Unit I The Study of Religion and Popular Culture

wholeheartedly the works of other editors and authors—not least our colleagues Meredith Minister and Sarah J. Bloesch, who have edited the Bloomsbury Reader in Cultural Approaches to the Study of Religion and Cultural Approaches to Studying Religion: An Introduction to Theories and Methods, and Chris Klassen, the author of Religion and Popular Culture: A Cultural Studies Approach—who have sought to provide readers with authors and their theories that might be considered more diverse, more current, or better suited to particular issues in contemporary culture. And we encourage readers of this volume to continue their reading, be it in volumes like these, or elsewhere. We have provided suggestions for additional reading in the excerpts and Connections in Units I and II. The study of religion and popular culture is as new as the latest cultural product; but we should be mindful that, often (in the words of the author of Ecclesiastes), “there is nothing new under the sun.”

NOTE: Many of the following readings were originally published in languages other than English or were first published in the UK; for ease of reading, we have taken the liberty of transforming the style into one more familiar to readers in the United States. For reading ease, we also have omitted most of the original internal citations provided by the author (or translator).