Signs of the Times : The Intersection Between Popular Culture and Political Theology

This book delves into the dynamic interplay of popular culture and political theology, examining three key areas of interaction: engagement with liturgy and scripture, film and television, and music. From depictions of Jesus in South Park and Family Guy to Beyoncé’s Lemonade, from cinematic scandals to portrayals of atheists and holy fools in film, from Islamic pop music to Bible-themed cookbooks and church yoga practices, this book explores how religious individuals and communities incorporate popular culture into their political theologies across diverse sets of beliefs and practices. In this way, the book heralds a renewed focus on popular culture’s theological potential and its impact on the collective imagination. This volume will captivate researchers in theology, religious studies, cultural studies, media studies, and sociology of religion, as well as general readers intrigued by religious themes in contemporary culture.

Ryszard Bobrowicz is a Visiting Professor of Comparative Law and Religion at Bonn University and a research associate at KU Leuven. His research investigates how states, religious communities, public institutions, and private organisations respond to diversity. He is also interested in exploring how individuals navigate normative pluralism. He is a co-founder and former director of »A World of Neighbours Practitioners Network«, a pan-European network of faith-based practitioners working with migration, and regularly collaborates with A World of Neighbours, the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe, and the Atlas of Religion or Belief Minority Rights. His monograph, The Politics of Multifaith: The Limits of Legible Religion in Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2024), received a “Special Mention for Excellence in Religious Studies" in the 2024 Giuseppe Alberigo Junior Prize Award.

Emil Hilton Saggau Ph.D. is a church historian currently employed as a research fellow at the section for Church History at Lund University, Sweden. Saggau graduated from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, with a thesis on the Orthodox historiography and theology of former Yugoslavia (2020). His primary area of expertise is the Eastern Orthodox churches in post-communist Eastern Europe, which he has studied as memory, popular culture and ideologies. Saggau has received the Miklós Tomka Award in 2018 and the Danish Elite Research travel grant in 2019 for his research into nationalism and religion. His newest research focuses on Eastern Orthodoxy, war, theology and politics, discussed, among others, in his recent book Nationalizing the Sacred (Peter Lang, 2024).

Jonas Otterbeck is Professor in Islamic Studies and Rasul-Walker Chair in Popular Culture in Islam at the Aga Khan University – Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, London. He recently completed a large research project on Islamically inspired pop music, especially the media company Awakening, that resulted in the monograph The Awakening of Islamic Pop Music (Edinburgh UP, 2021). His most current research discusses individual Muslim artists and their creative output. Previously, Professor Otterbeck has, among other things, published on about the situation of Muslim pupils in Swedish schools, the identity constructions of Muslim youth and their understanding of Islam, the representation of Islam and Muslims in Sweden, Islamic revivalist discourse, active citizenship among Muslims, and the relation between European states and Muslim organizations. He earned his PhD in Islamic Studies at Lund University, Sweden and has been lecturer at International migration and Ethnic Relations, Malmö University, Sweden. His publications can be found in journals such as Ethnic and Racial Studies, Contemporary Islam and Popular Music and Society and in numerous edited books. His monographs included Migration and Religion (co-authored with Magdalena Nordin, Springer, 2023) and several Swedish titles.