Jesus of the Silver Screen

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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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...