From Cold War spies to electoral spectacles, conspiracy theories to country singers, the papers on this panel all examine explosive phenomena unfolding at the intersection of religion, politics and popular culture. Each author diagnoses the polarized present through cases that explore the entanglement of political ritual, state power, and religious anxiety.
This paper will explore the religious dynamics of the Cold War geo-political construction of “brainwashing.” Its analysis centers on two cultural texts—one public, one classified—whose juxtaposition suggests an underexplored religious dimension in apparently secular sites of American geo-political strategy during the Cold War. This paper will examine journalist Edward Hunter’s highly influential exposé, Brain-Washing in Red China (1951) alongside a previously classified script of a CIA training film on hypnosis entitled The Black Art (1953). These two cultural texts rely on Orientalist tropes to articulate mind-control as a secret, mysterious technique of enemy influence akin to malevolent magic. Comparing these two texts thus presents an opportunity to redeploy the ancient concept of maleficium, the magic art of “evil-doing,” as an analytical framework. In so doing, I will argue that reconceptualizing brainwashing as a Cold War maleficium reveals unexamined religious dimensions animating the enduring image of mind-control.
This paper is the first to provide a systematic analysis of the theology of the Appalachian singer and songwriter Tyler Childers and to explore how Childers' music and biography both reflects, and contributes to, constructing contemporary religious, regional, and political identities in the United States. Childers' music and popularity are significant to religious studies because attention to his music, videos, biography, and fan base can help us better understand the complex interplay between religious, regional, class, and political identities at a time when democratic backsliding and authoritarian creep is a significant threat. Childers' theology consistently engages complex religious themes at the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, addiction, church, and the afterlife, but does so in a way that is compelling both with the rural white southerners and also embraced by a diverse group of listeners that do not fit the typical country music consumer demographics.
Employing the analysis of professional wresting developed by Roland Barthes in his influential essay, “The World of Wrestling” (1972), this paper contends that American voters, like a professional wrestling audience, are not interested in facts, but desire a public spectacle in which good triumphs over evil. Given the vagaries of the Electoral College, the influence of dark money in elections, and the increasing role of the Supreme Court plays in validating or determining election outcomes, many Americans believe the electoral process, like a professional wrestling match, is rigged. An analysis of the symbols and rituals of professional wresting provides a lens through which we can analyze the American electoral process as a rigged public spectacle intended to reinforce cultural and national narratives of American triumphalism embodied in images of masculinity, violence, and power.