Religions and popular culture

With the mediatization of society comes fundamental changes in all areas of society. The omnipresence of the influence and availability of media means that religious specialists and institutions no longer have the monopoly on religious narratives, designs and practices. Religious semantics are freely available and can be interpreted, reassembled and newly distributed by individual religious actors. Under these terms the narratives, materialities and practices which are commonly understood to belong to the so-called world religions, can be taken up by popular culture, reworked, blended and (re)interpreted on a large scale. This development raises questions about changes in the genuine religious field and the reciprocal effect of popular culture and religion. The question as to how far the field of popular culture is itself transforming into religion also arises.