Terry Mattingly - Pop Goes Religion: Faith in Popular Culture

"Terry Mattingly is arguably this country's most judicious commentator on the interface between religion and popular culture; and in Pop Goes Religion, he gives us the best of his best. In equal parts entertaining and informative, these pieces and Mattingly's running commentary about the context of each celebrate America's deep, if sometimes idiosyncratic, absorption with all things religious."

PHYLLIS TICKLE
Religion Editor (ret.), Publishers Weekly and compiler of The Divine Hours

"As this excellent collection of essays demonstrates, Terry Mattingly understands that finding faith in popular culture is no trivial pursuit. These columns remain fresh and relevant. They were so informative, I found myself taking notes!"

MARK I. PINSKY
Author of The Gospel According to Disney

"Terry Mattingly's astonishingly broad grasp of popular culture is matched by an impressive talent for writing with fairness and insight, even about things that would have most of us tearing our hair out. Get on board for a wild ride with the best of guides."

FREDERICA MATHEWES-GREEN
Beliefnet.com columnist and National Review Online movie critic

"This is a book I've been waiting for. A must-read for anyone who hopes to communicate faith to a society mesmerized by pop culture, and for anyone else who wants to plumb the depths of the stuff on their MP3 players and TiVos and at their local multiplex. Terry Mattingly is a uniquely acute observer of both pop culture and religion who inhabits both worlds simultaneously, spotting the parallels, conflicts, and convergences. He is the theologian invading 'Entertainment Tonight. the pop culture fan who understands and reveals the world of church, synagogue, and mosque."

BISHOP WILLIAM C. FREY
Author of The Dance of Hope

He gets it. Terry Mattinglyof GetReligion.org, among many other good worksgets the spirit and flavor and texture of those improbable locations where religion and modern culture encounter and circle each other: not quite enemies, not quite friends. In "Pop Goes Religion," he makes very certain you get it, too.

WILLIAM MURCHISON
Radford Distinguished Professor of Journalism, Baylor University

If there's a Christian writing today who understands better than Terry Mattingly the complex relationship between religion and popular culture, I don't know who he is. Mattingly has a veteran journalist's unerring eye for discerning the deeper issues and forces at work among believers today, and writes with a missionary urgency about the challenges and crises that arise when pulpit meets public square.

ROD DREHER,
Dallas Morning News columnist and author of "Crunchy Cons"

Terry Mattingly is probably the only religion writer in America who's as much at home in floor seats at a U2 show as he is on the floor of the annual convocation for any given denomination. He clearly has an affinity for pop culture, and no one makes a better case for the church needing to become more aware of the media its congregants are consuming. But Mattingly also possesses a healthy skepticism about the mingling of faith and entertainment, and he isn't one of those guys who's naive enough to imagine the problems of the church being solved by more sermons about movies. If anyone is equipped to keep an eye on this balancing act of spirituality and culture, it's somebody who knows every theological distinction you could think of AND all the lyrics to "Bullet the Blue Sky."

CHRIS WILLMAN,
senior writer, Entertainment Weekly, and author of
"Rednecks & Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music"

"I recommend this book to everyone who wants to know about the exciting way in which Christian faith is interacting with the world of popular entertainment and culture."

PHILLIP JOHNSON
Author of Reason in the Balance and Darwin on Trial

POP GOES RELIGION
Copyright 2005 Terry Mattingly

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Editorial Staff: Jennifer Stair; Bethany Bothman
Cover Design: David Carlson, Gearbox Design, Sisters, OR
Published in association with Bully Pulpit Books.

All articles are reprinted with permission of Scripps Howard News Service.

Scripture quotations in this book are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mattingly, Terry.
Pop goes religion / by Terry Mattingly.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8499-0998-8
1. Religion and cultureUnited States. 2. Popular cultureUnited
States. I. Title.
BL65.C8M365 2005
201'.7'0973dc22

2005006487

05 06 07 08 09 RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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With gratitude to Roberta Green,
a good reporter