Hyper-Real Religion

Hyper-Real Religion is a term coined to describe a new trend in acquiring and enacting spirituality. The term was first described in the book Religion and Popular Culture: A Hyper-Real Testament by Adam Possamai.
With hyper-real religion, elements from religions and popular culture are highly intertwined. The Church of All Worlds, The Church of Satan, and Jediism from the Star Wars series are three examples of new religious movements that have been inspired by popular culture to (re)create a religious message. There are other examples of these religious groups, such as Matrixism which is inspired by the Matrix trilogy, the Baha’i faith and psychedelic studies. These examples have a growing presence on the internet and are partly enabled by the expansion of interactions between religion and the internet. They are, borrowing Baudrillard's term, 'hyper-real' religions; that is a simulacrum of a religion partly created out of popular culture which provides inspiration/faith for believers/consumers. They are postmodern expressions of religion, likely to be consumed and individualised, and thus have more relevance to the self than to a community and/or congregation. Thus in postmodern times, the relation between people and religion/spirituality is very fluid. Possamai discusses these changes with Theofantastique:
"There is no doubt that the western world has changed since the 1960s. Some theorists call this change late modern, others postmodern. However what these social and cultural changes have brought are, among many other things, a stronger focus of individuals on themselves rather than on a community; and a breaking apart of boundaries between fields of knowledge such as between academic and everyday knowledge, and high and popular culture. Because of this greater focus on the self, because of the implosion of boundaries between spheres of knowledge, and because of the development of consumer culture in western societies with its strong culture of choice, individuals are now free to choose from almost whatever they want to construct their personal spiritualities. If, let’s say, before the 1950s, people were in majority getting the religion of their parents (a sort of inherited menu when it comes to religious practice), now people tend to have various experiences and choose the religion/spirituality they want (in a sort of choosing a à-la-carte style) across various spheres of knowledge. With the New Age spiritualities of the 1980s and 1990s, it was common to pick-and-choose from various religions and philosophies to construct a spirituality that gives sense to an individual. With religions such as Jediism and Matrixism, the realm of choice has been extended from religion and philosophies to reach popular culture".
On the other hand religious fundamentalist groups tend, at times, to resist this synergy between popular culture and religion . They do this by re-appropriating or resisting popular culture in promoting their own religion. Examples of this reappropriation are Christian super-hero comics and role playing games, Bible-based PC games, and 'White Metal' music . Through his analysis, Possamai found 4 types of reactions from more conservative religious groups towards the use of popular culture for religious purposes . The first one is resistance to popular culture where fundamentalist groups openly opposes youngsters reading and watching Harry Potter and Pokemon, or playing Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). This is because of fear that when they are older, these youth might be tempted by Satanism and Dark Paganism. The second type is re-evaluation of popular culture in which these groups discuss what is good in global popular culture and what is bad for their religion. They simply make comments without attempting to police these forms of popular culture. In the re-appropriation of popular culture type, some more conservative groups finance their own works of popular culture for evangelical purposes. They have, for example, created Christian D&D, computer games, and superheroes comics with a strong Christian message. The last type is meta-resistance to popular culture. Some people within these groups see themselves as Christian but like to enjoy global popular culture without being tempted to leave their committed Christian beliefs. They want fundamentalist groups to know that they play, for example, non Christian D&D or like Goth Culture (such a ChristianGoth.Com) and that there is nothing wrong with them doing these things, as they are deeply committed to Christianity.
Thus if modernity brought the disenchantment of the world, as Max Weber puts it, postmodernity is re-enchanting the world not only through this proliferation of 'subjective myths' (myths that are relevant to the self) but also through the expansion of consumerism as the work of Ritzer points out in his McDonaldization thesis. However, although these factors re-enchant the world, some people involved in this McDonalised Occult culture might become blasé about this proliferation of myths and religious commodities, and might themselves become disenchanted with the consumerist aspect of their own spirituality. Although our western society is being re-enchanted, there is also the paradoxical effect that this re-enchantment pushes some people towards a disenchanted state of mind .

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