This essay studies the TLC channel reality show My 600 Pound Life as a manifestation of the religious ritual of pilgrimage. The influence of popular culture upon religion, and of religion upon popular culture, is well established. Of special interest is the study of ritual, a highly formal discourse and practice. Because of its formal nature, ritual may be found across both sacred and secular texts and practices. Discourses may perform a ritual function vicariously for an audience. When a ritual is of religious origin, it appeals to an audience’s sense of religious meanings and authority. One central ritual pattern, of religious origin but found widely in secular discourse and practice, is the pilgrimage. This essay explains the major formal components of a pilgrimage, and then using a method of rhetorical homology, identifies My 600 Pound Life as formally a pilgrimage. The ideological commitments induced in an audience through formal appeal are discussed in this particular case. The essay shows the value of looking for religious form in the secular, the value of studying pilgrimage specifically, and the value of the method of rhetorical homology.

Recently, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has experienced unprecedented public attention in what has been termed “The Mormon Moment.” While there has been an increased media focus on the religion, research into how Mormons perceive that attention is lacking, especially regarding the attention directed toward recent political candidate Mitt Romney. The purpose of this research is to fill the gap by analyzing the Mormon community’s perspectives of Mitt Romney. The current study uses Q-methodology and personal interviews to access Mormon’s perceptions of the media and politics. Results indicate that Mormons fall into four perceptual categories, indicating greater diversity within the Mormon community previously recognized.

Because of the role religion plays in upholding socio-political arrangements in Jordan, we argue that Jordanian Protestants, as a religious minority, can be productively understood as a religious counterpublic. Given the explicitly Islamic nature of Jordanian national identity, their unique mode of counterpublicity seeks to simultaneously maintain a distinct religious identity while also compensating for Jordanian Protestants’ deviance from the prevailing religious norms via overt displays of national loyalty. This compensatory mode of counterpublicity is visible through Jordanian Protestants’ public displays and symbols, public sermons and statements, and on social media.

This paper explores the origins of media ecology as defined by Neil Postman. It clarifies the extent to which McLuhan and Korzybski influenced its development, and discusses specific strengths and weaknesses of the theory as a vehicle for study. Finally, this paper explores Judeo-Christian influences upon media ecology, briefly examines the place of media ecology in church history beginning with Luther, and finally offers fresh applications of Postman’s ideas to three particular aspects of the everyday practice of the Christian faith.

Faith-based organizations often provide resources to low-income populations. In the religion literature, this is seen as a key element of the social capital of religion for these populations. However, this qualitative study finds a different element in how low-income people experience social capital. In focus groups, this study finds a surprising number of references to God and spirituality, but not faith-based organizations, among a sample of low-income people, many experiencing homelessness, when talking about resources available through their social networks. This study finds a population so estranged from resources they can trust that they substitute God as they understand Him as their only source of social capital. These participants described communication with God as a way to access resources through kind strangers who may decide to be generous with them as a result of God’s intervention.

The reign of England’s Mary Tudor has long been examined by historians for her regime’s extensive use of propaganda to attempt to convert her populace from Protestantism to Catholicism. These explorations, however, ignore the regime’s employment of other communications strategies, particularly public relations, as key components of its conversion efforts. This paper furthers the discussion of how propaganda and public relations are differentiated and examines and reinterprets the Marian government’s activities from a public relations perspective with the goal of continuing to establish a more comprehensive history of public relations and to explore the impact of public relations activities versus pure propagandistic techniques.