During the last decade, scholars of religion have researched Star Wars-based Jediism, the Tolkien-inspired Elven community, and other religious movements inspired by popular fiction. This article ...raises two related questions about this new kind of religion: what should we call it?, and what differentiates it from conventional religion on the one hand, and from fandom on the other? Referring to Jean Baudrillard, Adam Possamai has suggested referring to new religions based on popular culture as 'hyper-real religions'. I contend, however, that for Baudrillard, all religions are hyper-real in the sense that they ascribe reality to the socially constructed. I therefore offer fiction-based religion as a more accurate term. Fiction-based religions draw their main inspiration from fictional narratives (e.g. Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings) which do not claim to refer to the actual world, but create a fictional world of their own. As such, they can be contrasted with conventional (or 'history'-based) religions whose core narratives (e.g. the Gospels) do claim to refer to the actual world and therefore fall under the narrative meta-genre of history, although they do not correspond with the actual world from a historian's perspective. Despite their fictional basis, fiction-based religions are genuine religions because the activity and beliefs of which they consist refer to supernatural entities which are claimed to exist in the actual world. As such, fiction-based religions can be contrasted with fandom which, as a form of play, creates a fictional play world rather than making assertions about the actual world. Fiction-based religion emerges when fictional narratives are used as authoritative texts for actual religious practice.
Popular and lived religions Possamai, Adam M
Current sociology,
10/2015, Volume:
63, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This article discusses the sociological understanding of popular religion by first exploring the theories of Gramsci. It then critiques this approach by arguing that the social construction of ...popular religion in contrast to institutionalized religion is not as clear cut in our late modern, multi-faith and global world as it was in the early modern period. Indeed, through consumer culture, some institutionalized religions are now reaching for the popular. Through the use of new Internet methodologies (e.g. Ngram Viewer), the article explores the various understandings of the words popular religion, mysticism and spirituality. It discovers that the usage of these words has evolved over time and reflects wider socio-cultural changes. The article then argues that spirituality (technical or unchurched) can be sociologically understood as an outcome of two processes that intertwine within late modernity; that is the gentrification of popular religion and the democratization of mysticism.
This paper challenges recent arguments that the Church of the SubGenius (COSG) is a 'real' religious organization, in that it purportedly provides a path to spiritual enlightenment. Besides ...downplaying the COSG's comedic aspects, these essentialist approaches have largely ignored its historical development within the American 'alternative' underground of the 1980s and early-1990s. Drawing on interviews and the analysis of participatory media, this paper examines the COSG alongside Zontar, a stridently political zine named in honour of a B-movie monster that its founders claimed to worship. It is demonstrated that these interrelated, intentionally 'fake' religions emerged in the context of a turbulent American culture war, and confronted a conservative evangelicalism perceived to be a political threat. While the founders of the COSG and Zontar accordingly attacked and satirised politically engaged television preachers such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, their approaches to certain less explicitly political televangelists can be considered examples of ironic fandom, shot through with flashes of genuine admiration. In all of these activities, the founders of these fake faiths participated in a cultural discussion about authentic Christianity in America - playful religious work more indicative of the COSG's cultural significance than its alleged status as an 'authentic' religion.
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