The Celebrity Imprint: Fan-Celebrity Attachments and Religious Work Among Fans of John Lennon and Johnny Cash

Based on in-depth interviews, this article examines the relationships fans develop with John Lennon and Johnny Cash. Fan attachments consist of an initial curiosity, to a more profound emotional bond or relationship with “religious” underpinnings. An externalized sense of self and the concept of a product of popular culture doing the work of religion highlight how fans develop relationships because they see more of themselves in the celebrity than do other fans. The notion of gradual development of an interpretive lens helps explain how these shifts happen over time. I conclude by considering what degrees of fan attachment say about the relationship between celebrity fandom and religion.

Built Women in Men’s Paradises: A Critical Analysis of the Garden of Eden Narrative and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina

Bringing the biblical story of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2-3) into conversation with Alex Garland’s 2014 film Ex Machina, this paper examines and compares the male-scribed nature of paradise stories that describe the “building” of woman-creatures. From ancient Judean scribes to modern film-makers and computer coders, male-guarded forms of literacy enabled and continue to enable storytelling and world-building. A comparison of the accounts of the creation of Eve of the Garden with Ava of Ex Machina highlights that male control over literacy more generally and creation accounts more specifically yields diminished woman-creatures designed to serve the specific needs of men in male-imagined paradise settings. Although separated by millennia, ancient Judean scribes and modern computer programmers have imagined and built woman-creatures with a limited set of functions and programmed routines that include providing help, serving as a companion, and heterosexual receptivity.

Watching Movies in Jonestown: A Cultural Interlocutor Approach to Visual Media and New Religions

This article argues that new religious movements (NRMs) develop as cultural interlocutors. As emergent social bodies that respond to extant norms, structures, and values, NRMs can deploy cultural products as a shared vocabulary and grammar in their response to surrounding society. To demonstrate this approach’s ability to parse NRMs’ relations to popular culture while highlighting organizationally distinctive dimensions of such interactions, this article examines Jim Jones’s references to visual media shown in Jonestown in 1978. Jones critiqued movies and television as tools of social control, repurposed documentaries and films as evidence to support his proffered doctrine, and creatively presented movies as analogues of the commune’s perceived challenges. This threefold hermeneutic shaped the Peoples Temple’s beliefs and behavior, as well as its own media productions.

Religion and Relationality in Punk: Musicking and Ordinary Ethics

Engaging with Christopher Small’s notion of musicking and Veena Das and Michael Lambek’s notion of ordinary ethics, this article analyzes research on religion in punk from religion studies, sociology, and theology to offer a (self) critique of the representation of religious belief and relationships in punk. Focusing on the presence of evangelical Christianity in contemporary punk, and emphasizing relationships as central to the activity of musicking, this article draws attention to exclusions and essentializations in research in this field. Focusing on the ordinary ethics enacted through punk musicking, rather than the normative ethics located in sometimes polemical punk statements and scholarship, it is argued that a more accurate understanding of the place of religion in punk becomes apparent by focusing on quotidian relational practices.

“American Wise Men Discover the Secret of Religion”: Religious Content in the Civilization Computer Game Series

The Civilization series of computer games (1991–) is one of the most popular and influential series in the history of computer gaming. The game’s impact and exposure indicate that its treatment of religion is therefore significant. Throughout the Civilization series, religion has been a part of the game. However, the role that religion played and the underlying models of religion represented in the game have changed over time. This article considers how the treatment of religion in the Civilization series has developed, what this reveals about the game designers’ assumptions, and what implicit lessons about religion it teaches players.