Religion and Popular Culture: Rescripting the Sacred

Front Cover
McFarland, Apr 17, 2008 - Religion - 231 pages
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).

About the author (2008)

Richard Santana is associate professor of English at the Rochester Institute of Technology and director of literary and cultural studies. He lives in Phelps, New York. Gregory Erickson teaches world literature and writing at Mannes College and New York University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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