Religious Communication in Asia

 

“Religious Communication in Asia” (with Keval J. Kumar).  In The Handbook on Religion and Communication, edited by Yoel Cohen and Paul Soukup, 99-116. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2023.

 

This chapter examines religion and communication in Asia. As a large, heavily populated region, Asia has many religions; thus, the chapter addresses Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Jainism, the Bhakti tradition, and Sikhism – religions that appear throughout the areas. (The chapter does not address Christianity and Islam since other chapters do so.) Asian religions were never uniform and monolithic; they were, and continue to be, characterized by numerous sects and cults, and centered on orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy. They are largely “open” faith systems, nondoctrinal and often nonsectarian too, and their historical evolution through the early, medieval, and modern periods focused on the use of the varieties of forms of oral and traditional media, and later of modern mass media and the new digital media. 

In each case, the chapter introduces the religion and its general approach to communication, any ethical teachings that touch on communication, and its use of communication and digital communication technologies.