Christianity and Pop Culture – Celia Warrick

A favourite rallying-cry of the more right-wing members of UK society is that “Christianity is under fire,” that the media is unwavering in it attempts to vilify and denigrate the faith of the country and instead genuflect towards ‘foreign’ religions (because we all know that Jesus was born in Sawbridgeworth…) like Islam and Hinduism. Well, usually just Islam. As a member of a liberal Vicarage family I read these comments on social media in absolute disbelief and think: how did we get here? The Christianity that I know recognises no man-made boundaries and thinks little of jealousy. In this brief essay I hope to do the following: give pop culture examples of things that (rightly or wrongly) are seen as offensive to Christianity along with the reasons given for offence, attempt to understand why Christians may feel like this and to suggest how we can deal with balancing these opinions in the RE classroom (broadening out to the study of any religion).

To illustrate my points I have three examples from popular culture of material that has caused offence to Christians, probably examples that you have either seen or are tangentially aware of. These are far from the only examples of religious offence of even Christian offence to be found in modern culture – religious groups have found issue with everything from gay relationships in soaps to Harry Potter – but they do cover various rationales for finding offence.

1.         A few years ago, to the shock and offence of many Christians, aliens invaded     Manchester Cathedral. Well, they invaded via people’s video game consoles into a digital representation of Manchester Cathedral, but the damage was done nonetheless. The bishop of Manchester at the time called for the game that featured    these sequences (Resistance: Fall of Man) to be banned, claiming that the inclusion of the cathedral as a setting for violent gun battles (particularly as Manchester was having a large problem with gun crime at the time) was “beyond belief and highly irresponsible.”[1] In the end, the game wasn’t withdrawn and the extra publicity from the controversy probably resulted in a few thousand extra copies of the game being sold. Indeed, some say that tourist visits to Manchester Cathedral (particularly from teenagers discovering that the building isn’t a work of fiction) has increased since then.

2.         More recently another branch of Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church, has been in outrage due to the mocking of a fundamental part of Catholic belief – the celibacy of priests – in an advert for ice cream. The Antonio Federici ad campaign included, amongst a couple of other dubious images, a picture of two males priests about to kiss with the message “We believe in salivation.”[2] While it only attracted six official complaints, the offence was serious enough for the Advertising Standards Authority to ban the ad alongside the other risqué images in the campaign (which included a     pregnant nun) as it was felt that the ice cream company had been mocking the religion.

3.         My last example is rather more vague, but perhaps more widespread. The initialism    ‘OMG’ is found a lot in pop culture, and is cropping up increasingly in adverts (such as the Caramel Kit Kat Chunky with the slightly strange strapline: OMG! My chunky just got funky[3]). It’s a matter of common knowledge that the three letters usually stand for ‘Oh my God,’ although usually used in a more excitable way and more beloved of teenage girls. Due to its origins, many Christians find its use in pop culture offensive, citing it as an example of the wearing away of the moral standards of our ‘Christian country’.

The question is though, why are people finding these things offensive, and if it’s clear that Christians find these things distasteful why are ad agencies and game studios continuing to use religious themes?

I’ll get to the first question in due course, but I think that the second one is actually fairly easy to answer. According to tradition, parliament and the monarchy, we live in a Christian country. Of course, we no longer have to be Christian in order to live here, but it does mean that the vast majority of UK citizens are very familiar with the tropes and traditions of mainstream Christianity. Like all things that we are familiar and comfortable with, it’s very easy for it to become part of the background of our lives and therefore something we find it easy to be flippant about. The Resistance: Fall of Man example shows this kind of attitude quite well: we are so used to cathedrals as part of the UK landscape that maybe we don’t realise they need to be treated differently to shopping malls and car parks. For those who care deeply about aspects of their faith this isn’t something that happens, and so it can be hard to understand why others may take things less seriously. This leads to a few different issues for Christians who may feel that their faith is being undermined.

Firstly, there’s an element of fear that the gradual encroachment of elements that don’t take Christianity seriously may work to erode parts of the faith until the whole religion is subject to ridicule. It’s why the use of ‘OMG’ can be seen as offensive to some – it’s not the three letters themselves (the G could stand for God, but also goodness, gosh, grapes…) but what they could represent and how allowing this could allow for blasphemy and then flat-out ridicule to be commonplace. It’s a sort of ‘slippery-slope’ argument that demonstrates how the landscape of society could change in the near future. I think that this fear is misplaced though – if the Antonio Federici situation shows anything, it shows that even if a manufacturer does go too far there are measures in place to make sure that no-one is caused serious offence. ‘OMG’ may not be welcomed by Christians, but it reflects generally accepted standards that won’t be allowed to go too far.

For some, the reassurance that pop culture won’t be allowed to go ‘too far’ might not be enough – after all, for them the phrase “oh my God” is already a blasphemous phrase too far. It’s thrown into perspective when they notice that other religions are not treated in the same manner. A concern over the use of Christian imagery in pop culture is often “would this be acceptable if it were Buddha/Allah/Muhammad?” This belies a certain fear that there is an extra sensitivity to other religions that Christianity isn’t being allowed to share in. To some degree this may be true, and that has a lot to do with the idea of people being comfortable with Christianity – they know roughly how far they can push the boundaries without getting into trouble, and that if they go too far there won’t be too much to answer for. With less familiar religions these boundaries are not so well known and so are stayed much further from. However, this perceived over-sensitivity is not necessarily the most accurate view of the situation. The Sofa Factory in Birmingham found themselves at the sharp end of the ASA when they used the Sikh holy figure Guru Nanak and some sacred verses to sell sofas[4]. While there may be more sensitivity to other religions, it’s not necessarily as much as first appears, and when there is there may be several cultural reasons for it.

Finally, I think that there is a huge variety of ways in which Christians see their faith. I’ve used the word ‘some’ throughout this article for a very good reason – not all Christians will feel the same way about this issues in pop culture because, of course, every Christian is an individual with their own subtle take on the myriad elements of their faith. In Craig Detweiler’s Halos & Avatars: Playing Video Games With God Chris Hansen proposes his own theory about faith. The ‘movie generation’ is used to narratives that have a set story – one linear path to follow – and their faith often reflects this in an exclusivist way, with no room for other inputs. In contrast, the current ‘video games’ generation is used to the idea that we can end up at the same conclusion with different ways of getting there, like one would in a video game (same narrative but different players go about things in different ways). These people have a faith that is open to different interpretations that will ultimately land in the same place, a more pluralistic view. I think this is summed up by the ChurchAds recent ‘God Baby’ poster – representing Jesus as a baby doll with the tagline “He cries. He wees. He saves the world.” The Daily Mail ran an article[5] explaining why many Christians were angry at this representation of God, feeling it was mocking and blasphemous. At the same time, other Christians felt that this was a poster showing the humanity of Jesus and tied in nicely to the anti-consumerist message by presenting Jesus as a piece of the materialist clutter that surrounds Christmas. For me, this explains why it’s so hard for creators of pop culture to tread the right line between reflecting mainstream ideas that often treat Christianity as part of the cultural furniture, and making sure that no-one is seriously offended – there is no real consensus about what is acceptable for religious believers and what isn’t.

So, we’ve determined that there are certain aspects of pop culture that some Christians (or other religious believers) may have reason to find offensive. We’ve examined why these might be occurring, the reasons why people may take offence and why these reasons may occasionally be misplaced or misunderstood. What is important to us as RE practitioners, however, is understanding how we can help students to learn to recognise boundaries and to understand why some elements of popular culture may cause offence to some but not others. I think that there are three main strands to covering this.

Firstly, I think it’s important to cover the general ideas of religious offence. Organisations such as Ofcom, the Advertising Standards Authority and the BBFC have guidelines that they use to prevent or ban material that may cause offence on religious grounds, and these can be great classroom resources. Often the students that we teach will not be aware of exactly what could cause offence (many is the time I’ve reprimanded a teenager for using ‘gay’, ‘retard’ or ‘spazz’ as an insult only to be met with confusion over what exactly was wrong with that), but by introducing them to these guidelines and showing them some examples to evaluate for themselves we can help to counter this and foster an understanding of what is meant by offence. The examples I’ve used in this article are a good starting place, but there are other places to look: Ofcom publishes a broadcast bulletin every week outlining complaints about TV programmes and what action it feels is necessary[6], the BBFC has various education resources and articles[7] and the ASA publishes rulings about adverts every Wednesday[8]. Obviously complaints and adjudications by these bodies will cover much more than religious offence, but a little hunting will turn up good examples.

Secondly I think that it’s important to examine the differences between religions to help students understand more about why some faiths and cultures may find some things more offensive than others do. For example, in order to understand why the infamous Danish cartoon of a few years ago was so offensive, students need to be aware that the depiction of Muhammad in any way has been forbidden for centuries, and to present him as a terrorist is therefore a serious anti-Islamic statement in the eyes of the community. If people understand the different boundaries that religions have, it’s easier to get rid of the “but they wouldn’t be allowed to do this to Buddha…” mentality. For example, the Sofa Factory ad that used sacred Sikh verses to sell furniture is much more offensive than the many Christmas carols used in commercials around the festive period because, while all are religious songs, they are used in different ways, have entered our culture to different degrees and, most importantly, are valued in different ways and amounts within the faith structure. Being someone who loves a good spreadsheet, I would do this by creating a table to compare faiths with categories like ‘depiction of God’ and ‘use of scripture’, but it could be done in more creative ways of course. Seeing this will help students to understand that religions aren’t just different because of different languages or history, but that variations run deep all sides and that judging matters of offence can be extremely complicated.

Finally, there’s a more general lesson to be learned in this matter, one that comes up frequently in our lives and those of our students – the difference between fair and equal. When I was first creating differentiated resources I would always worry that it would single out some kids for ‘special treatment’, that others would either mock them or say “Why does he get help? That’s not fair!” It wasn’t until fairly recently that I discovered others had these concerns and had used them as a teaching point. In essence one would assume that everybody should be treated equally – this is what we have equal rights for after all. However, one could then ask if a child with dyslexia should be treated exactly equally to a child without this impairment – then the answer becomes no, as that wouldn’t be fair. This is a lesson that perhaps we need to be proactive in teaching children: most of the time equal is very fair, occasionally it isn’t. When talking about religious offence this distinction becomes very important. If we were to treat all matters equally, then it would be ok to depict Jesus, Allah, Buddha and Guru Nanak. However, it would not be fair to Islam in this instance because the religion specifically forbids this. This may raise uncomfortable questions about where we draw the boundaries, but I think that these are questions that must at least be acknowledged even if they can’t be answered. For what it’s worth, the organisations mentioned above take care to ensure that variation in religious doctrine and cultural attitudes to those elements are taken into account for matters of religious offence. This is a tricky lesson for students to learn, and it may be a while before it can be united with other matters like religious offence, but it could help to make a more open-minded set of teenagers who can think critically about different world views.

The realm of religious offence is a minefield, and it’s particularly difficult when you consider the interplay between religions with different histories in the same society. In order to make judgements we have to bring together the strands of religion and culture, history and society, and we need to furnish students with the ability to do this so that they can engage sensitively with these issues in their own lives. For the foreseeable future at least, we know that Christianity will continue to be part of our cultural furniture, and that people will continue to push the boundaries. As we get used to other religions growing in our society the same thing might happen there too – in fact, it will be interesting to see what pop culture does as multiculturalism continues to flourish. Examining religious offence is a way to help our students open up to the deep differences in religions that, on the surface, they might feel familiar with, and can also help them to understand the content of some of the pop culture around them.