Scott Draper

Sunday Celluloid: Visual Media and Protestant Boundaries with Secular Culture

We examine how ministers in two religious traditions use discourse on secular visual media as a means of establishing symbolic group boundaries. We compare content in 100 evangelical and mainline Protestant sermons, each of which makes at least one reference to secular cinema. We find that mainline ministers largely promote “expanding” boundaries with secular culture, that evangelical ministers promote “contracting” and “expanding” boundaries in roughly equal measure, and that ministers from both traditions sometimes promote “selectively permeable” boundaries. We explore prevailing frames employed by ministers to promote the respective boundaries, and we discuss implications for studies of culture and religion.