Secular Steeples 2nd edition: Popular Culture and the Religious Imagination
Ebook
An exploration of secularization in America, this book provides students with an innovative way of understanding the relationship between religion and secular culture. In Secular Steeples, Conrad Ostwalt challenges long-held assumptions about the relationship between religion and culture and about the impact of secularization. Moving away from the idea that religion will diminish as secularization continues, Ostwalt identifies areas of popular culture where secular and sacred views and objectives interact and enrich each other.
The book demonstrates how religious institutions use the secular and popular media of television, movies, and music to make sacred teachings relevant. From megachurches to sports arenas, the Bible to Harry Potter, biker churches to virtual worship communities, Ostwalt demonstrates how religion persists across cultural forms, secular and sacred, with secular culture expressing religious messages and sometimes containing more authentic religious content than official religious teachings.
An ideal text for anyone studying religion and popular culture, each chapter provides questions for discussion, a list of important terms and guided readings.
Fully updated, innovative textbook on the relationship between popular culture and religion, exploring secularization in America and the way religion functions in postmodern society.
Includes topics for discussion, sample questions, and guided pedagogical techniques or exercises.
New chapters focus on religious and quasi-religious communities that blur distinctions between secular and sacred.
Offers a clear and accessible introduction to secularization theory.
Features contemporary secular examples of television, movies, literature and music which express religious messages.
Acknowledgments \ 1. Popular Culture, the
Religious Imagination, and the Evolution of God \ 2. Secularization-The
Evolution of Western Religion \ Part I:
Pre-text \ 3. Space/Place/Pre-text \ 4. Megachurches \ 5. Love Valley: The Sacralization of Secular Space \ Part II: Text \ 6. Narrative/Text \ 7.
Religion and Secular Text \ Part
III: Post-text \ 8. Image/Post-text
\ 9. A Cinematic Secular Apocalyptic Imagination \ Part IV:Con-text \ 10.
Communitas/Con-text \ 11. The Motorcycle as American Icon and Symbol of Sacred
Journey \ 12. Emerging Religion: Machine
Guns, Post-Christian Churches, The Internet, Snakes, and Science \ Conclusion: Theological Appropriation of Secularization: A Cooperative Model \ Works Cited \ Index
'In this bold, thoughtful, and complex work, Conrad Ostwalt counters major currents in religious and theological studies that identify the nature and role of the religious and sacred by positing their contrary relation to the secular and profane. He argues and richly illustrates how and why these putative contraries are actually in constant and various involvements with and even dependencies on one another and how awareness of these relational dynamics can and should affect our understandings of both American culture and religion and theology.'
'More a reengagement than a revision, this second edition of Conrad Ostwalt's influential work on secularization, religion, and popular culture retains the best aspects of the original-a clear theoretical framework and relevant, entertaining examples-while incorporating not only new material, but also student-friendly features such as lists of key words and concepts, study questions, and even suggestions for guided readings.The first edition of Secular Steeples allowed readers to navigate the reciprocal relationship between religion and popular culture.This new edition will engage, educate, and entertain both previous and new readers alike.I look forward to using it in my classes.'
'In contrast to modern sociology's secularization theories, Ostwalt sees the sacred and the secular commingling as religious groups secularize by adopting secular forms and as secular forms and institutions betray religious sensibilities. New material in this edition includes forays into football stadiums, Harry Potter, 2012, motorcycles, and the emergent church. To place, text, and image, he now adds communitas. He also adds a chapter seeking to ground his theological view of postmodernism in process theology. Finally, his addition of questions, assignments, and reading suggestions will facilitate the use of the book in classrooms.'
- Title: Secular Steeples 2nd edition: Popular Culture and the Religious Imagination
- Author: Conrad Ostwalt
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2012
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781441183415, 9781441172860, 1441172866, 1441183418
- Resource ID: LLS:9781441183415
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-04-08T22:53:07Z
Conrad Ostwalt is Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Appalachian State University, USA.