Myth “Today”: Reading Religion Into Research on Mediated Cultural Politics

Abstract

The events in Lafayette Square in Washington on June 1, 2020, in which President Trump displayed a Bible in front of St. John’s Church, constitutes a heuristic lens through which to explore the potential of serious scholarship on religion. Culturalist Media Studies, as a field, has traditionally ignored religion and it now does so at its peril, leaving it increasingly unable to account for the emergent political formations of the post-Brexit era. June 1 provided a rich tapestry of visual, iconic, symbolic, discursive, and agonistic formations through which to explore how religion, media, and culture are present in complex and layered ways and that careful scholarship can deepen knowledge and understanding about contemporary social and cultural life.