Page - 80 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 01/01

80 | sigrid schade www.jrfm.eu 2015, 1/1, 75–88 only by diverse facets: institutions, habitudes, conventions, rituals, symbols, practic- es, images, prayers, and by the discourses they might produce and by their effects. The term “religion” seems appropriate only in the sense of a systematised concept claiming to include the entirety of symbols, codes, practices, beliefs, rites, liturgies and narratives that constitute a specific religion. Considering how Christian religion functions in Western culture, it must be admitted that not a single individual who has been raised as or calls themselves a Christian can be considered to be participating in the whole set of such facets or its complete knowledge. The access to holy and spir- itual wisdom is/was often limited or restricted to specific mediators, such as priests, and the consistent practising of religion in fact usually is/has been deficient. Consist- ent practice is not necessary for belonging to a religion and this is even more true in secularised versions of religions nowadays. The elements of such practices are based on processes of repetition, convention, habits, imagination, identification and belief. These processes cannot be analysed without a concept of how imagination and communication function in constituting relationships between individuals and communities, thus processing subjectivity and the feeling of belonging or not belonging to communities (of believers). MeDia iN reliGiOUs CONTexTs, reliGiON as a MeDiUM, arT as reliGiOUs PraCTiCe Visual culture in the West has been strongly linked to religious rites. The academic discipline of Western art history and its debates on the meanings and functions of visual culture and visual practices within Christian religion and its facets cannot be summarised appropriately in a short article. i refer to a few of its topics only, like Christian iconography and symbolism, which formed an elaborate theological system of representation in the Middle ages. The use of (audio-)visual culture within religious contexts led to liturgies synthesising stag- ing, listening, preaching, singing etc., and sculpted and painted images in churches constructed in symbolical forms, reflecting the narratives of the holy texts and the codes of liturgies. Mediating theology, belief and the power of the church, the prac- tices of Christian religion can be regarded as a refined composite of media – a term used nowadays in media studies. Images are subject to medial layering or re-media- tion throughout their use. Their final reference is God, the holy and/or the spiritual, in themselves concepts that can be grasped and represented only through allegories and metaphors and their diverse mediatisation. Visual culture is an integral part of religious practices. it is also a medium of religion, the holy or the spiritual (as is every- thing else) and refers to meanings beyond what it shows. Thinking about strategies for making others believe takes into account that com- munication is always rooted in medial structures. Knowledge or experience (of the world) can only be accessed through language and media, which, however, are never