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The Research Seminar Series in Religious Studies and Theology invites you to a seminar with Elisabeth Tveito Johnsen, Olso, "The Singularized Church: From Reasserting Authority to Attracting Visibility".

Abstract

Unlike most newly developed low-threshold church offers which have minimal, and even a negative effect, drop-in weddings seem attractive to distant and passive church members in the Nordic countries. The Church of Norway’s drop-in wedding campaign 2025 as a purposefully created religious product, this article asks how the adoption a new media ensemble transforms how the church produces meaning, and if the drop-in wedding campaign constructs the church as a “new” religious institution, or if remains the “same”. Employing Reckwitz singularization concept as theoretical framework, the analysis unpacks how the campaign’s aesthetic, narrative-hermeneutic, ethical, creative, and ludic qualities enable a rebranding of church weddings within a performative attractiveness economy. An overarching topic within scholarship on religion and media has been authority. However, the drop-in wedding campaign is not aimed towards reasserting authority. Overall, attracting visibility seems to be a more pressing issue for churches in late modernity.