{"id":2207,"date":"2009-07-13T00:08:49","date_gmt":"2009-07-13T07:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=2207"},"modified":"2026-06-12T08:40:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T08:40:38","slug":"book-openers-holy-super-bowl-holy-bambi-holy-oprah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/book-openers-holy-super-bowl-holy-bambi-holy-oprah\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Openers: Gary Laderman &#8212; Holy Super Bowl, Holy Bambi, Holy Michael Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_2213\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2213\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/07\/13\/book-openers-holy-super-bowl-holy-bambi-holy-oprah\/sacred-matters-author-2009-07-10\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2213\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-2213\" title=\"sacred-matters-author-Gary-Laderman\" src=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/sacred-matters-author-2009-07-10.webp\" alt=\"Author Gary Laderman. Photo by Elizabeth Hardcastle\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2213\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Author Gary Laderman. Photo by Elizabeth Hardcastle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em>By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Author Gary Laderman sees Holy everywhere in America. That is, he sees Americans practicing &#8220;religion&#8221; all over the place &#8211; in sports stadiums, at Star Trek conventions, on &#8220;Oprah,&#8221; on pornographic websites.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>For Laderman, a professor of American Religious History and Cultures at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emory.edu\/home\/index.html\">Emory University<\/a>, religion is not so much a path to Spirit as it is an expression of the human need for ritual, myth, ineffable experiences, moral values and community.<\/p>\n<p>In the introduction to his new book, <em>Sacred <\/em><em>Matters: Celebrity Worship, Sexual Ecstasies, the Living Dead, and Other Signs of Religious Life in the United States<\/em>, Laderman makes clear that he is writing about forms of religion that are less about theology than anthropology.<\/p>\n<p>He proceeds with examples.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Film:<\/strong> Disney movies like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=nLvX-erABqY\">&#8220;Bambi&#8221;<\/a> and &#8220;Sleeping Beauty&#8221; are religious expressions &#8220;intimately tied to a desire to triumph over death.&#8221; They resonate with the most profound of human yearnings &#8211; for justice, redemption and death overcome.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sports:<\/strong> The Super Bowl is a national ritual with &#8220;flags flying, fans behaving, time passing, authorities presiding, athletes competing &#8211; the game is predicated on familiar sights . . . a predictable order of things.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Celebrity worship:<\/strong> Laderman cites <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oprah.com\/index\">Oprah<\/a> as an object of worship, &#8220;an intimate authority of sacred, spiritual matters.&#8221;\u00a0 The same goes for\u00a0Michael Jackson. In a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/Faiths\/2009\/Michael-Jacksons-Death-Funerals-Faith-and-Fame.aspx\">recent column <\/a>on beliefnet.com, Laderman writes that Michael Jackson&#8217;s fans\u00a0adored him for his contributions to their lives. &#8220;For many people these artistic, aesthetic, moral contributions were sacred in every sense of that word.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Film, music, sports, celebrity, science, medicine, violence, sexuality, death, all are &#8220;holy possibilities,&#8221; according to Laderman&#8217;s &#8211; anthropological &#8211; lights. His book is full of fascinating stuff. And Laderman&#8217;s point is well taken: Americans no longer feel they have to limit their deepest passions and yearnings to traditional, monotheistic religion.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/07\/13\/book-openers-holy-super-bowl-holy-bambi-holy-oprah\/sacred-matters-book-2009-07-12\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2214\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2214\" title=\"sacred-matters-book-by-Gary-Laderman\" src=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/sacred-matters-book-2009-07-12.webp\" alt=\"sacred-matters-book-by-Gary-Laderman\" width=\"160\" height=\"240\" \/><\/a>My problem with Laderman&#8217;s thinking here is that he presents Holy as\u00a0 a projection of the human longing for transcendence and nothing more. As if real transcendence &#8211; real union with a Sacred that is beyond human understanding and beyond scholarly study &#8211; were not a reasonable possibility.<\/p>\n<p>Still, this is a fascinating study of\u00a0deep\u00a0human\u00a0needs\u00a0&#8212; and the creative\u00a0lengths human beings will go to meet them.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Sacred Matters: Celebrity Worship, Sexual Ecstasies, the Living Dead, and Other Signs of Religious Life in the United States<\/em>, by Gary Laderman, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenewpress.com\/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=1&amp;Itemid=6\">The New Press<\/a>, 2009, hardcover, $25.95.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>For another\u00a0 take on contemporary religion, check out my post on <a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/09\/11\/book-openers-john-shelby-spong-facing-death-and-a-dead-theism\/\">&#8220;When Christianity Is Bunk.&#8221;<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Americans are practicing religion in sports stadiums, at Star Trek conventions, at Michael Jackson&#8217;s memorial, and on pornographic websites. Holy is all over the place in America, says author Gary Laderman, a professor of American Religious History and Cultures at Emory University and the author of a new book, &#8220;Sacred Matters.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,50],"tags":[324,325,326,327,328,329,330,331],"class_list":["post-2207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-openers","category-on-writing-reading","tag-celebrity-worship","tag-gary-laderman","tag-oprah","tag-religion-in-america","tag-sacred-matters","tag-sacred-michael-jackson","tag-secular-religion","tag-the-living-dead"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52777,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207\/revisions\/52777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}