Worship Weblog
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Podcasting, as begun in 1825
David Morgan, Professor of Christianity and the Arts and of Humanities and Art History at Valparaiso University, and author of The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice, writes in Sightings:
A recent New York Times article on downloading missed church services to one’s iPod, called “godcasting” by one Protestant pioneer of the medium, reminded me of a pamphlet published by the American Tract Society around 1825 on how best to spend the Sabbath when one is unable to attend church (tract no. 34, “A Sabbath at Home"). One imagines that the iPod
provides an experience preferable to the one illustrated in the tract, where a man is depicted kneeling before a chair, praying with face buried in hands. But the intention remains the same in each case: Convenient media are deployed to provide useful substitutes to church services—though not enduring ones, since both Protestant purveyors of pious media artifacts—tract and iPod—would have their “customers” attend church often.What’s new about podcasting besides the convenience of novel technology to match the hurried lives of people today? Essentially nothing—and that is important, because it ensures that the new medium fits the old message.
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