popular culture

Besides the weighty matters of truth, justice and protection, Coach Brown prayed for something much less obviously connected to the alleged sexual abuse: a restoration of masculinity to the game of football. “There are a lot of little boys around the country, today, who are watching this game. And they’re trying to figure out what the definition of manhood is all about. Father, this is it right here. I pray that this game will be a training ground of what manhood looks like.” When I heard that prayer I couldn’t help but ask, why here and why now? What is it exactly about this scandal that relates to little boys trying to learn what manhood looks like?

In order to restore meaning to the ideas of freedom and community, Rev. Billy exposes their current bankruptcy through a “religious” performance drawn from institutional, theatrical, and cultural realms. But make no mistake, it is real.

Even with all its imperfections “All-American Muslim” will open a conversation. The question is: what kind of conversation and where will it take us?

This summer, the world’s largest clock began to tick in Mecca—Islam’s holiest city—marking the beginning of Ramadan, the month of fasting for Muslims. After the inauguration of the clock, there were calls from many Muslims to replace Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)—the world standard for 125 years—with Mecca Time.

Everyone is an expert when it comes to religion. Those of us in the discipline are well acquainted with the fact that religious convictions are strongly held even by those with no formal training. They can often explain why they believe what they do. At length. This is the dilemma of the religion…

Zombie Jesus might seem silly to you and horror may not be your thing. But spiritual seekers might want to ponder the imagery of horror precisely because it runs against some of their instincts. Freud famously argued in his essay “The Uncanny” that horrific fairy tales terrified us as children because they reminded us of the vulnerability of our bodies. The horror tradition, maybe especially the zombie narrative, does the same for adults.

Ours is primarily a linear society which rewards building, doing, improving, and growing. It’s no surprise, then, that countercultural movements have tended to emphasize circles: consensus rather than hierarchy, egalitarianism, nuanced notions of ‘progress.’ Does this sound familiar? It should—it’s behind a lot of what observers have noticed about the Occupy movement: that there are no clear goals, no policy prescriptions, no realistic (i.e., incremental) demands.

We Americans don’t like to talk about death or the dead, and since many Protestants have difficuty with Catholic practices around prayer to the saints and prayers for the dead, our practices around All Saints’ and All Souls’ days have drifted in very different directions, leaving more space for the secular, non-religious practices around these festivals.

My mother might not be Tim Tebow’s most typical fan, but she shares many traits with the growing throngs of people who make up his already vast fan base. She breaks the mold in terms of geography and football knowledge. She is from Canada, not the American South, and before I started attending the University of Florida as a doctoral student in religion, she had never been concerned with anyone’s “throwing accuracy,” nor would she have known that it is tough for a running quarterback to make it in the passing-dominated NFL. She is, though, an evangelical Christian and that qualifies her for Tebowmania—even if only via internet connections in Canada.

The president of the American Atheists knows there is no God, just as I always knew there was a God. Call us fundamentalists, the two of us. But here’s the difference: I am a reformed fundamentalist. I can now entertain the idea that my truth may not be the only truth. I want to understand, to listen and consider other people’s points of view, even when I find their convictions strange or frightening. That’s why I’m here. If I reject this group’s beliefs without understanding them, then I have not changed from the zealot I once was. But I’m nervous and feel a bit nauseous. I’m waiting for lightning that won’t miss this time.