Summary: There has been growing interest in recent years in looking at the intersection of media and religion, with particular focus on how religious entrepreneurs, subversives and new religious movements are building new followings by adapting in highly effective ways to the possibilities being offered by technologies and cultures of new media. While these adaptations of religion to new media, and concerns about the shaping effects that media are having on religion, are widely seen as relatively recent phenomena, a historical study reveals that all religions are, and always have been, mediated phenomena, with the form any religion takes at any time a significant function of contests and negotiation in the processes of its mediated constructions. This presentation explores this historical perspective on current religious activity with a study of the role played by literacy and literate figures in the third and fourth century transformation of Christianity from a pluralistic early movement to a structured political organisation governed by male bishops.
