Religion and Popular Culture

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Religion and Popular Culture

• Popular Religion

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What is Religion?
Religion, a system of thought, feeling, and
action that is shared by a group and that gives
the members an object of devotion a code of
behavior by which individuals may judge the
personal and social consequences of their
actions and a frame of reference by which
individuals may relate to their group and their
universe. Usually, religion concerns itself with
that which transcends the known, the natural, or
the expected it is an acknowledgment of the
extraordinary, the mysterious, and the
supernatural. The religious consciousness
generally recognizes a transcendent, sacred order
and elaborates a technique to deal with the
inexplicable or unpredictable elements of human
experience in the world or beyond it.
Belief, ritual, experience, doctrine, worldview,
community, institution
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Popular Religion
Popular Religion non-official, non-elite,
unorganized, eclectic and lived religion It
does not emphasize the importance of scriptures,
literary tradition, institution, clergies or
doctrinal purity. It is syncretistic and implicit
in its nature.
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Religion, Television Belief

• Explicitly religious dramas - Touched by an
  Angel, etc.
• Flattens religious doctrine?
• Theological messages God is love, God has a plan
  (unknowable), God exists Evil isnt Gods fault
  anything else?

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Religion,Television, and Belief

• Talk shows
• Attesting to the Supernatural
• Demonic possession
• Angel visitations
• Near Death Experiences
• Hauntings

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Religion,Television, and Belief

• Dramas, Reality shows
• Ghost Whisperer
• Ghost Hunters
• Ghost Trackers
• Supernatural
• Retellings of folkloric, pop culture beliefs,
  reivigorating supernatural in modern world?

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Religion and Television portrayals of Religious
Affiliation

• Law and Order
• Religion as short-hand for character traits
  (religious stereotyping)
• Religion as moral reasoning (Justice vs Law)
• Religion as destructive force (fanatics,
  cultists, terrorists)

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Religion, Television, and Ritual

• Television as surrogate religious ritual?
• Judge Judy and Dr. Laura - modern day
  confessionals?
• substitutionary catharsis?

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Religion, Ritual and Pop Culture

• Pop Culture Tourism as Religious Ritual -
  Pilgrimage?
• Pilgrimage to Graceland?
• Pilgrimage to Star Trek conventions?
• Pilgrimage to Grateful Dead concerts?

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Is Popular Religion really pop?
Vs
Chevrolet Presents Come Together and Worship -
16 concerts with top Christian rock bands
across the Southeast and the preaching of Texas
pastor, Rev. Max Lucado.
WWJD? (What would Jesus Drive?)
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Trickle down, Trickle up?

• Theories of popular religion - the trickle down
  theory - religion starts with orthodoxy, trickles
  down to the masses, who reinterpret, appropriate
  for own uses, etc. - pop religion as degraded
  form of orthodox religion.
• Trickle up - religion starts with folk belief,
  practice, becomes codified over time, subject to
  continual renewal from popular level.

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Popular Religion and Popular Culture

• Lowest common denominator - mass culture?
• Cultural mirror?- Maintaining the Status quo?
• Subversive of orthodoxy?