1. ‘This is My Journey’
The Mediated Religious Experience on British
TV
Ruth Deller, Sheffield Hallam University
AHRC-funded PhD candidate

2. Presentation Outline
 Exploring factual TV conventions
 Personalities
 ‘Journeys’ and ‘experiences’
 Narrative, visual, linguistic and audio metaphors
 What do these reveal about:
 Secularism and ‘re-enchantment’
 Modes of experiencing religion/spirituality
 Values and attitudes towards r/s
 Personalisation and individualisation of belief

3. British Factual TV Conventions
 Personality-driven – whatever subject/genre
 Celebrities
 ‘Experts’
 Real people
 Heroes and villains
 Heroes or ‘good’ people (or ‘neutrals’) control narratives
 About ‘journeys’ or ‘experiences’
 Literal and/or metaphorical
 Geographical, historical, internal
 Tourism – look at the unusual, the spectacle
 Transforming – personal change

4. Programmes used
 Am I Normal? – science/psychology
 Christianity: A History – history/polemic/travel
 Gary, Young, Psychic and Possessed – ‘fly
on the wall’ combined with ‘investigative’.
 The Retreat – reality

5. Am I Normal: Spirituality
(BBC Two, 2008)
 ‘What place does religious belief, which
depends not on rational thinking or scientific
proof, but simple faith, have in the modern
world?’
•Irrational vs Rational
•Belief vs Science
•Modern (implied: secular)
world vs old religious
traditions

6. Am I Normal: Spirituality
(BBC Two, 2008)
 ‘Religion has inspired beautiful art and
inspired terrible acts of violence. It’s
provoked bloody sacrifice and led to lives of
great devotion’.
•Acceptable vs unacceptable
beliefs and practices
•‘Good’ vs ‘bad’ religion
•Surface ‘neutrality’ and
‘balance’

7. Am I Normal: Spirituality
(BBC Two, 2008)
 ‘I
think that, that there is a God, I, I think that
Christ was who He said He was, you know.
Maybe that makes me totally mad but that’s
what I think’
 Personality – ‘good’ personality
 MY belief
 Admission you may be wrong

8. Am I Normal: Spirituality
(BBC Two, 2008)
 ‘Is
someone who believes the Holy Spirit
speaks to them in the language of angels
worthy of our respect, or in need of
psychological treatment?’
 Acceptable vs unacceptable beliefs and practices
 Fetishisation of the exotic or unusual
 Moderate vs ‘excessive’ or ‘fundamentalist’ beliefs

9. Am I Normal: Spirituality
(BBC Two, 2008)
 ‘What happens when the worlds of hard science and
pure faith meet? Where does a sincere belief in
God meet behaviour which is odd, bizarre, or even
damaging to others? What is normal in the world of
spiritual belief?’
•Science and rationality vs
religion and irrationality
•Acceptable vs unacceptable
•Personal vs corporate
•What is normal? Implication:
we already know

10. Christianity: A History
(Channel 4, 2009)
 ‘Ours is said to be a godless age. Yet billions
remain faithful to religions thousands of years
old’.
 Secularisation and continued place of religion

11. Christianity: A History
(Channel 4, 2009)
 ‘In this series, eight well known commentators will
go on personal journeys to explore the world’s most
powerful faith, how it began in a remote part of the
Middle East and spread to every corner of the
planet… how it transformed the way we think about
God and about ourselves, how it brought salvation
to countless people and death and destruction to
countless more’.
•Personality
•Individualism
•‘Journey’
•‘Good’ vs ‘bad’ religion

12. Christianity: A History
(Channel 4, 2009)

13. Christianity: A History
(Channel 4, 2009)

14. Christianity: A History
(Channel 4, 2009)
 ‘Whether we are believers or we are not, this
global religion continues to exert the
profoundest influence on the world in which
we live’.
 Personal choice
 Linking to world events
 ‘Balance’

15. Gary: Young, Psychic and
Possessed (BBC Three, 2009)
 ‘We live in an age of science and technology, yet
we’re still prepared to believe in the strangest things.
According to a recent survey, nearly a third of us
believe it is possible to contact the dead. And a
multi-million pound industry now caters for this
interest in alternative beliefs’.
 ‘Alternative’ beliefs – implications of weird, unusual,
unorthodox.
 Irrationality vs rationality, Science vs belief
 Spiritual practices for money vs ‘authentic’ practices

16. Gary: Young, Psychic and
Possessed (BBC Three, 2009)

17. Gary: Young, Psychic and
Possessed (BBC Three, 2009)

18. The Retreat
(BBC Two, 2007)
 ‘She has begun to find that the Qur’an
answers many of her lifelong intellectual
questions about the nature of the divine. The
dream of apparently Sufi sheep has pushed
her to the brink of a life-changing decision’.
•Irrationality vs rationality;
intellectualism
•Spiritual experiences
respected but challenged
•Moments of transformation
and conversion

19. The Retreat
(BBC Two, 2007)
 ‘I’ve, I dunno, I mean I feel quite kind of um, I’ve… it gives me
butterflies actually even saying anything so I feel, not nervous
exactly, but someone said erm, if this is the one that really feels right
for you, maybe you should make some kind of um, commitment and
I felt really split because on one hand I was thinking wow, you know
maybe I can, you know, and that’s actually I didn’t expect it to be
appealing but it did seem really exciting actually, but then on the
other hand I was thinking that’s ridiculous. I’ve been here for three,
three and a bit weeks. And I was worried about being a hypocrite,
you know, almost pretending I’m some scholar in something I
don’t…
 Irrationality vs rationality
 Personal/Individual
 Authenticity
 Experience, journey

20. The Retreat
(BBC Two, 2007)
 ‘Yes it’s dramatic in that I wasn’t a Muslim five
minutes ago and now I am but it’s not dramatic
because I’m not changing who I’m worshipping, um,
and I’m not changing myself, so yeah, it just feels
like a kind of natural enhancement… I’ve began to
feel more and more and more accepted and familiar
with Islam’.
•Accepted as ‘me’
•Change/transformation – but only to a point of
‘enhancing’ life
•Pluralism
•Quiet, articulate, limited emotion

21. The Retreat
(BBC Two, 2007)
 ‘I think she’s, she’s the epitome of the English
Muslim because in the United Kingdom really
there’s a need to create a culture, not preserve a
culture, not preserve a Moroccan or an Egyptian or
a Pakistani or an Indian way, but the need to create
a British Islam, which meets the spiritual needs of
the British people, people in modern times’.
•British/WE sensibilities
•Rejection of othering and
‘excesses’– importance of
assimilation
•Spirituality vs religion

22. What is acceptable?
 Moderation, tolerance, liberalism, acceptance
 Willingness to change or be questioned
 Doing ‘good’ deeds
 Emotional/sensory – within limits
 Peacefulness, silence, stillness
 ‘Natural’ or ‘authentic’ practices and beliefs
 Rationality
 ‘Meaningful’
 The exotic – in its proper place (voyeurism)

23. What is unacceptable?
 The exotic – out of context
 ‘Extreme’ emotional or physical
manifestations and expressions
 Being ‘too formal’, cold or closed-minded
 Conservative, ‘fundamentalist’ views
 ‘Flaky’ insubstantial beliefs
 Irrational or suspicious/sinister beliefs
 Controlling others, especially children
 Trying to force beliefs on others