Religion and Popular Culture - Adam Possamai Kartoniert (TB)

Popular culture can no longer be exclusively seen as a source of escapism. It can amuse entertain instruct and relax people but what if it provides inspiration for religion? The Church of All Worlds the Church of Satan and Jediism from the Star Wars series are but three examples of new religious groups that have been greatly inspired by popular culture to (re)create a religious message. These are hyper-real religions that is a simulacrum of a religion partly created out of popular culture which provides inspiration for believers consumers. These postmodern expressions of religion are lik ely to be consumed and individualised and thus have more relevance to the self than to a community and or congregation. On the other hand religious fundamentalist groups tend at times to resist this synergy between popular culture and religion and at other times re-appropriate popular culture to promote their own religion. Examples of this re-appropriation are Christian super-hero comics and role playing games Bible-based PC games and 'White Metal' music. To explore these new phenomena this book views itself as the 'hyper-real testament' of these new religious phenomena by addressing the theories among many others of Baudrillard Jameson and Lipovetsky and by exploring the use of fictions such as those from Harry Potter The Matrix Star Trek Buffy and The Lord of the Rings .