New Idolatry

(Russian Orthodox priest is blessing a car, above, from the TIME photo essay, Inside Putin's Russia)

Religions tend to have their own set code of communications, information distribution networks, which sometimes play an adherent part even in the religious liturgies, like the holy book, the Torah for the Jewish, which not only acts as a medium of knowledge, but also a tool for communication during the liturgies. Or like the cultural practices of pilgrimage or the fast or even prayers, something you can't mediate other way. Or even you do, it is not easy to do so, although we have seen the opposite quite a few times, take televangelists as an example. How does these organizations use new media, and are they change themselves in the process? In this part of the research, I am focusing on the usage of new media by these structures, especially to image production.

The question is, if this media shift alters the message in this case?
As it becomes evident for religious groups that they have to compete with many of the aspects of our visual culture, which did not existed before, they are giving different answers for this challenge - the process is very similar to the learning and usage of a language, yet, in this case, the language is media . What I am curious about if this process is becoming something what turns out to be just the opposite of the intentions of these users - after all, media is meant to be a highly secular practice, with its inherent freedom, what is sometimes hard to handle for these organizations.

Is it possible to point out a post-secular condition regarding of media usage by religious groups? Is there a boundary after we might say that the message is compromises the usage of media? Where are the limits, after which the original intention of the sacral message disappears, or even compromises it, and becoming idolatry?