The Bible in and Popular Culture: A Creative Encounter (Semeia Studies)

218 Pages·2010·1.05 MB·English

by  Philip Culbertson

The Bible in/and Popular Culture
A Creative Encounter
Semeia Studies
General Editor:
Gerald O. West
Editorial Board:
Jione Havea
Jennifer L. Koosed
Tat-siong Benny Liew
Jeremy Punt
Erin Runions
Ken Stone
Caroline Vander Stichele
Elaine M. Wainwright
Number 65
The Bible in/and Popular Culture
A Creative Enounter
edited by
Philip Culbertson and Elaine M. Wainwright
THE BIBLE IN/AND POPULAR CULTURE
A CREATIVE ENCOUNTER
Edited by
Philip Culbertson and Elaine M. Wainwright
Society of Biblical Literature
Atlanta
THE BIBLE IN/AND POPULAR CULTURE
A CREATIVE ENCOUNTER
Copyright © 2010 by the Society of Biblical Literature
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by
means of any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permit-
ted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission
should be addressed in writing to the Rights and Permissions Office, Society of Biblical
Literature, 825 Houston Mill Road, Atlanta, GA 30329 USA.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Bible in/and popular culture : creative encounter / edited by Elaine M. Wainwright
and Philip Culbertson.
p. cm. — (Society of Biblical Literature semeia studies ; 65)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58983-493-4 (paper binding : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58983-494-1
(electronic library copy)
1. Bible—Influence. 2. Popular culture—Religious aspects. 3. Arts and religion. I.
Wainwright, Elaine Mary, 1948- II. Culbertson, Philip Leroy, 1944- III. Title: Bible in
popular culture. IV. Title: Bible and popular culture.
BS538.7.B525 2010
220.09182'109045—dc22
2010016749
Printed on acid-free, recycled paper
conforming to ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) and ISO 9706:1994
standards for paper permanence.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
Elaine M. Wainwright
TexTs and Their afTerlives in liTeraTure: a frame
Some Novel Remarks about Popular Culture and Religion: Salman
Rushdie and the Adaptation of Sacred Texts 13
Michael J. Gilmour
TexTs and Their afTerlives in music and OTher mulTimedia
Red Dirt God: Divine Silence and the Search for Transcendent Beauty in
the Music of Emmylou Harris 29
Mark McEntire
“Here, There, and Everywhere”: Images of Jesus in American Popular
Culture 41
Dan W. Clanton Jr.
’Tis a Pity She’s (Still) a Whore: Popular Music’s Ambivalent Resistance to
the Reclamation of Mary Magdalene 61
Philip Culbertson
Spittin’, Cursin’, and Outin’: Hip-Hop Apocalypse in the Imperial
Necropolis 81
Jim Perkinson
The Bible and Reggae: Liberation or Subjugation? 97
Noel Leo Erskine
“Help Me Make It through the Night”: Narrating Class and Country Music
in the Theology of Paul 111
Tex Sample
-v-
vi THE BIBLE IN/AND POPULAR CULTURE
Jesus of the Moon: Nick Cave’s Christology 127
Roland Boer
Prophetic Voices in Graphic Novels: The “Comic and Tragic Vision” of
Apocalyptic Rhetoric in Kingdom Come and Watchmen 141
Terry Ray Clark
Reading “Pop-Wise”: The Very Fine Art of “Making Do” When Reading
the Bible in bro’Town 157
Steve Taylor
TexTs and Their afTerlives in liTeraTure again: a frame
Daemons and Angels: The End of the World According to Philip
Pullman 175
Tina Pippin
responses
Close Encounters: The Bible as Pre-Text in Popular Culture 189
Laura Copier, Jaap Kooijman, and Caroline Vander Stichele
Pop Scripture: Creating Small Spaces for Social Change 197
Erin Runions
Contributors 203
Index 207
Acknowledgments
This volume of essays had its origin in a course, The Bible in Popular
Culture, co-taught at the University of Auckland by the editors. Philip and
I wish to thank all of our students in 2006 and 2007 whose engagement with
the course material and undertaking of creative assignments stretched our
knowledge and imagination considerably. Emily Colgan and Jayson Rhodes,
postgraduate students who tutored in the course, brought both new resources
and creative insights and we are grateful for their ongoing engagement with us
in exploring the intersection between the Bible and popular culture.
My special thanks go to Dr. Philip Culbertson, who has undertaken the
major part of the editorial task even though he is no longer formally engaged
in tertiary education. His attention to detail and his relentless following
through on all aspects of the editorial role have brought this volume to a very
satisfactory conclusion.
-vii-

Introduction
Elaine M. Wainwright
I wonder … whether we Bible scholars shall be brave enough to focus on the
Bible’s heritage in our culture… . [T]he gain of doing cultural/biblical stud-
ies so-called, outside organized religion especially, may be enormous. Who
knows, this way the Bible may continue to exist as a book for life, an identity
cultural marker. Redefining it as a cultural commodity which, yes, also hap-
pens to be a religious book may save the Bible from popular oblivion. And it
may save us Bible scholars from socio-political insignificance too—while al-
lowing for great fun, of the serious and the light-headed types, in the process.
(Brenner 2000, 11)
These words of Athalya Brenner in her foreword to Culture, Entertainment and
the Bible (2000) provided a significant challenge to biblical scholars—an invita-
tion to a reading of the Bible outside “organized religion,” a reading of the Bible
as “cultural/biblical studies.” Her challenge remains valid today, almost a decade
later, even though many such readings have been undertaken in the interim, and
so her words provide a fitting opening to this collection of essays in which biblical
scholars engage with the Bible in/as popular culture in ways that are both serious
and fun.
That biblical scholars are engaging with popular culture is evident in the
almost four-hundred-page volume Teaching the Bible through Popular Culture
and the Arts, published in 2007, in which Mark Roncace and Patrick Gray engage
not only a number of biblical scholars with experience in this nexus of Bible and
popular culture but also a range of popular media and the arts: music, film, art,
literature, and other media such as comics and television shows. Roncace and
Gray provide a compendium of resources for those teaching biblical studies in
today’s classrooms. What they do not provide, however, is a theoretical engage-
ment with the very nexus itself—the Bible in/as/and popular culture—also an
essential tool for those who teach in this area. One of the surprising aspects of this
is that, given the penchant in biblical studies for hermeneutical and methodologi-
-1-
2 THe BIBle In/And POPulAR culTuRe
cal issues, there is as yet no systematic study of the interrelationship between the
Bible and popular culture.
Such a lacuna does not exist in theology and religious studies. Just by way of
example, two books appeared in 2005 addressing theology and popular culture.
In The Blackwell Guide to Theology and Popular Culture, Kelton cobb engaged
with theories of popular culture in dialogue with a theological framework as the
foundation from which to analyze a range of popular media and their conveying
of theological meaning. Gordon lynch, on the other hand, in his Understanding
Theology and Popular Culture, also published by Blackwell, drew more heavily on
cultural theorists, such as Adorno, Bourdieu, Barthes, and certeau, as well as a
three-pronged framework of author-focused, text-based, and audience-centered
approaches familiar to biblical scholars, to examine the theology/popular-culture
nexus. In the following year, 2006, Adam Possamai published his Religion and
Popular Culture: A Hyper-Real Testament.
The title of Roland Boer’s 1999 book, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door: The Bible
and Popular Culture, promised just such an analysis in relation to biblical studies.
He, however, makes clear the very explicit and limited dimensions of his work
when he says in the introduction:
My effort in this book does not seek biblical dimensions in contemporary
cultural products as such, nor does it restrict itself to the application of cul-
tural theories to the Bible, nor is it interested in explicit representations of the
Bible in contemporary culture. Rather it juxtaposes biblical and other cul-
tural texts and it does so from the perspective of dialectical Marxism. (Boer
1999, 1–2)
The need for a more general theoretical framework/s remained.
What biblical scholars have done is to turn their attention to the representa-
tion of biblical figures, biblical themes, even biblical genres in popular culture,
with the most explicit attention being directed to the Bible and film (see, by way
of example, from a wide range of titles: Aichele and Walsh 2002; Reinhartz 2003,
2007; Runions 2003; Shepherd 2008; and the many books examining Mel Gibson’s
The Passion of the Christ, such as corley and Webb 2004; Beal and linafelt 2006;
and Fredriksen 2006). That this aspect of the Bible-and-popular-culture nexus
has developed or is developing significant theoretical frameworks of analysis is
evident in the words of christopher Fuller in his review of the most recent publi-
cation, Images of the Word: Hollywood’s Bible and Beyond (Shepherd 2008):
Whereas past studies have tended to focus on story at the expense of visual
analysis, these essays demonstrate that the study of the Bible and film has
matured into … a beautiful friendship. The greater awareness of film history,