus, Strategiaopas seurakunnille (Helsinki: Kirkkohallitus, 2014), 16–17. Kirkkohallitus, “A Church of Encounter—Guidelines for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland until 2020 [Report],” 2014, 8. http://sakasti.evl.fi/sakasti.nsf/ sp?open&cid=Content2656A1. Accessed October 20, 2016. Ibid., 14. Stoltz and Usunier, “Religions as Brands,” 17–18. Ibid. Fairclough, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” 156–7. Cf. Angela M. Eikenberry and Jodie D. Kluver, “The Marketization of the Nonprofit Sector: Civil Society at Risk?” Public Administration Review 64, no. 2 (2004): 137.

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39 Jens Schlamelcher, “The Decline of the Parishes and the Rise of City Churches: The German Evangelical Church in the Age of Neoliberalism,” in Religion in the Neoliberal Age: Political Economy and Modes of Governance, ed. Tuomas Martikainen and François Gauthier (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 60. 40 Kimmo Kääriäinen, Kimmo Ketola, Kati Niemelä, Harri Palmu, and Hanna Salomäki, Facing Diversity: The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland from 2004 to 2007 (Tampere: Church Research Institute, 2009), 318–19. 41 Hanna Salomäki, Harri Palmu, Kimmo Ketola, Kati Niemelä, Maarit Hytönen, and Veli-Matti Salminen, Community, Participation, and Faith: Contemporary Challenges of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (Tampere: Church Research Institute, 2013), 134. 42 Interview with ELCF official. IF mgt 2015/097. 43 Kirkkohallitus, Vuoropuhelun kirkko, 20. Author’s translation from the Finnish original: Tietoverkosta on tullut luonteva ympäristö tarjota ja hakea tietoa, käydä kauppaa ja viestiä vuorovaikutteisesti . . . Erityisesti nuoret ja nuoret aikuiset ovat olleet edelläkävijöitä niin tietoverkkojen kuin mobiiliviestinnän suhteen. Tietoverkko on nuorille jopa ensisijainen tiedonlähde, ja verkkoyhteisöistä on tullut heille tärkeä vuorovaikutuskanava. 44 Ibid., 58–9. Author’s translation from the Finnish original: Kun kirkolliset toimijat eri tahoilla kehittävät verkko-osaamistaan ja sitoutuvat kirkon yhteiseen verkkoportaaliin, kirkon kansalaispalveluajatus verkossa toteutuu parhaalla mahdollisella tavalla. 45 Ibid., 59. Author’s translation from the Finnish original: Sisällön tuottaminen ja verkkosivujen ylläpitäminen edellyttää entistä suurempia panostuksia koulutukseen. Työyhteisöjä kannustetaan kehittämään työntekijöidensä verkkotaitoja niin, että nämä osaavat käyttää verkkoa yhtenä tärkeänä viestintäkanavana ja toimia verkkoyhteisöissä . . . Ensisijaisena tavoitteena on synnyttää työntekijässä tietoisuus verkkoviestinnän mahdollisuuksista sekä lisätä kirkon verkkoviestinnän vuorovaikutteisuutta ja kiinnostavuutta. 46 Cambell, When Religion, 156–7. 47 Kirkkohallitus, Kohtaamisen kirkko Suomen evankelis-luterilaisen kirkon toiminnan suunta vuoteen 2020 (Helsinki: Kirkkohallitus, 2014). 48 Kirkkohallitus, “A Church of Encounter,” 4. 49 Ibid., 8. 50 Ibid., 24. 51 Sakasti.evl.fi, Totuudellisuus on kirkon viestinnän perusta: Kirkon viestintäohjelma vuoteen 2015. http://sakasti.evl.fi/sakasti.nsf/0/ CABABB29C7AFB81DC2257B67003F8AEF/$FILE/viestint%E4esite.pdf. Accessed October 21, 2016. Author’s translation from the Finnish original: Osallistumme aktiivisesti mediassa käytävään keskusteluun. Pidämme yhteyttä tiedotusvälineisiin ja tuomme julkiseen keskusteluun tärkeitä aiheita, Kerromme kirkosta ja sen

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54 55 56

57

58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

Notes työstä ajankohtaisesti, monipuolisesti sekä mielenkiintoisesti. Tiedotamme myös valmisteilla olevista hankkeista. Tuomme esiin kirkon kulttuurisen merkityksen ja sen vuosisataisen hengellisen perinnön. Puhumme rohkeasti Jumalasta tässä ajassa. Lisäämme panostusta uuden median käyttöön Osallistumme verkkoyhteisöjen toimintaan ja niiden luomiseen. Tarjoamme verkossa palvelujamme. Tarjoamme työntekijöillemme sosiaalisen median käyttöön tarvittavat välineet, työajan ja koulutuksen. Rohkaisemme kirkon jäseniä toimimaan myös verkossa kristittyinä. Sakasti.evl.fi, Meidän kirkko verkossa: Sosiaalisen median suuntaviivoja. http:// sakasti.evl.fi/sakasti.nsf/0/A72035B2D2CFC55AC22579FA00453AAD/$FILE/ Meid%E4n%20kirkko%20verkossa%20-%20sosiaalisen%20median%20 suuntaviivat.pdf ). Accessed October 27, 2016. Author’s translation from the Finnish original: Sosiaalisen median ohjeistusta tarvitaan kirkossa työntekijöiden ja päätöksenteon tueksi. Kun mennään uuteen työympäristöön, tarvitaan yhteisiä toimintamalleja ja keskustelua uudesta tilanteesta. David Herbert, “Theorising Religious Republicisation in Europe: Religion, Media and Public Controversy in the Netherlands and Poland, 2000–2012,” in Religion, Media, and Social Change, ed. Kennet Granholm, Marcus Moberg, and Sofia Sjö (London: Routledge, 2015), 54–70. Schillemans, Mediatization, 17. Ibid., 87. E.g., Peter Fisher-Nielsen. “Mellem sogne-og cyberkirke: En analyse af folkekirkens kommunikation på internettet.” Ph.D. thesis, Afdeling for Systematisk Teologi, Det Teologiske Fakultet, Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, 2010. Cf. Marcus Moberg and Sofia Sjö, “The Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Media in Post-Secular Finland,” in Mediatization and Religion: Nordic Perspectives, ed. Stig Hjarvard and Mia Lövheim (Gothenburg: Nordicom, 2012), 79–91. E.g., Hodkinson, Media. Ibid., 129–34. Ibid., 130. Ibid., 146. Herbert, “Theorising Religious Republicisation,” 54. Cf. Moberg and Sjö, “The Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Media.” Nuotta, http://www.nuotta.com/ Accessed October 24, 2016. IF mgt 2015/096; IF mgt 2015/097. Schillemans, Mediatization. IF mgt 2015/097. Author’s translation from the Finnish original. IF mgt 2015/097. Author’s translation from the Finnish original. IF mgt 2015/097. Author’s translation from the Finnish original. IF mgt 2015/096. Author’s translation from the Finnish original. IF mgt 2015/096. Author’s translation from the Finnish original.

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197

Index accommodation 61–2, 150–1 Act of Religious Freedom (Finland) 122 advertising 5, 34, 43, 52, 89, 125, 127–8, 134 amalgamation 62, 143, 150–1 American Baptist Churches USA 78 American Civil War 79 Ammerman, Nancy T. 83 Anglicanism/Anglican Church 78, 98, 100, 103 Anglicans 102 antitrust legislation 80 audience research paradigm 56–7 auditing 34, 49 Augsburg Confession 12 authority structures/relations 60, 67, 134 autonomy (discourse) 48 balanced scoreboard 107 Baltimore 88 Beckford, James A. 98 Bell, Daniel 43 bench-marking 107 Bentham, Jeremy 40 Berger, Peter L. 19, 77 biblical scholarship 79–80 Bourdieu, Pierre 10 brand/branding 4–5, 43, 52, 113 Breaking New Ground initiative (Church of England) 103 Bretton Woods Agreement 42, 44 Brewitt-Taylor, Sam 99 Britain 12, 32, 44, 53, 75, 77–8, 98–101, 153 British Census (2001, 2011) 102 British Social Attitudes Survey (2001) 102 Brown, Callum 99 Buchanan, Laura 89 Burr, Vivien 23 Campbell, Heidi 67, 69–70, 88, 139 Carneiro, Larissa 57 Carrier, James, G. 41

Catholic Church/Catholics 13–14, 82 change communication 126–7 change management 107–8, 126 charismatic churches, 13, 110 Chaves, Mark 83 Chiapello, Eve 30 China 44 Church Council (Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland) 144, 147 church growth 1, 103–4, 109 church membership 110–11, 124, 126, 143, 146, 148, 151 Church of Denmark (CoD) 1, 12, 75, 111, 115–20 Church of England (CoE) 1, 12, 75, 78, 88, 98, 100, 103–9, 117, 119 Church of Norway 76 Church of Sweden (CoS) 1, 12, 75, 109, 111–16, 119–20, 122 Church of Sweden Act 112 citizen consumer 43 citizen journalism 145 civil religion 110–11 civil rights movement 81 civil service 109, 111–12, 114, 116, 119–20 commodity aesthetics 43–4 communism 122 congregational 12, 77 consumer culture 2, 4–6, 43 consumerism 2, 5, 43–5, 134 core competency 50 corporate reengineering 107 corporatist welfare state 42, 46 cost-effectiveness 48 critical discourse analysis (CDA) 24–5 critical realism 21 cultural circuit of capital 49 cultural dominant 10–11, 50 customer orientation 49, 52, 112, 128, 134–5

198

198

Index

Davie, Grace 77, 98–9, 101–2, 124 Deng Xiaoping 44 Denmark 12, 109, 115–16 denominational 12–13, 53, 77, 79, 81–2, 101 deregulation 45–6, 48, 53, 101 digital media 2, 6, 28, 56, 67–9 DiMaggio, Paul 63 Disciples of Christ 78 discourse analysis 11, 15, 19, 22–37 discourse technologies 34–4, 92, 107, 126 discourse technologists 34–5, 49, 69 discourse type 29, 34 discursive event 29 discursive formation 9, 23, 27, 29–30, 39, 48, 62–4, 67–8, 70, 137–8 discursive study of religion 11 Durkheim, Émile 41

Finke, Richard 4 Finland 12, 110, 122–3, 143–4, 146 Finnish Christian Democrats 146 Finnish Civil War 110, 122 Finnish Orthodox Church 122 First Amendment (United States Constitution) 77 flexibility 48, 50, 84, 104, 134, 140 Fokas, Effie 77 folk church 53, 117, 121–3, 136 Ford Motor Company 97 Fordism 43 Foucault, Michel 20, 29, 34 Free Exercise Clause (United States Constitution) 77 Fresh Expressions initiative (Church of England) 103 fundamentalists 80, 82

Eastern Bloc 46 economics 2–3, 5–6, 23, 40–2, 45–7, 126 effect-paradigm 56 Einstein, Mara 4 Eltanani, Mor Kandlik 109 emergence (of discourse) 33, 128 enactment (of discourse) 33, 93, 130, 154 enhanced-human frame 70 enhancement 50 Enlightenment 77, 79 enterprising 45, 49 entrepreneurialism 48 Episcopal Church (USA) 78 equilibrium 40 Establishment Clause (United States Constitution) 77 Europe 3–5, 77 European Union 43, 65 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) 1, 12, 75, 78, 95–8 Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELCF) 1, 12, 16, 75, 111, 116, 121–52 Evangelicalism 12, 81 Evans, John H. 83

Gauthier, François 4–6, 9, 47 gender equality 81 genealogical method 20 General Assembly Mission Council (PCUSA) 85–6 genre 28–30, 84–5, 91, 105, 119, 128, 130 Gergen, Kenneth 24 Giesel, Helen M. 83 governance 46–7, 53, 118 Graham, Philip 54–5, 63, 65 Gramsci, Antonio 24 Grand Duchy of Finland 122 Great Depression 42, 80 Great Society 81 Greckhamer, Thomas 32 Gruber, Helmut 63 Gutenberg, Johannes 54

Facebook 119, 136, 140, 150 Fairclough, Norman 10, 19, 22 Faith in the City report (Church of England) 101 Federal Council of Churches (FCC) 78–9, 81 female clergy 81, 147

Hall, Stuart 23 Hargittai, Eszter 63 Harvey, David 44, 55 hegemony 20, 23–5, 31–3, 35–6 Hepp, Andreas 59 Herbert, David 145 “hidden hand” of the market 40 hierarchy structures 67 Hjarvard, Stig 55, 57, 59, 60–1 Hobbes, Thomas 40 Hodkinson, Paul 55–6, 145 Homoilta (Gay Night), 146, 148–9, 151 Hoover, Stewart M. 7, 60

199

Index human-technology hybrid frame 70 hybrid discourse 69, 84–5, 91, 105–6, 130 Iannaccone, Laurence 4 ideational 6, 8–9, 11, 14–16, 26–8, 48–9, 63, 68, 121, 153 ideological discursive formation (IDF) 31–3, 49–51, 54, 76, 88, 94, 98, 107, 120, 128, 136 ideology 24–5, 27, 50, 110, 125 Igniting Ministry campaign (UMC) 89 immigration 77, 79–80, 83, 100, 112 inculcation (of discourse) 33, 106–7, 128 industrial revolution 54 Information and Communications Technology (ICT) 2, 16, 55–6, 63–6, 68–70, 87, 93–4, 97, 117, 125, 136–40, 144 information economy 11, 47, 55 information society 11, 63 institutional Christian Protestant churches 1, 7, 9, 11–16, 25–6, 28, 32, 39, 51–2, 54, 67–70, 84, 87, 99, 101, 153–4 institutionalization 13, 54 instrumental rationality 34–5, 42 internalization (of discourse) 33, 71, 76, 129, 131, 133 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 42, 46 internet 8, 16, 28, 54, 56, 63–4, 66–9, 82, 94, 114, 136–41, 144–5 Kasselstrand, Isabella 109 Keynes, John Maynard 42 Keynesianism 42, 44, 80 knowledge-driven economy 10 Kornberger, Martin 43 laissez-faire capitalism 45 Lantzer, Jason S. 78, 80–2 Latin America 46 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 41 LGBTQ 95 liberal corporatism 83 Liberalism 40–1, 45 liberal-utilitarianism 3, 40 Locke, John 40 Luckmann, Thomas 19 Lundby, Knut 7, 59

199

Lury, Celia 43 Lynch, Gordon 99 Lyotard, Jean-François 43 mainline Protestant Churches (USA) 53, 75, 78–98 managed capitalism 42 management 34–5, 45, 48–9, 80, 92, 104–6, 108, 118, 126, 135, 141 managerialism 48 market (concept) 3–7, 9, 10–11, 13, 15, 25, 39, 40–1, 45–9, 52, 96, 101–2 market dematerialization 43–4 market enculturation 43 Market Idea 42, 45 market society 5–6, 41–2 marketing 1, 4–5, 34, 43, 52, 88–92, 94, 96, 113, 119, 125, 127–8 marketization concept 7–9, 11, 15–16, 26, 27–8, 48 discourse 48–9, 51, 53–4, 76, 83–5, 88, 91, 94–7, 102, 104–5, 109, 113, 119–20, 125, 127–9, 132–6, 153–4 Martikainen, Tuomas 5–6, 52–3 Marx, Karl 41 mass media 8, 54, 57, 61–2, 143–4 materialization (of discourse) 33, 50, 93, 103, 130, 133, 154 Matthews, Shailer 80 Mauss, Marcel 41 Mautner, Gerlinde 11 maximization 50 Mazzoleni, Gianpetro 58 meaning-making 20, 22, 24 media convergence 56, 64, 138 media industries 55 media logic 59–60, 62, 150–1 mediation 55, 57 mediatization concept 8, 16, 27, 56–9 direct 59, 61 discourse 62–6, 154 indirect 59, 61 of religion 60 organizational 16, 61–2, 143–4, 148, 150–1 mega-chruches 52 Merton, Thomas 105 Mill, John Stuart 40 Millo, Yuval 47

200

200

Index

Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs (Denmark) 115–19 Mission Advancement Unit (ELCA) 1, 96 Mission-shaped Church initiative (Church of England) 103 mixed economy 42 mobile media platform 145 modernists 79–80 Morgan, Clay 92–3 multi-site church 52 Muniesa, Fabian 47 Murphy, Tim 20 mutagenic effect 62, 150 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America (NCC) 81–2 neo-evangelicalism 81 neoliberalism 2–3, 5–6, 16, 39, 44–9, 55, 83, 100–1, 125 Neuman, W. Russell 63 New Deal 81, 83 new economy 10, 46–7 new media discourse 64, 75–6, 83–4, 88, 94–5, 97–8, 102, 109, 113, 119–21, 125, 136, 141, 153–4 new paradigm 3–6 new paradigm churches 81 New Public Management (NPM) 28, 33, 48–9, 51–3, 61–2, 75, 85, 97, 104, 109, 114–20, 125–6, 128–9, 132–6 New Seeds of Contemplation 105 news values 145 news 60–1, 95, 145–8, 151 night watchman state 45 non-denominational 101 non-religion 99 Nordic countries 12, 32, 46, 53, 75, 77–8, 109–10, 112, 122, 153 Nordic Reformation 109 Nordic welfare state model 53, 111, 122 Norway 76 Nuotta 147–9 operationalization (of discourse) 33, 50, 93, 103, 107, 130, 141, 154

order of discourse 10, 27, 29, 30–6, 37, 49–50, 54, 76, 88–9, 95, 103, 111–12, 116, 120, 125, 130, 136 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 42, 65 organizational discourse 30–1, 125 outsourcing 46, 101, 125 parish model 13 Passas, Nikos 3 PCUSA General Assembly 86 Pentecostalism 12, 52 performance 34, 49–50, 107–8, 131 performance goals 50 performance targeting 49 Period of Orthodoxy 122 Petterson, Per 112 Pew Research Center 82, 84, 89, 95 Philadelphia 78–9, 83 Polanyi, Karl 41 political economy 2, 11, 40–1, 45–6, 52, 55, 125 post-denominational 13, 81 post-Fordism 43 post-humanism 69–70 post-structuralism 20 post-World War II era 4, 6, 9, 15, 42, 44, 58, 80, 98, 110, 122 Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) 1, 12, 75, 78–9, 83–9, 95, 97 Presbyterian Mission Agency 84–5, 87 Principles of Scientific Management 80 privatization 46, 48, 101, 125 Progressive political era (United States) 80 Prohibition 80 promotion 10, 34, 43–4, 128–30 public-private partnership 46, 53 Puritans 78 quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization (quango) 46 Räsänen, Päivi 146–9 rational choice theory 4–6 Raupp, Juliana 61 Reagan, Ronald 44 recontextualization (of discourse) 33, 36, 118–19, 127–8 Reformation 12, 54

201

Index Religious Digital Creative (RDC) 69–70 Religious Landscape Study (2014) 82 religious pluralism 77 religious-social shaping of technology (RSST) 67–9 remediation 56 republicization 143, 146, 148 re-regulation 46 Rethink Church campaign (UMC) 1, 89, 93–4 Robinson, John P. 63 Roderick, Ian 65–6 Romans 8: 26–30, 105–6 Roof, Wade Clarke 4 Rothenbuhler, Eric W. 2 Russian Empire 122 Sahlins, Marshall 41 Schillemans, Thomas 61–2, 144 Schrott, Andrea 59 Scientific Management in the Churches 80 Second Great Awakening 79 secularization paradigm 2–5 Sennett, Richard 47 Seven Sisters of American Protestantism 12, 78, 80–2 sexual minorities 81 sign value 43–4 skill 10, 34, 45, 50, 95–6, 106, 108, 139 Slater, Don 40–1, 47 Smith, Adam 40 Smith, Christian 81 social class 77 Social Construction of Reality 19 social constructionism 19–22 social formation 31–2, 50–1, 62, 76, 120 Social Gospel 53, 80 social media 87–8, 93, 96–7, 108–9, 119, 140–3, 145–8, 150 social shaping of technology 65 socialism with Chinese characteristics 44 socialization 67, 99, 123 Southern Baptist 82 Soviet Union 46 Stark, Rodney 4 Stolz, Jörg 119 strategic planning 49–50, 92, 106, 113, 115, 117, 131, 136

201

strategies 25, 32–3, 35, 50, 61, 63, 87, 97, 113, 115, 117, 131, 142, 144 style (of discourse) 28–30, 33, 86, 91, 96, 104, 114–15, 128–9, 132–3, 138, 142 Sweden 12, 109–10, 112, 122 Swedish Reformation 122 SWOT analysis 92, 131 synchronous media 56, 64 Taylor, Frederick 80 Taylorism 80 technological determinism 57, 65–6, 69– 70, 119, 138, 140 technologization of discourse 15, 34–7, 39, 49–50, 64–5, 68–70, 76, 84, 87–8, 96– 7, 104–5, 109, 113, 118–19, 121, 128, 131–3, 136–7, 139 technology cultured frame 70, 88, 94, 138, 140 televangelism 8, 82 Thatcher, Margaret 44, 100–1 Thrift, Nigel 10, 48 Thuesen, Peter J. 79–80 Tonkiss, Fran 40–1, 47 Tsitsos, William 83 Tuckman, Bruce 93 Twitter 119, 150 United Church of Christ 78 United Methodist Church (UMC) 1, 12, 75, 78, 88–95, 97 United Methodist Church Communications 89 United Nations 42 United States Constitution 77 United States Declaration of Independence 79 United States Federal Reserve 44 United States, the 1, 3–5, 8, 12–13, 44, 53, 75, 77–8, 82–4, 88–9, 95, 153 urbanization 52, 57, 79–80, 110, 122 Usunier, Jean- Claude 119 vicarious religion 102, 110, 124 Vietnam War 81 Volcker, Paul 44 Wacquant, Loic 10

202

202 Warner, Stephen R. 3 Wealth of Nations 40 welfare provision 53, 78, 100–1, 111, 135 Wesley, John 88 Woodhead, Linda 5–6, 100–1

Index World Bank 42, 46 World Trade Organization (WTO) 46 Wuthnow, Robert 83 Young Adult Catalyst Office (PCUSA) 87