Why Religion turned to Pop Culture
Throughout this blog I hope I have been able to illustrate the many different intersections between religion and popular culture. As we’ve seen religion can be immersed in popular culture, popular culture can be used in religion and sometimes popular culture can even become a sort of religion. I would now like to raise and attempt to shed light on the question of why religion ever became involved with popular culture. Porcu discusses traditional Buddhism in Japan and how in order for the religion to compete with all of the other fun and vivacious activities, they must turn to using popular culture icons to advertise themselves (2014). For example the religious institutions use Hello Kitty
as a way to make their religious items more appealing and competitive with other cultural institutions (Porcu, 2014). Similarly Buddhist Japanese institutions have created their own manga comic book characters which are used in both entertainment and educational settings (Porcu, 2014). This is interesting because Japanese Buddhism is supporting capitalism and materialism, which are things that they should be fundamentally opposed to based on their religious beliefs. Though it seems that religions are turning to popular culture as a way to keep themselves current.
Christian Rock can also be seen as an attempt to use popular culture as a way to keep up with the younger generations. Christian Rock is a musical group consisting of Christina followers who concentrate their lyrics around the Christian faith. This genre of music sprouted during the 1960’s because Christian parents did not want their children listening to the rebellious music we have come to call Rock n’ Roll. In this sense religion used popular culture as a way to both deter their followers away from forms of music that would damage their relationship with the Christian faith as well as using music to attract a younger age group of followers by using an alternative to a genre of music that was new and popular during those times.
Ironically in both of the above cases religions’ attempt to stay as up to date as possible has also worked to degrade a once free-of-charge institution into a capitalist commodity, so was modernity really the only factor in religions’ decision to turn to popular culture? Just as seen with the Barefoot Doctor who finds it only appropriate that he be able to take aspects of Taoism and sell his performance and teachings of these practices to devout religious followers, Buddhist and Christian followers seem to have no problem taking their respective religious ideologies, combining them with aspects and objects in popular culture and selling them for profit (Carrette & King, 2005). This can further be illustrated in the South Park episode entitled “Christian Rock Hard”.
Here we see one character resort to forming a Christian Rock band as a way to sell platinum albums and make lots of money in the process due to the high volume of Christian followers. This episode makes fun of the fact that a genre of music that has Christian undertones and is created and performed in the name of the Lord is simultaneously contributing to furthering and being a part of our capitalist economy. So whether religion turned to popular culture as a way to be modern and keep up with the other cultural activities and institutions or whether religion flocked to the use of popular culture as an attempt participate in our growing capitalist economy is left up to you to decide.
Reference List
Carrette, J., & King, R. (2005). Spirituality and the privitisation of Asian Wisdom Traditions. In Selling spirituality: The silent take over of religion(pp. 88–122). Canada and USA: Routledge.
Porcu, E. (2014). Pop religion in Japan: Buddhist temples, icons and branding. Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 26(2). Retrieved November 15, 2014, from http://getit.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/oneclick?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Pop Religion in Japan: Buddhist Temples, Icons, and Branding&rft.jtitle=Journal of Religion and Popular Culture&rft.au=Elisabetta Porcu&rft.date=2014&rft.pub=University of Toronto Press&rft.eissn=1703–289X&rft.volume=26&rft.issue=2&rft.spage=157&rft.epage=172&rft.external
