Gleefully pluralistic?

Glee is a guilty pleasure. Lately the show has become more schizophrenic and at the same time ideologically subtle than usual. One week high school cheerleaders are debasing themselves in hallucinogenic Britney Spears covers; the next, members of the glee club are discussing belief through a variety of “spiritual” popular songs. The second of these two trends is a perfect representation of the religiously based secularism that has become American civil religion and, not surprisingly, popular culture.

Quick Review: Tony DuShane’s Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk

Instead of flying back from Provo, UT after participating in the Joseph Smith Summer Seminar, I took the California Zephyr, a train that winds through Denver, Co before crossing the plains of Nebraska and Iowa. It largely follows the route of nineteenth-century passengers who traveled from Chicago to San Francisco. While on-board, my friend Chris and I met two self-identified lez-brarians from New Zealand. We started talking about religion – about the responses of various churches to the earthquake in Samoa, to the Mormon Church’s response to homosexuality and Prop 8, to the rise of Christian fundamentalism in what they see an otherwise ultra-liberal New Zealand.