Stewart M. Hoover is Professor Emeritus of Media Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and founder of the Center for Media, Religion, and Culture. A central figure in the study of media and religion, he reflects on decades of work that helped establish the field. His remarks move between intellectual history and present concerns, tracing how religious life has increasingly taken shape through media practices rather than institutional authority alone. What stands out is his insistence on religion as lived and negotiated—formed within households, routines, and personal media use as much as in formal doctrine. He connects earlier work on televangelism and broadcasting to contemporary digital environments, suggesting continuity rather than rupture. Media, in his account, are not external forces acting on religion but integral to how belief, identity, and meaning are formed and sustained across everyday life.
