Andreas Häger

Åbo Akademi University · Department of Sociology

This open access book offers a systematic overview of the relations between comics and religion from the perspective of cultural sociology. How do comics function in religions? How does religion appear in comics? How does the reading of comics relate to rituals, ethics, and worldviews? And how do graphic narratives inform us about contemporary soci...

The topic of this chapter is the media discussion of a Finnish case of child sexual abuse within conservative religion. Religion and child sexual abuse have been a major topic in media coverage not least of Catholicism in the English-speaking world. Although this case deals with a different national and cultural context and a different religious gr...

This chapter looks at the use of comedic elements in external church communication and reactions to this use. The main example is a tweet from the Church of Sweden. Different possible functions of comedy in church communication are discussed. The most fundamental function of religious comedy is the establishment of a sense of community among the gr...

Bob Dylan’s brief overt involvement in Christianity, his Jewish background, as well as the use of biblical material in his works, have led to a continuing discussion among fans and critics regarding his relation to religion. This relation is here studied in the context of the “rock mass.” This is a communion service, which is set to some form of po...

Religious themes and characters have lately assumed center stage in a number of Scandinavian films. As with films from other parts of the world, so also in Scandinavian films a suspicion of certain religious traditions can be observed. In Scandinavian films this is not only true of traditionally foreign religions, but for some domestic religious gr...

The theoretical starting point for my article is the concept of tran scendence in the writings of Thomas Luckmann and Alfred Schutz. Schutz describes a continuing flow of transcendences of the immediate lifeworld. Luckmann speaks of three levels of transcendence: the ‘little transcendences’ of an awareness of time and space, the ‘intermediate trans...

This article, which is located within the field of research on religion and popular culture, is a discussion of the relations of one particular rock artist, Bob Dylan, to religion. Religion can be seen as a recurring topic in Dylan’s work—particularly during a period at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, often referred to as his ‘Chri...

This article discusses Christian rock videos. Videos from a collection entitled Wow Hits 2002: the year's top Christian music videos are used as examples. The title of the collection declares that the videos are "Christian", and the question asked in the article is how this quality may be seen in the videos. How may the videos be seen as visual rep...

-One of very few books on religion and popular music -Covers a wide range of musical styles, from heavy metal and rap to country, jazz and Broadway musicals -The essays are written by academics and informed by their enthusiasm for the music Many books have explored the relationship between religion and film, but few have yet examined the significan...

Different forms of artistic expression play a vital role in religious practices of the most diverse traditions. One very important such expression is music. This paper deals with a contemporary form of religious music, Christian rock. Rock or popular music has been used within Christianity as a means for evangelization and worship since the end of...

Throughout the history of Christianity, its relationship to art has been a complicated one, concerning the use of art in worship as well as the views on "secular" art. This article deals with a current example of the latter. More specifically, the article examines some examples of Christian views on popular music. The best-known reactions to pop an...