MF CASR lunch with Elisabeth Tveito Johnson

The Singularized Church: From Reasserting Authority to Attracting Visibility

Unlike most newly developed low-threshold church initiatives, which have minimal or even negative effects, drop-in weddings appear to be attractive to distant and passive church members in the Nordic countries. Researching the Church of Norway’s 2025 drop-in wedding campaign, a purposefully created religious product, this talk asks how the adoption of a new media ensemble transforms the church’s production of meaning, and whether the campaign constructs the church as a “new” religious institution or if it remains the “same.” Employing Reckwitz’s concept of singularization as its theoretical framework, I will shortly unpack 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 theme in scholarship on religion and media has been authority. However, the drop-in wedding campaign is not aimed at reasserting authority. Overall, attracting visibility appears to be a more pressing issue for churches in late modernity.

Elisabeth Tveito Johnsen is Professor in Practical theology at TF and currently visiting researcher at MF.