Authentic Fakes Religion and American Popular Culture [Paperback]

Authentic Fakesexplores the religious dimensions of American popular culture in unexpected places: baseball, the Human Genome Project, Coca-Cola, rock 'n' roll, the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, the charisma of Jim Jones, Tupperware, and the free market, to name a few. Chidester travels through the cultural landscape and discovers the role that fakeryin the guise of frauds, charlatans, inventions, and simulationsplays in creating religious experience. His book is at once an incisive analysis of the relationship between religion and popular culture and a celebration of the myriad ways in which invention can stimulate the religious imagination.

Moving beyond American borders, Chidester considers the religion of McDonalds and Disney, the discourse of W.E.B. Du Bois and the American movement in Southern Africa, the messianic promise of Nelson Mandelas 1990 tour to America, and more. He also looks at the creative possibilities of the Internet in such phenomena as Discordianism, the Holy Order of the Cheeseburger, and a range of similar inventions. Arguing throughout that religious fakes can do authentic religious work, and that American popular culture is the space of that creative labor, Chidester looks toward a future pregnant with the possibilities of new kinds of authenticity.

David Chidesteris Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, author ofChristianity: A Global History(2000),Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa(1996), andSalvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown(revised edition, 2003), and coeditor ofAmerican Sacred Space(1995).Savage SystemsandSalvation and Suicideare winners of the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in Religious Studies.

Preface
Introduction
1. Planet Hollywood
2. Popular Religion
3. Plastic Religion
4. Embodielã¾