Many religious bumper stickers have a straightforward, serious message. I have put these into three categories: “Christian How-to,” “Christian Spiritual,” and “Defensively Christian.” (A large percentage of the bumper stickers pertaining to other religions, particularly Buddhism, would fall into the spiritual category; however, since the great majority of the stickers relate to Christianity there will be a section later exploring the contexts in which bumper stickers from other religions are seen at all, since they are comparatively rarer).
In the context of Clifford Geertz’s definition of religion- “a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic-“ bumper stickers and other such “popular religion” items play an interesting role, allowing the system of symbols of a religion a new mode of expression with which to permeate the consciousness of the general public.
No comments:
Post a Comment