Discussion Board #8: A Move toward Modernism It has been noted that (a) contemporary music and media may be today’s myth transmitters, and (b) computers are potential tools of religious activities and experience through the web of communities, imagery, and textuality of global communication. Researchers have explored the ways in which contemporary popular culture has religious dimensions in similar ways to the religions students have studied in the course. David Chidester explores American society in this light in “The Church of Baseball, the Fetish of Coca-Cola, and the Potlatch of Rock ’n’ Roll: Theoretical Models for the Study of Religion in American Popular Culture” (Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64, no. 2 [Winter, 1996]). His research explores how commodities have penetrated religious spheres in one’s life and how advertising has become the iconography of global civilization. As Chidester remarks, “The theoretical models of religions that we have considered allow some of the strangely religious forms of popular culture—baseball, Coca Cola, and rock ’n’ roll—to become refamiliarized as if they were a religion.” A. In your opinion, how has modernism shaped and impacted religious communities? B. Has this shift been inclusive to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Persons of Color), LGBTQQIP2SSAA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer, intersex, pansexual, two-spirit (2S), androgynous and asexual), Women, and differently-abled persons?
