The Apparatus of Belief: Prayer, Technology, and Ritual Gesture
Through a focus on the early history of a mass mediated ritual practice, this essay describes the apparatus of belief, or the specific ways in which individual religious belief has become intimately related to tele-technologies such as the radio. More specifically, this paper examines prayers that...
| Published in: | Religions |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
MDPI
[2016]
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| In: |
Religions
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| Further subjects: | B
Belief
B Technology B transduction B Ritual B Healing B Pentecostal B Radio B Prayer |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Through a focus on the early history of a mass mediated ritual practice, this essay describes the apparatus of belief, or the specific ways in which individual religious belief has become intimately related to tele-technologies such as the radio. More specifically, this paper examines prayers that were performed during the immensely popular Healing Waters Broadcast by Oral Roberts, a famous charismatic faith healer. An analysis of these healing prayers reveals the ways in which the old charismatic Christian gesture of manual imposition, or laying on of hands, took on new somatic registers and sensorial attunements when mediated, or transduced, through technologies such as the radio loudspeaker. Emerging from these mid-twentieth century radio broadcasts, this technique of healing prayer popularized by Roberts has now become a key ritual practice and theological motif within the global charismatic Christian healing movement. Critiquing established conceptions of prayer in the disciplines of anthropology and religious studies, this essay describes belief as a particular structure of intimacy between sensory capacity, media technology, and pious gesture. |
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| ISSN: | 2077-1444 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3390/rel7060069 |