The Mediatization Oof Religion: An analysis of Kenya’s Electronic Pulpit from 1990 To 2015

Abstract

This Study is on the Mediatization of Religion in Kenya, specifically analyzing the Electronic Church pulpit from 1990 to 2015. The Study offers some new reflection on what happens when the institution of the Church is mediatized, focusing on the agency the media gives to the Electronic Church ministers to experiment with media technology and formats in order to constitute and retain their audiences. Centering the study in Kenya is significant because not only is Kenya ahead of many nations of Africa in media investments running into billions of shillings but besides South Africa, Kenya has the most liberalized media, giving the emergent Electronic Church a unique and competitive space to experiment with technology and creative arts. Drawing from Ben Armstrong‘s (1979) concept of ―the Electronic Church‖, the Study examines a new phenomenon we have called the ―Electronic Pulpit‖ and how it has tended to dominate the definition and operation of Kenya‘s Church, especially in the post-liberalization period. It is evident from the Study that, following the liberalization of the airwaves, the Church in Kenya could no longer ignore or be separated from the media. Kenya‘s mediatized Church makes a new form, face, structure and appeal of the Church‘s expression to society. As some of our key informants have observed, not being on radio or television is synonymous with being irrelevant or insignificant. The main objective of this Study is to analyze and find out what happens when religion is mediatized and establish the results of such mediatization. To achieve this, it was important to outline the historical factors that led to the emergence of Kenya‘s Electronic Pulpit, analyze how the Electronic Church employs language and sensorial experiences to cajole and maintain the loyalty of her media audience, and assess the agency media gives the Electronic Church to experiment with media technology and formats as well as the results of that agency. Using Mediatization and Discourse Analysis, both as theory and concept, and a strand of postmodernism espoused by French critical thinker, Jean Baudrillard as an interrogative theory, the Study has analyzed select media texts in the form of radio and television programmes in the post-liberalization period spanning 1990-2015. We have employed the descriptive method to explain the results of our analysis. With limited resources on the Mediatization of Religion in Kenya, this Study probes an area that is under-researched in African scholarship. The Study intends to make a contribution that will help fill this gap and move the discourse away from subjective debates on Tel-evangelism and ‗prosperity preaching‘ to objective academic inquiry. The bulk of the literature on the relationship between media and religion in Kenya centres on scandals and accompanying exposes from investigative journalists. The main finding in this Study is that the media gives social institutions such as the Church new ways of experimenting with technology for the propagation and packaging of their messages, while transforming those institutions in some irreversible ways, the end result being the birth of new definitions of the same institutions which, as Baudrillard would view them, end up like a social coup d‘état of a map taking over from the original territory it once represented. Reading the final portrait of Kenya‘s Electronic Church through Post-modern eyes, we conclude that the Electronic Pulpit is a hyper-reality that has replaced the way Church was viewed before. This is notable in the way media transforms the identity of the preacher through new language and expression, technology and the perfection of performance. Media changes the preacher‘s status, character, and appearance and gives him power to amass and manipulate the public social space. Although our study confirms this, there is room for more inquiry.