Televangelical publics: secularized publicity and privacy in the Trinity Broadcasting Network

Abstract

With a recent resurgence in interest in the geography of religion, questions of the limits, qualities and efficacy of public versus private religiosity have come to the fore. This article is concerned with interpreting the public headquarters of one of the world’s most popular religious broadcasters, Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), through the lens of the public/private binary and its use in the secularization paradigm. It is argued that the mediated public engagement of religious broadcasting renders the public/private distinction in the secularization paradigm problematic. Despite the paradigm’s postulation of increasing privatization, religious broadcasters like TBN are fully engaged with a mediatic public. However, the peculiar nature of TBN’s headquarters and its relationship to the broadcaster’s central mission suggest that in the final instance, the secularization paradigm accounts for TBN’s inability to effectively engage a material, embodied public.