Religion and Popular Culture in America [Paperback]

Bruce David Forbes (Editor), Jeffrey H. Mahan (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0520220285 | ISBN-13: 978-0520220287 | Edition: 1

The connections between American popular culture and religion is the subject of this multifaceted and innovative collection. Ranging from religious themes in cowboy fiction to Madonna's "Like a Prayer," from televangelism to the world of sports, the book's contributors offer fascinating insights into what popular culture reveals about the nature of American religion today.

Bruce David Forbes provides an introductory essay that states the book's organizing principles. The first group of essays examines the appearance of explicit religious content or implicit religious themes in popular culture, focusing on such particulars as Christmas television specials and the fiction of Louis L'Amour and Cormac McCarthy. The second group of essays considers ways that popular culture influences traditional religions, especially evangelical Christianity. A third group illustrates how aspects of popular culture develop their own myths, symbol systems, and ritual patterns; included are discussions of Star Trek fandom, women's weight loss rituals, and sports. The fourth group offers examples of ways that religion and popular culture might critique each another: the disguise of vengeance in Pale Rider, rap music's take on African-American Christian theology, and a Christian feminist perspective on the role of gender in cyberspace. Jeffrey H. Mahan's concluding essay looks at the academic and general audiences engaged in discussions of social and cultural reform.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This is an uninspired and uninspiring hodgepodge of 14 unrelated essays of uneven quality. Forbes and Thompson, professors at Morningside College and Iliff School of Theology, respectively, offer four classifications for understanding the relationship between religion and popular culture: various essays examine explicitly religious themes in television and mass market novels, ways that popular culture affects traditional evangelical Christianity, how popular culture promulgates its own myths and traditions, and ways that religion and popular culture can inform each other. None of these classifications seems particularly helpful. There are a few interesting articles here, a number of which have been published before, on such subjects as Madonna, Cormac McCarthy, Star Trek fandom, weight loss books, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and gangsta rap. But these are paired with essays on topics whose novelty has long worn out--on television as an "electronic golden calf," on sports as a form of religion and on the megachurch as a spiritual marketplace. This is a case in which the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. There are flashes of insight scattered throughout the volume, but overall the project is woefully undertheorized (indeed, setting up religion and popular culture as opposing categories in the first place seems unsophisticated). In the end, the editors offer no conclusions on religion or popular culture--and no clear direction for thinking about either subject. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A solid introduction to the dialogue between the disciplines of cultural studies and religion. . . . A substantive foundation for subsequent exploration."--"Religious Studies Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 335 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (February 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520220285
• ISBN-13: 978-0520220287
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #419,269 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Religious Experience?, March 28, 2002

By 

Aaron Rosenberg (State College, Pa USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Religion and Popular Culture in America (Paperback)

This text, which is , in fact an anthology of academic papers on the topic of religion(s) and popular culture is limited by the fact that it only deals with the United States while claiming to deal with America? Other than this, however the essays are for the most part informative, intelligent and lucid in an easily accessible diction and content. Not being a huge fan of abstract theoretical constructions myself, I found the articles well-organized and significant in their content. At the same time, the extensive annotated bibliographies that accompanied each article were useful for myself in tracking down relevant data with regards to the articles about the internet, Pale Rider and Rap music and would, I assume, be likewise for those interested in pursuing other subjects such as the presence of sports and religion or weight loss as a soteriological undertaking.
While I definitely feet that there is a tremendous amount to be gained from reading these articles as far as their in-depth analysis of the interrelationship between Religion and Popular Culture in the United States, I also was intrigued by the fact that. The editors of the volume as well as the vast majority of their contributors felt compelled to support, or rather accepted as a foregone conclusion the concept that religious and popular cultures constitute two areas of thought and endeavor that are, more or less, mutually distinguishable. It seemed to me, even before reading the text, that religion is, primarily another manifestation of popular culture. One of its unique characteristics is the attempt of its supporters to construct an immutable facade which belies the extreme volatility and changeability of even its most cherished and central concepts and practices.