Religion and Popular Culture: Rescripting the Sacred

by Richard W. Santana, Gregory Erickson

The United States is the world's primary creator and exporter of popular mass culture and arguably one of the most religious countries in modern history. As a result, the coexistence of American religion with popular culture has created a fertile yet caustic environment for new religious belief structures, new texts, and new worldviews that are uniquely American. This work considers ways in which American television, advertising, music, and video games have played a significant role in creating, representing, and influencing contradictory religious identities. The authors examine three distinct segments of popular culture that "rescript the sacred", including popular religious texts (e.g. the Christian fantasy novels of Frank Peretti), secular works that nonetheless reflect and influence popular religions (e.g. Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and works that contain a central element of religious content but no clear didactic intent (e.g. The Da Vinci Code).

225 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Becca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over all, I enjoyed this book's take on popular religion. It doesn't take the easy way out of so many similar texts I've seen and merely dismiss popular religion as the realm of crazies and Republican neo-Nazis. There was also a rockin' examination of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I will complain, though, that there was not nearly enough discussion of the more recent--and immensely more complex--Battlestar Galactica. The world needs more Adamalove.