Review of "The Routledge Companion to Religion and Popular Culture," Edited by John C. Lyden and Eric Michael Mazur
Routledge: New York, 2015, $240.00
The Routledge Companion series provide an overview to the study of a wide range of fields, approaches, topics, and figures. The Companion volumes typically provide an introduction to the subject matter which puts the current discussion in a historical context, offer a structure for organizing the discussion of the topic, and essays by authors from a variety of perspectives within their organizing structure. Though typically too expensive to use as textbooks, the volumes have developed a reputation as rich and trustworthy introductions of a topic that bring together diverse voices in the field and serve as helpful research sources.
The Routledge Companion to Religion and Popular Culture illustrates the breadth of attention scholars who study religion are giving to popular culture and provides an opportunity to reflect on the range and development of this discourse. It should quickly become a standard source book for those interested in the topic and belongs in the libraries of colleges, seminaries, and universities where the subject is being taught or researched. The editors are respected figures in the study of religion and popular culture: Lyden is known particularly for his contributions to the study of religion and film and Mazur as the editor of one of the standard textbooks on religion and popular culture.
In Part I, Lyden and Mazur offer introductory essays discussing the development of interest in religion and popular culture, speculate about the reasons for attention to the topic, and consider its growing acceptance as a scholarly topic over the last twenty-five years. These are useful essays that put the rest of the volume in context.
I do, however, raise a couple of cautions about the editors’ portrayal of the discussion of religion and popular culture today. First, the editors give attention to the longstanding complaint that the study of popular culture has not been respected in the academy. There was clearly a time when religious studies resisted attention to popular culture, but it is hard to sustain the argument today. Presentations related to popular culture appear in many AAR/SBL groups, and journals and many books on the topic give evidence to its place in academic discourse. Indeed it is the popularity of the topic with both scholars and students that demonstrates the need for this volume. It seems more accurate to note that popular culture studies are a part of a broader trend that focuses on religion in everyday life.
Secondly, as is increasingly common, the editors discuss the attention to religion and popular culture as though it marked the emergence of a new field. But, this area of study has no distinctive methodologies. It draws, as the volume demonstrates, on religious, literary, media, and cultural studies. Would it not be more accurate to think of the interface of religion and popular culture as an important location for the interdisciplinary study of religion rather than as a field?
