Jesus Christ, Movie Star?

Think religion doesn’t matter at the movies? Think again. More specifically, think of the kerfuffle over the Church of England’s “Lord’s Prayer Commercial” and some of the UK’s biggest cinema chains denying the commercial ad space in its theaters.

As Reuters reported, “The 60-second ad, which shows a variety of Christians including a police officer, weight lifter and school children each saying one line of the prayer, had been due to be shown next month before screenings of the new Star Wars film ‘The Force Awakens.’” 

Not only was the Anglican church confused over the refusal, but social media and blogs erupted with robust conversations about the place of religious ads before movies, on television, and on radio. This scenario of scandal underscores the importance, and urgency, of considering the interaction of religion & pop-culture in its many, many, forms. 

That is why I am overwhelmingly excited to announce the release of Jesus Christ, Movie Star by Edward N. McNulty, in which I was humbled & honored to write the foreword. In that introductory statement I attempted to frame McNulty's work on Jesus and movies in the contemporary context of currents in religion & pop-culture. 

In the foreword I wrote that in a global culture, where internationalization occurs across, through, and in tension with various sites and conduits of ethnicity, technology, financial systems, media, ideological networks, and religions the images of Jesus not only matter to U.S. moviemakers, and consumers, but people throughout the world. Hence the importance to critically think through what depictions of Jesus mean — how they are represented, how they communicate, how they are interpreted, and how they reflect, critique, and interact with wider socio-cultural realities. 

This is even more pertinent because Jesus is such a popular movie star and it is helpful -- both theologically and from a religious studies perspective -- to consider him as such. As David Crumm of Read the Spirit wrote:

“ONLY ONE FIGURE rivals Sherlock Holmes and Santa Claus as the longest-running characters in world cinema. As veteran-faith-and-film writer Edward McNulty points out in his new book, that unique, history-spanning figure is Jesus Christ, Movie Star.”

McNulty’s exploration of Jesus-figures, faith, and film gets us started down a path to not only catch the great importance of Jesus’ story as it was, but also — crucially — how it is transported and transposed in our current culture. To that end, I invite you to explore more about the work or to purchase it at Amazon.com to engage heartily in discussion with those with whom you watch, react to, and examine faith and film.

Our Values - Promoting Civil Dialogue on American Values

What are American values? How do they shape the way we view movies, television, landscapes, cityscapes, and our fellow humans? 

Dr. Wayne Baker of Michigan State University created the sites Our Values to provide a place to explore the many ways that American (in the U.S. sense of the term) values shape our world and how many different people shape American values. 

This week he invited me to write his daily blog. In this series you will find explorations of digital religion, religious sightings in Philadelphia, and more. Check out OurValues and/or subscribe for the series this week as FaithGoesPop takes over to talk about the impact of faith on culture and vice versa.

Religion is everywhere, we just need to know where to look for it

“…anything can be sacralized through the work of religious interpretation, ritualization, and negotiation.”

— David Chidester, Authentic Fakes (120)

At FaithGoesPop.com we like to riff on altars to JJ Watt, the intersection of faith and film, and when comedians get all "religiousy." Yet, the #FaithGoesPop project is deeper than identifying and briefly commenting on surface phenomena. Beyond superficial sightings, #FaithGoesPop is about understanding how religion & culture interact with, challenge, confront, come into conflict with, and change one another. 

At another level, #FaithGoesPop is about understanding how religion is at work in the world. Indeed, it is my contention that if we are to understand religion in the world today we must take a look at the interaction, interplay, and intermeshing that goes on between religion and pop culture.  

The definition of "religion" is a slippery beast. Trying to grasp the essence of what "religion" is proves difficult and nigh impossible. Just ask the umpteen theoreticians and countless grad students who have toiled over pinning down just what "religion" is all about and how we can define it. Is it about beliefs of embodied ritual? Is it about crossing & dwelling or more material aspects? Is it about an "encounter with the numinous" or some "collective effervescence?"

Whatever your response is to these classic and contemporary prompts that emerge from the greatest minds in religious theory we all feel like we know religion when we see it. We all feel that we can grasp what is religious and secular, public and private, by the way it functions or the tenets it holds to and professes. But do we?

Too often today, our conceptions of what religion is and is not are wrapped up in the official "-isms" of world religion theory or some misguided notion that religion is about official organizations or some form of faith in the supernatural. This has led many to believe, errantly, that religion is on the decline in our world. That our cosmos is becoming demystified and desacralized. But that just isn't the case.

First, because the world's "great" religions are not necessarily declining in adherents, just shifting their geography. Second, because we have to free ourselves from institutional conceptions of "religion" in order to understand the way #religion is at work in our world today. It turns out that we have to free up our conception of "religion" in order to understand its prolific and fluid nature. We have to, in the words of Eric Michael Mazur and Kate McCarthy, look for "god in the details." 

Today, religion is on the move via migration and communication. Religion is unbounded from its institutional frameworks and the colonial project of naming and claiming “the great world’s religions.” Religion is being fought over and contended in public spaces and in private domains. It is pouring over traditional boundaries and settling in new places. Religion is popping up in pop culture and settling in strange places. Religion is part of what we call "sacred" as well as what we construct as "secular." Religion is at once obvious and obscure. Religion is mutant and hybrid, multifarious and huge. Religion is everywhere we look and in places we haven't even thought to glance at. 

Quickly, I hope you are appreciating just how hard it is to understand how religion is at work in our world today. But that's why #FaithGoesPop exists -- to help us see the ways that religion is at work in pop culture and how the interaction between these two seemingly disparate realms (religion and pop culture) is part of the ever-evolving religious landscape of the world we live in. 

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Gone are the days of one individual adhering to one faith. While there may be holdouts I argue that most of us in the globalized, modern, and heterogeneous world today are hybrid religious creatures who have put together our own hodge-podge religious and spiritual outlook. Instead of strolling up to the counter of religious options a la the McDonald's menu and choosing the #1 Catholic Club Sandwich or the #2 Big Islam or the #5 Buddhism Burger we now saunter up to a  Chipotle-style religious smorgasbord that allows us mix-and-match, pick and choose what we like, when we like, how we like it. It can be large or small. Spicy or savory. On whatever tortilla you'd like. Indeed, there is no more menu to choose from. You're required to "have it your way" and you can trust it. After all, Chipotle's motto is "food with integrity." Although you don't really know the source, you're told the source is trustworthy and that whatever you choose is honest-to-god good for you. 

And so, we ask Pastor Google, Sheikh Ibn Yahoo, or Guru Bing our most pressing religious questions and we assemble a plate full of faith-food that shapes our bodies and minds with its mystical miscellany. We don't even look to the traditional sources anymore and we can find our religious or "spiritual" inspiration from television shows and YouTube channels, podcasts and pulpits, the Pope and pop culture. Meanwhile, on our plate of religious perspectives the astrology sauce mixes in with the Hindu helpings and the Kabbalah crunchy rolls and we dig in whenever we need a spoonful of spirituality for the day. 

What I hope you're starting to see is that the lines between public and private religion, between what is religious and what is not, between "religion" and "spirituality" or the "sacred" and the "secular" aren't as clear as we once thought they were.

In fact, I argue that the space between -- the borderlands and boundaries we constructed -- are blurring and that the friction, tension, and mixing that is occurring there is where religion is at its most vibrant today, for good and for ill. 

Whether religion is co-opting pop culture or pop culture is using religion to its ends; whether pop culture is found in religion or religion in pop culture; or whether religion is transforming into pop culture or pop culture is morphing into religion we are witnessing a shift in the nature of religion that, while not unprecedented, is profound and portentous. 

A few weeks ago I shared this with students in a summer "World Religions" course at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, FL. Their instructor Prof. Kerri Blumenthal did a wonderful job of helping these students navigate the world of religions throughout the semester. One of the ways she expanded their views was by inviting in guest speakers with their own perspectives and areas of expertise. When I came into the class I taught them about #FaithGoesPop, covering the content in this blog post. (You can find the Prezi HERE)

The students took to the lecture and grabbed hold of the concept that religion is unbounded and often to be found in the borderlands between the public and private, the explicitly religious and the unapologetically popular. One said that "religion is all around us" and said we need to widen our view of what religion is or where it can be found to not only understand religious culture but to tolerate and respect it. Another student reflected that "religion and pop culture surround us every day" and that the lines are blurred in the 21st-century when technology and social media can so easily mix-in with "something as ancient as religion." All of this is to say, as one student rightly remarked, that "we have to see religion from different perspectives" in order to "analyze the interplay between religion and pop culture." 

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Hence, www.FaithGoesPop.com. Hence why I need your help to sight #FaithGoesPop. That's why I need all my social media sociologists and entertainment-news ethnographers to be on the lookout. Not only is it fun to find #FaithGoesPop, but as we've seen, it's also about understanding religion in our world today. 

*So what do you think? Is religion unbounded? Is it at work in our world in ways we may not immediately recognize as "religious?" Do we need to be on the look out for more #FaithGoesPop? Share your comments, thoughts, and questions below...

Angels, Demons & Pop Culture

I remember the first "demon" I came across in a film. More accurately, it was a poltergeist. Thought not technically a demonic force the actions of this pesky little spirit were demonic enough. You see, I grew up in the town of Poltergeist, the movie. I used to ride my bike past the poltergeist house in Simi Valley, CA. Each time, images of TVs flicking on by themselves, possessed clowns, and bodies emerging from the front lawn would creep into my mind.

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The "Poltergeist House" in Simi Valley, CA where I grew up. What wonderful, horrifying, childhood memories. 

Shudder. 

Then, there were the angels. John Travolta as Michael, the post-modern angel-human romance of Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin), Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life, or the kickass, androgynous, Tilda Swinton Gabriel in Constantine. No matter the angel movie, I have always preferred them to pop-culture demons (though Paul Bettany's angel in Legion may be an exception). 

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Tilda Swinton as an androgynous angel in "Constantine" with co-star Keanu Reaves. 

Any way you cut it, our culture has a seeming fascination with angels and demons in pop culture -- particularly film. Over on the front page for Read the Spirit we are featuring an interview with Greg Garrett  in which he talks about his new book Entertaining Judgment: The Afterlife in Popular Imagination. This book, as RTS chief David Crumm shares, covers the "entire cosmos...from Heaven to Hell—including visits with angels and demons, comic book super heroes, TV stars, great authors and even strange characters in video games—all in 200 pages!"

Check out the interview, but also be sure to share your favorite angel (and demon) sightings in pop culture on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest with the hash-tag #FaithGoesPop and we'll include them in a post later this week!

Coke Can Nativity at #FaithGoesPop

Heather Choate Davis, author and cultural commentator, shared this photo on her Facebook page. She posted it with the words “Nativity scene meets culture.”

Clearly, this is prime #FaithGoesPop territory.

While at first glance it may seem someone was just being clever with Coca-Cola’s #ShareaCoke campaign, perhaps there are deeper intimations behind this ShareaCoke nativity.

*See more at my blog with Read the Spirit - #FaithGoesPop and send me more #FaithGoesPop by using the aforementioned hashtag on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Nik Wallenda walks the tightrope with Jesus & Joel Osteen

Did you see it? A week ago today, Nik Wallenda made history walking two tightropes, one with a world-record setting incline, the other blindfolded, both without a safety-net or tether, between skyscrapers in Chicago.

The stunt showed live on Discovery Channel Sunday night, being beamed abroad to more than 200 countries. The exploit was, in a word, mesmerizing…almost miraculous.

Many Wallenda fans, and even the casual viewer, readily appreciate the strength, focus, and mental fortitude that Wallenda must hone in order to complete such a feat. Wallenda credits his ability to perform such stunts to prayer and faith, to stepping out on the tightrope and with his eyes focused not only on the wire below him, but his God above. 

To help him focus, he usually rallies right before the exploit with his favorite pastor - Joel Osteen. 

*See more at #FaithGoesPop with Read the Spirit

What religious bumper stickers say about you...

I was out driving the other day and I happened upon religion just over the hood of my car.

“I believe.”

In black and bold on yellow background. What did Ms. White Accord believe in?

In this case, the transubstantiation of Holy Communion. Quite a statement for a bumper!

Whether sitting at a traffic light, stuck in gridlock or zooming along the freeway, commuters’ eyes are often caught by what is displayed on other vehicles. Sometimes it’s a decal demonstrating parental pride for a child’s achievement, a custom plate for dog lovers or a decal displaying a witty aphorism.

Other times bumper stickers can exhibit more divine intimations, as was the case above.

*See more at #FaithGoesPop

#ReformationMemes for Reformation Day

It's #ReformationDay (October 31) when Protestants, specifically Lutherans and some Reformed, commemorate the day in 1517 when Augustinian monk and Uni professor, Martin Luther, posted (either nailed to a door, or actually sent in the mail...or both) an invitation to debate on the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral.

What better way to celebrate than post a bunch of memes on my social media feed? You're right, there is none. 

To learn more about #ReformationDay and the #ReformationMemes project, check out my post at #FaithGoesPop.

Faith Goes Pop?

Taylor Swift. My new blog venture begins with Taylor Swift. What could go wrong? 

I am excited to announce a new project I am (re)launching with Read the Spirit entitled "Faith Goes Pop." 

The aim of the "Faith Goes Pop" blog is a "bold foray into the unknown and untamable intersections between, and manifestations of, religion and popular culture." Like Taylor Swift, I am "going pop" and jumping head first to combine sightings of the intersections between "faith" and "pop culture" with winsome and witty commentary that will hopefully lead to a book project down the road. But, I need your help! 

So, I invite you to check out the blog this week and share it your friends. It goes "full launch" with Read the Spirit next week when I will be featured on their e-mail blast and magazine front page. Exciting times, thanks for coming along with me on this journey! 

*For more on religion & culture, follow @kchitwood.

*Read the Spirit is a publishing company, an online magazine and a network of writers connecting readers with the most important voices in religion, spirituality, interfaith and cross-cultural issues. Read the Spirit strives for accuracy, balance and fairness.