Religion and Popular Culture

"Some reflections on theology and popular piety: a fruitful or fraught relationship?", The Heythrop Journal (published online March 2012)

by Salvador Ryan

Jediriddaren - från fiktion till religion

by Markus Altena Davidsen

Published in Swedish in RetorikMagasinet nr. 47/48, pp. 15-18, March 2012.

Jediismen är en seriös och etablerad religiös rörelse baserad på George Lucas Star Wars-filmer. Jediisterna låter sig... more Jediismen är en seriös och etablerad religiös rörelse baserad på George Lucas Star Wars-filmer. Jediisterna låter sig övertygas av jedimästare som Yoda och Obi-Wan Kenobi och tror på deras utsagor om Kraften.

Americanasana (review essay on history of yoga in America)

by Jared Farmer

Special attention given to Mark Singleton's YOGA BODY, Stefanie Syman's THE SUBTLE BODY, and Robert Love's THE GREAT OOM.

Un ejemplo de religiosidad en el Jaén de la Edad Moderna: la devoción a San Eufrasio

by Amparo López Arandia

published in Liceo, 11 (1999), pp. 137-146
ISSN: 1136-8128

Resilient Religion

by Salvador Ryan

The Greatest Super-Story Ever Told: A Review of _Mutants and Mystics_ (by Jeffrey Kripal)

by Christine Hoff Kraemer

Review for general readers at Patheos.com.

In Jeffrey Kripal's latest book, paranormal experiences are real and their message is being spread by pop culture. In Jeffrey Kripal's latest book, paranormal experiences are real and their message is being spread by pop culture.

Review of Carole M. Cusack, Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (2010)

by Markus Altena Davidsen

Literature & Aesthetics: Journal of the Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics 21(1), 259-261.
Published as Markus Davidsen.

Anmeldelse af Carole M. Cusack, Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (2010)

by Markus Altena Davidsen

Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift 57 (2011), 115-118.
Published as Markus Davidsen.

Jediism: a convergence of Star Wars fan culture and salad bar spirituality

by Markus Altena Davidsen

Published 2011 in De Filosoof: Departementsblad Wijbegeerte Universiteit Utrecht 51, 24-24.
Published as Markus Davidsen.

Fantasy som religion: Star Wars og jediisme

by Markus Altena Davidsen

Religionspædagogisk Forum 2010/1, 15-23.
Published as Markus Davidsen.

Recension de Pilar Jiménez-Sanchez, Les catharismes. Modèles dissidents du christianisme médiéval (XIIe-XIIIe siècles). Préface de Dominique Iogna-Prat. Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2008, 454 p.

by Julien Théry

Recension parue dans "Annales. Histoire, sciences sociales", 2009, 6, p. 1403-1405.

More Than Music: Notes on "Staying Punk" in the Church and in Theology

by Michael Iafrate

in Secular Music and Sacred Theology (tentative title), Tom Beaudoin, ed. .(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), forthcoming.

"I'm a Human, Not a Statue": Saints and Saintliness in the Church of Punk Rock

by Michael Iafrate

Paper presented at the Catholic Theological Society of America annual convention, San Jose, California, June 10, 2011.

In agreement with theologians who are noting how popular music fulfills a religious function in people's lives, this... more In agreement with theologians who are noting how popular music fulfills a religious function in people's lives, this paper gives a brief overview of the emergence of punk rock communities in the 1970s and '80s and the various ways that punk functions “religiously” for its participants. It then analyzes the way punk rock lifts up exemplars or “saints” who embody the diverse and often conflicting ideals of this movement and the ways in which punk rock “saints” challenge mainstream rock's patterns of “rock star religiosity.” Finally, it argues that this internal debate about the meaning of “saintly” figures in rock music has much to teach the Roman Catholic Church in its current debates about the meaning of saints in postmodern culture and that it can also provide an important critique of the enthusiasm with which emerging theologies of popular music approach rock music as a “religion.”

Dead Man Walking (1995)

by Matthew Rindge

Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films. Edited by Adele Reinhartz. New York: Routledge. Under contract. Expected in 2012.

Teaching the Bible and Film: Pedagogical Promises, Pitfalls, and Proposals

by Matthew Rindge

Teaching Theology and Religion 13 (2010): 140-55. With critical responses by Erin Runions and Richard Ascough.

Sacred sacrilege: Religion and popular culture in Singapore

by Lloyd Chia

Review of Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero's Visions of Hell on Earth (–By Kim Paffenroth)

by Christine Hoff Kraemer

Religious Studies Review 34:4 (Dec 2008): 284.

"The Magic Circus of the Mind": Alan Moore’s Promethea and the Transformation of Consciousness through Comics

by Christine Hoff Kraemer

Co-authored with J. Lawton Winslade. In Graven Images: Religion in Comics and Graphic Novels. Eds. A. David Lewis and Christine Hoff Kraemer. New York: Continuum, 2010. 274-91.

Film as Religion

by Christine Hoff Kraemer

The Encyclopedia of Religion and Film. Ed. Eric Mazur. Westport, CT: ABC-CLIO, 2011. 187-92.

Can film function in the place of religion? Summarizes a variety of approaches to the topic of theology, religion, and... more Can film function in the place of religion? Summarizes a variety of approaches to the topic of theology, religion, and film.

The Erotic Fringe: Sexual Minorities and Religion in Contemporary American Literature and Film

by Christine Hoff Kraemer

Submitted for the PhD in Religious and Theological Studies at Boston University, 2008.

In the wake of the sexual revolution, the Christian Right has waged a religiously-based campaign for pre-1960s gender... more In the wake of the sexual revolution, the Christian Right has waged a religiously-based campaign for pre-1960s gender norms and against gay rights. This project treats works in which sexual minorities respond by constructing the erotic as a source of sacred experience, one superior to that offered by conservative Protestant Christianity and Mormonism: the novel The Fifth Sacred Thing (Starhawk, 1993), the cult film Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001), the play and film Angels in America (Tony Kushner, 1992/2003), and the graphic novel Blankets (Craig Thompson, 2003).

My method is historically contextualized close reading that also considers the formal advantages of hybrid media in communicating a controversial message. I introduce The Fifth Sacred Thing as part of an American tradition of sexually alternative millennial communalism. This communalism, however, is always in dialogue with an individualistic Emersonian religion of the self, as in Hedwig’s tale of Gnostic personal transformation. Hedwig (in the tradition of The Rocky Horror Picture Show [1975]) demonstrates this individual/communal dialectic in its fans’ media-centered group practices. Next, I turn to Angels as a failed queer utopian vision in which neither its political agenda nor its religious eroticism is fully realized. Finally, I examine individual liberation in Blankets, which demonstrates how strict, religiously-based sexual and gender roles can create closeted sexual minorities even among heterosexuals.

Against the Religious Right’s focus on the nuclear, blood family, these works privilege individual transformation, chosen families, and utopian communities liberated and then bound together by erotic experience. Engaging the power of religious rhetoric in American culture, they mark a rhetorical shift by sexual minorities to speak of sexual liberation not purely as a secular matter of civil rights and cultural norms, but rather as a sacred mission that promises individual and social transformation. The effectiveness of hybrid media in engaging audiences helps to explain the strong responses—ranging from censorship efforts to the founding of new spiritual communities—that readers and viewers have had to these works.