Jesus of the Silver Screen
Explicit content warning
11/16/20 • 48 min
Religion and pop culture go together like watermelons and summer. They are so intertwined, sometimes we don't even recognize the allusions anymore! Can pop culture be a religious experience? Can the love for pop culture go too far?
In this episode, we explore its core concepts. We talk about the role of God and touch on Buddhism. We question terms like "holy" and "sacred".
Our exploration continues into the complexities of religion and spirituality. We discuss the differences between righteousness and holiness and think about the challenges of understanding holy texts. We draw connections between deification and fan culture, questioning the rituals and tax-exempt status of both.
We then broaden our discussion to talk about spirituality versus religion. Exploring the wider scope of spirituality, including practices like sound therapy and LSD use. We challenge the idea that religion requires specific beliefs. Our conversation also touches on tax exemption for churches, inspired by John Oliver's humorous take. We share different views on whether churches should be tax-exempt, considering transparency and financial concerns. We end by inviting listeners to share their thoughts on this complex topic.
Book: Jesus Potter Harry Christ: The fascinating parallels between two of the world's most popular literary characters, by Derek Murphy
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Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram
**
Preston Meyer 00:14
And welcome to the holy watermelon Podcast. I'm Kate Preston.
Katie Dooley 00:20
And what are we talking about today?
Preston Meyer 00:23
What are we talking about?
Katie Dooley 00:25
I mean, I did all the research for this episode, so I should probably introduce it. We're talking about
Preston Meyer 00:31
para religion and culture, pop
Katie Dooley 00:34
culture, as religion is the topic, but religion in pop culture will definitely come up. I think it's unavoidable. We also I'm just gonna say we have a third co host, that's my dog. So if you hear snorts or jingles, that's her, that'll just help with editing if you just know she's here. Alright, so let's get started. I guess. When I was researching this, I found a term I had never actually heard before, which was pair religion and I thought that that describe what we're talking about really well. And its definition is a secular belief system having certain aspects of religion, but not all aspects of religion. So then I had to look up what religion was because if you heard our last few episodes nobody knows.
Preston Meyer 01:27
Yeah, I think the things we covered in the last two episodes lend themselves very easily to the discussion of parrot religion.
Katie Dooley 01:35
Yes, and I Yes, all the talk arounds I guess what religion is and what Gods are basically fall under pair religion. So for morons who didn't really throw up formal religion has a belief in supernatural powers, some influence or live rituals and ceremonies and so a pair religion would be missing some of those things. So this is where pop culture comes in. And that could be repaired religion, whether that sports celebrity, your favorite TV show, media, Aberdeen's media, just like a big that covers all, YouTube and books, and everything worshipping
Preston Meyer 02:17
PewDiePie.
Katie Dooley 02:20
I mean, I think we all have our favorite YouTubers. Well, yeah, I
Preston Meyer 02:24
think if you spend enough time on YouTube, you're definitely somebody that you're going to keep going back to.
Katie Dooley 02:29
It's true, like the holy watermelon podcast, right?
Preston Meyer 02:32
Like and Subscribe. He was five star reviews. So
Katie Dooley 02:37
we're getting better this. Maybe we should start our conversation with why people worship pop culture, like religion, and maybe some similarities and differences and what that looks like. I mean, you wrote a paper on this.
Preston Meyer 02:56
I did. And I didn't actually explore the why in the paper that I wrote. But I just tried to illustrate a whole bunch of things and said, See, these people are definitely religious in their reverence for these things. Yeah, sports m...
Religion and pop culture go together like watermelons and summer. They are so intertwined, sometimes we don't even recognize the allusions anymore! Can pop culture be a religious experience? Can the love for pop culture go too far?
In this episode, we explore its core concepts. We talk about the role of God and touch on Buddhism. We question terms like "holy" and "sacred".
Our exploration continues into the complexities of religion and spirituality. We discuss the differences between righteousness and holiness and think about the challenges of understanding holy texts. We draw connections between deification and fan culture, questioning the rituals and tax-exempt status of both.
We then broaden our discussion to talk about spirituality versus religion. Exploring the wider scope of spirituality, including practices like sound therapy and LSD use. We challenge the idea that religion requires specific beliefs. Our conversation also touches on tax exemption for churches, inspired by John Oliver's humorous take. We share different views on whether churches should be tax-exempt, considering transparency and financial concerns. We end by inviting listeners to share their thoughts on this complex topic.
Book: Jesus Potter Harry Christ: The fascinating parallels between two of the world's most popular literary characters, by Derek Murphy
Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt
Join the Community on Discord
Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram
**
Preston Meyer 00:14
And welcome to the holy watermelon Podcast. I'm Kate Preston.
Katie Dooley 00:20
And what are we talking about today?
Preston Meyer 00:23
What are we talking about?
Katie Dooley 00:25
I mean, I did all the research for this episode, so I should probably introduce it. We're talking about
Preston Meyer 00:31
para religion and culture, pop
Katie Dooley 00:34
culture, as religion is the topic, but religion in pop culture will definitely come up. I think it's unavoidable. We also I'm just gonna say we have a third co host, that's my dog. So if you hear snorts or jingles, that's her, that'll just help with editing if you just know she's here. Alright, so let's get started. I guess. When I was researching this, I found a term I had never actually heard before, which was pair religion and I thought that that describe what we're talking about really well. And its definition is a secular belief system having certain aspects of religion, but not all aspects of religion. So then I had to look up what religion was because if you heard our last few episodes nobody knows.
Preston Meyer 01:27
Yeah, I think the things we covered in the last two episodes lend themselves very easily to the discussion of parrot religion.
Katie Dooley 01:35
Yes, and I Yes, all the talk arounds I guess what religion is and what Gods are basically fall under pair religion. So for morons who didn't really throw up formal religion has a belief in supernatural powers, some influence or live rituals and ceremonies and so a pair religion would be missing some of those things. So this is where pop culture comes in. And that could be repaired religion, whether that sports celebrity, your favorite TV show, media, Aberdeen's media, just like a big that covers all, YouTube and books, and everything worshipping
Preston Meyer 02:17
PewDiePie.
Katie Dooley 02:20
I mean, I think we all have our favorite YouTubers. Well, yeah, I
Preston Meyer 02:24
think if you spend enough time on YouTube, you're definitely somebody that you're going to keep going back to.
Katie Dooley 02:29
It's true, like the holy watermelon podcast, right?
Preston Meyer 02:32
Like and Subscribe. He was five star reviews. So
Katie Dooley 02:37
we're getting better this. Maybe we should start our conversation with why people worship pop culture, like religion, and maybe some similarities and differences and what that looks like. I mean, you wrote a paper on this.
Preston Meyer 02:56
I did. And I didn't actually explore the why in the paper that I wrote. But I just tried to illustrate a whole bunch of things and said, See, these people are definitely religious in their reverence for these things. Yeah, sports m...
Previous Episode
Who Let the Dogma Out?
Now that we (sorta) know what a god is, what qualifies as religion? If almost anything can be a god... can anything be a religion?!
In this episode, we discuss what religion is. Does there need to be a God to worship? Well, it’s a tricky thing to explain. There are many religions like Buddhism and Confucianism that, while they have one founder, aren’t directly worshiped like we see in the Abrahamic religions.
The foundation of the word religion (ligaments) means to be connected to something. We go over a couple of accepted definitions for religion, break them down into their parts and identify their flaws.
Is it a unified system of belief? Often there are differences within the same group. Or is religion a metaphysical moral vision?
With groups looking for tax-exempt status from the CRA and the IRS, we discuss how important it is for people to be aware of what actually counts as a religion.
And finally, is Katie actually religious? With these definitions, you might be surprised!
A good sequel to this episode is #16 Abide with Me, where we talk about parody religions.
Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt
Join the Community on Discord
Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram
**
Katie Dooley 00:11
Welcome back to the latest and greatest episode of The Holy watermelon Podcast. I'm Katie.
Preston Meyer 00:16
And I'm Preston.
Katie Dooley 00:17
And today we are having another big roundabout episode on what is religion? Do
Preston Meyer 00:24
you have an answer for that question? I don't you want to make a stab at it?
Katie Dooley 00:30
Yes, it is a belief system, a commonly shared belief system by a group of people that worship of God, please see episode two, what is a God to know how good that definition was?
Preston Meyer 00:52
Does it have to have a God? It could have multiple gods but a minimum of one.
Katie Dooley 00:57
I would say yes. But again, we know how big a god is. So we can have the church of mom and dad.
Preston Meyer 01:03
What about Buddhism?
Katie Dooley 01:06
Do they not worship the Buddha?
Preston Meyer 01:08
So that's the trick is, though Tallis Buddhism, specifically believe in a pretty cool cosmology. But there's multiple statements from Dalai Lama and whoever else that any theological study is a distraction and a waste of time, because there is no god for Buddhism
Katie Dooley 01:34
and philosophies of the person, right.
Preston Meyer 01:36
And the Buddha, of course, is a figure who is revered but not a Judeo Christian defined God, even though according to some of the definitions we came up with last time, it's not unfair to call him a god.
Katie Dooley 01:55
So we're off to a great start. Right?
Preston Meyer 01:57
All right, yeah. Not only is God tricky, but religion is tricky. And we're gonna dive into that a little bit, I
Katie Dooley 02:05
think we're gonna have another round about a PSA that will hopefully clarify more than confused.
Preston Meyer 02:13
If nothing else, you'll have something to discuss with your friends. And that's all we want at the end of this, isn't it? So there are competing schools of thoughts, of course, like in literally any other subject worth discussing. So question is, how do you define religion? I want to read to you a couple of definitions that I've got here from some well respected scholars. First is Emile Durkheim. So he defined religion as a unified system of beliefs and practices, relative to sacred things, which is super broad, but also closes things in reasonably well, I think I
Katie Dooley 02:56
feel like the word sacred is actually a problematic word in that sentence, because then we get into what does sacred mean, the definition of sacred, just like we had the definition of worship and definition of a god. I think everyone probably hold something different, sacred. I also don't like the word sacred. And maybe this is a tangent. But I think is now's a good time to dive into that. I don't like the word sacred, in general, because it means it can't be questioned. I think that's why religion today has so many problems is because you can't talk or ques...
Next Episode
From Asherah to Zhimáshén
In the study of the world's religions, religious groups are divided into two categories: Western (mostly Abrahamic religions), and Eastern (almost everything else). We're going to unpack these labels in this episode and chat about the similarities and differences between the two big categories. We also chat about everything that's left out (surprise, it's a lot).
All of the world’s religions come from Asia. Regarding the terms Eastern and Western, we are just referring to where in Asia they are from. The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) are from Western Asia (Middle East), whereas religions like Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism and Shinto are from Eastern Asia.
The labels of Eastern and Western aren’t handy anymore. You can be any religion anywhere in the world. These labels also only apply to a handful of unified world religions. It doesn’t include Indigenous religions, Animism, or other smaller pagan groups.
Eastern and Western religions can be broken down by their theological model. Eastern religions are more spiritual, typically polytheistic and have gods with niche stewardships. Their deities are very involved with specific things, but rarely involved with everything. Western religions are monotheistic, with Islam and modern Judaism being truly monotheistic while Christianity and the trinity are ideal monotheism.
In this episode, we also talk about Henotheism and how it is present in the Old Testament.
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