Dorothy, We’re Not in Kansas Anymore:
Religion and Popular Culture
First in a Three Part Series
The Rev. Joanne Sanders
Stanford Memorial Church
August 10, 2008
ENTERTAINMENT THEOLOGY
MOVIES, MEDIA, MUSIC AND MEANING
One of my favorite movies is Chocolat. A woman and her daughter move into a
small French community and open a chocolate store. The store opens with
Sunday hours, which causes a clash with the rigid morality of the church
centered community. The community is pious, but it is also riddled with judgment
and callousness and it is precisely their religion that has made them this way.
Vianne (played by Juliet Binoche) the chocolatier becomes a vehicle for change
in the community, her simple devotion to chocolate becoming a lightning rod for
renewal.
I enjoy movies as I suspect many of you do too. They can be (though clearly not
all) a window into our lives, our hearts, and truthfully, for good or for ill, are both
direct and subtle about what it means to be human.
But I confess - I don’t use Facebook and I haven’t “been friended” as far as I
know. I’ve only recently been on YouTube. I don’t blog, (yet) but I do own an IPod and I know how to text message, barely. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, I
occasionally feel as though I’m caught up in a tornado and set down in an
unfamiliar, but enticingly curious place. No, we’re definitely not in Kansas
anymore.
So given what I consider to be my relative amateur status in the middle of a
vibrant, hip university campus, why this particular series on Religion and Popular
Culture?
Because I do think it has something to say to us about renewal and the need for
it – a timeless truth for what it means to be human. And summer also seems to
be a good time to talk about that.
Remember (well maybe not) what notable American singer songwriter Bob Dylan
wrote in 1963? For the times they are a-changin’ (you better start swimming or
you’ll sink like a stone) and later in 2000: Things have changed (the human mind
can only stand so much).
Directly and indirectly or vicariously, as I’ve consulted with authors, theologians,
publications, conferences, movies, music and even You Tube over the course of
the summer, I’ve learned that there’s a new mood in the air, a new interest in
religion and the nature of belief in what it means to be human. Some refer to it
as “The Great Emergence” when every 500 years or so religion, the church, and
the world experience huge social, political, economic and cultural shifts. So what
does this revolutionary evolution mean for the religiously devout, the skeptics,
even the spiritually marginalized of all sorts?
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Dorothy, We’re Not in Kansas Anymore:
Religion and Popular Culture
First in a Three Part Series
The Rev. Joanne Sanders
Stanford Memorial Church
August 10, 2008
Thought the interest in religion or the nature of belief may not be anything
especially new, this great emergence may reveal that the balance of power has
clearly shifted in our culture. As one writer put it: “a growing number of people
are increasingly unwilling simply to accept the pronouncements of institutions,
whether they be religious, political or otherwise and are instead looking to
themselves, virtual communities, to their peers and particularly to alternative
resources like the web and contemporary media, in order to create new means
for grappling with questions of ultimate reality.” Recall that Time Magazine
declared in 2006 the Person of the Year to be You. You, as in me, you, all of us.
A computer terminal was featured on the cover, a metallic screen reflecting the
image of the person looking into it. “Time’s editors,” writes author and artist
Barry Taylor, overlooked a host of significant events and people in 2006 to
acknowledge the growing phenomenon of people powered culture shaping.”
This is not to say that the day of traditional institutions is over, but it is to say that
those institutions no longer have the last word or hold the authoritative sway they
once did. It all remains a work in progress.
While religions such as Christianity and Islam still attract billions of followers and
continue to shape and influence much of the world’s religious thought and
perspectives, what’s really going on? Is there yet another religious horizon to be
grappled with?
“The spiritual landscape, rather than the religious tradition, has become the
arena for theological exploration. And the theological excursion may no longer
begin with God and work downward; rather, it will originate in the human
experience of searching and seeking and move outward to embrace ever wider
horizons of life and reality,” wrote Diarmuid O’Murchu in Quantum Theology.
My point in all of this is not to suggest whether this is good or bad, but to say that
it is the time and place we find ourselves in and we best be in conversation with
this reality, reluctantly or not. And my 15 minutes will soon be up. But this
conversation will be a common thread in my sermon series, followed by Religion
and Sports (in true Olympic spirit) next week and concluding with a proverbial
question - so now what? --- and a return to God.
When I say we, and conversation, I’m generally referring to religion and both its
skeptics and advocates; even more specifically to Christianity, both categories to
which I identify strongly, willingly and passionately. Like many, I’m concerned
and perplexed by the fact that with the rise of religious fundamentalism in many
forms and inadvertently traditional religions as a source of conflict, we risk
teetering on the brink of extinction at the worst, or shamefully irrelevant at the
least.
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Dorothy, We’re Not in Kansas Anymore:
Religion and Popular Culture
First in a Three Part Series
The Rev. Joanne Sanders
Stanford Memorial Church
August 10, 2008
As a current case study, the two week bishops meeting of the Lambeth
Conference in England that just concluded further illustrates that religion in its
manifestation as the worldwide Anglican Church (one degree of separation, or
some would argue zero degrees from the Episcopal Church in the US in which I
am ordained) – is wrought with tension, debate and schism. This is only one
example – there are dozens more.
Will these kinds of examples be the limited focus of religious thought and
reflection well into the future? It is likely and probable, but I hope not. I am
nonetheless hopeful that religion, including Christianity, will be able to stand the
tests of time and genuinely able to prove itself again and again as a viable
contributor to the human search for God and an obligation to repair the world.
But there are some inherent risks involved in that process.
Our images from Scripture today are instructive. Theologians suggest that the
prophet Ezekiel’s vision of being led into water, eventually going deeper and
deeper into its currents until reaching a place where one could not touch the
bottom and had to swim to avoid drowning is a metaphor: it is easy to play with
God in the shallows where we can feel and know the current of the river but do
not really face the current of the river. Ironically, when the prophet left the shore
to enter the water, the earth around him was dry and barren. Upon returning
from the deep waters, the earth along the river had become lush and rich.
Perhaps this suggests that what we hold on to prevents us from the blossoming
and experiencing of new life. Renewal beckons.
Some might call it blossoming, others may call it chaos. It feels, at times, like a
raging storm. How ironic that the gospel for today illustrates a big storm, people
straining without success, an absence – a set-up for a new kind of faith perhaps.
The story in Mark is that the disciples were trying to manage the wind by
themselves. They looked up and there Jesus was. There but not recognized. In
a place and a form other than habitual. You would have thought they would
welcome him. But he scared them. He scared them more than the storm,
because in the storm Jesus appears in forms that are not immediately
recognizable. He turns out in the storm beyond their categories. Hope emerges.
This is our true situation while the old order of Western civilization deteriorates.
Some welcome the change, many are threatened by it.
The good news about chaos is that it usually goes hand in hand with creativity.
We do need new hearts, new ears, new eyes, and deep memory. We need
sharpened abilities to engage and interpret popular culture, rather than resist it.
In the process, we may have to put up with more chaos and lack of clarity in
interpreting the relationship and relevance of religion and popular culture. And it
will take some courage to break with the habitual and the familiar. It requires a
new permeability. Popular culture in a way invites us to a participatory theology
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Dorothy, We’re Not in Kansas Anymore:
Religion and Popular Culture
First in a Three Part Series
The Rev. Joanne Sanders
Stanford Memorial Church
August 10, 2008
– or God-talk - where elements of the religious emerge in our present situation
and engages in dialogue with it.
What I hope as we begin and conclude this series two Sundays from now is that
we will understand and appreciate one of the more surprising dynamics of
Western cultural life today – in fact, a return to God. Clearly, this return is not
reminiscent of the good old days of premodern concepts or traditions, but a
movement in a forward direction. It is a return that must not only recognize, but
also embrace a new understanding of the religious dynamic in popular culture.
To redraw the line of holiness or religion for that matter is to take it out of its safe,
conventional house and let it interact with the world as it is and not as we think it
should be. This is not to dismiss or negate. It is simply to assert a new order of
engagement.
Dorothy gets up from the bed where she has been lying and walks toward the
front door of the house. When the door opens, something new meets her eyes:
glorious Technicolor. The dull grayness of Kansas has been replaced with the
vibrant colors of Oz. Stepping out into this exotic world, she utters words that
become so familiar they are a part of our Western vernacular: Toto, I have a
feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
Ready to walk through the door?
Notes:
Sojourners Magazine, The Great Emergence, Phyllis Tickle, August 2008.
Walter Brueggemann; Inscribing the Text; Augsburg Fortress, 2004.
Barry Taylor; Entertainment Theology: New Edge Spirituality in a Digital Democracy;
Baker Academic, 2008.
Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch; The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission
for the 21st Century Church; Hendrickson Publishers, 2003.
Envision Conference, Princeton University, June, 2008.
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