Book Review

摘要

Nearly half of all American adults have switched their religious affiliation since childhood according to a recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. We live in an age of choice and access in which the public sphere is constituted by ubiquitous media and countless religious options. This age demands a study of religion that adapts to unprecedented religious switching. Thus contend Brands of Faith: Marketing Religion in a Commercial Age by Mara Einstein and Religion in the Media Age by Stewart Hoover. Whether the "age" is of media or commerce, both texts propose approaches to the study of religion that can engage a radically new soeio-historical context. Einstein writes from the discipline of Media Studies, with the backdrop of a previous career in marketing.