Chidester, David.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 294+xii pp. $50.00 US (cloth),
ISBN 978-0-520-24279-1; $21.95 US
(paperback), ISBN 0-520-24280-7.
[1] In Authentic Fakes, David Chidester explains how “the traces of transcendence, the
sacred, and the ultimate” saturate American popular culture (10). Far from flighty or irrelevant, the
author posits that popular culture “has a lot to do with how Americans in the
United States think about America” (29). “America” casts a large shadow in this book, extending beyond
territorial boundaries and into the global theatre. An American-born professor of comparative religion at the
University of Cape Town in South Africa, Chidester is in a unique position to
witness America’s widespread influence. As a result, he delivers a captivating series of dispatches from popular
culture, each revealing how religion is at work in some unlikely places
throughout the world. Both
scholars of religion and popular culture and theorists of religion should read
this book. At its core, this
volume is a penetrating study of religion, its meanings, locations, practices, and importance.
[2] From the outset, Chidester
makes provocative claims about where “religious activity is at work in forming
community, focusing desire, and facilitating exchange” (5). The author cites the “church of
baseball,” which he claims creates a “community of allegiance” for followers of
the sport (33). The “religion of
Coca-Cola,” Chidester continues, revolves around a sparkling beverage “that no
one needs but everyone desires” (34). Rock music also bears the traces of religion, with its ritualized
exchange of enthusiasm and intensity between “ritual specialists” (music
artists) and the “congregation” (music fans) (34). Chidester applies similar religious language to McDonalds,
Disney, Tupperware, and the Human Genome Project. Recognizing that some will dismiss his findings on the
grounds that he stretches the definition of religion too far, the author
recalls the European explorers who initially labeled New World inhabitants
“atheists.” Europeans revised this
assumption by “[extending] familiar metaphors—those that were already
associated with religion, such as the belief in God, rites of worship, and the
maintenance of moral order—to the strange beliefs and practices of other
human populations” (50). For
Chidester, relating the “familiar metaphors” of community, desire, and exchange
to the “strange” world of popular culture, undoubtedly shows religion at
work.
[3] The book’s attention-grabbing tone
continues when Chidester compares the civil religious rhetoric of Ronald Reagan
and Jim Jones, both of whom emphasized the redemptive quality of individual and
collective sacrifice. American
democracy and capitalism were essential components of Reagan’s creed. In contrast, they were demonic plagues
for Jones, a self-proclaimed communist revolutionary who led the mass-suicide
of over nine hundred people in 1978. Despite their differences, the author proposes, “Reagan looked a lot
like Jim Jones, inverted mirror images, perhaps, one at the center, the other
at the periphery of American society, but both reflecting an ideology that
negotiates redemption through the supreme expenditure” (110). Instead of dismissing Jones’s as
“fake,” the author brings the religious leader into indirect conversation with
Reagan, noting along the way their ironic similarities and profound
differences.
[4] Chidester’s study takes a
transatlantic turn with his examination of shamanism and the complex career of
South African, Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa. Beginning in the 1950s, Mutwa claimed to be a genuine receiver of Zulu
tradition. During the following
decades, he oversaw a series of South African cultural villages, all the while
flaunting his credentials as a witchdoctor and healer. While popular with tourists, fellow
South Africans labeled Mutwa a spiritual fraud. His final cultural village closed in 1994. But in the following years, TheAfrican.com
and Credomutwa.com gave Mutwa a new building space and a new audience. In the United States, the supposed
shaman has earned the approval of New Age enthusiasts, environmentalists,
animal-rights activists, and extra-terrestrial conspiracy theorists (Mutwa
claims to have had alien encounters). With a hint of irony, Chidester concludes that Mutwa has “achieved a
greater aura of authenticity in cyberspace than in Africa” (188).
[5] The discussion of religion,
authenticity, and the Internet continues with the volume’s investigation of
“real fakes,” or religions that flaunt their fakeness. The Discordians, for example,
supposedly began in 1957 in a California bowling alley when two friends had a vision
of Eris, “Goddess of Discord and Confusion and Really Scwewy [sic] Stuff”
(199). From this encounter, a
mythology developed, a community formed, and offshoots sprang (such as the
Illuminated Knights of Otis and the Intergalactic House of Fruitcakes). These “religions” are all patently
fake; however, Chidester proposes, “Let us call them religions, since they are
real fakes, acting just as religions even if they are completely fake, because
they are doing real religious work in a medium of communication in which
anything, even religion, seems possible” (212). Again, the author makes an ostensibly counterintuitive
claim: Even the Discordians can do “real religious work” by imitating,
parodying, and/or criticizing “real” religions.
[6] In his preface, Chidester
expresses his hope that readers will, “see all of the religious fakery in this
volume as an occasion for thinking about authenticity” (xii). The author most certainly succeeds in
meeting this objective. When
talking about “real fakes,” Chidester cites the Landover Baptist Church
(202). Interested, I visited their
site and happened upon a sermon concerning the brutal 1998 murder of
Wyoming’s Matthew Sheppard, an openly gay man. “True Christians,” the fictitious address reads, “believe
that every word of the Bible was dictated by God, Himself. They
consequently must believe that God, the Father, ordered that people who ate the
wrong food or messed around before marriage should be punished in a way even
more brutal than Sheppard was killed.” Some may find this mock sermon outlandish, absurd, irreverent, and
decidedly unfunny. But compare it
with similar statements on Godhatesfags.com, the website of Pastor Fred
Phelps’s Westboro Baptist Church—a “real” church. Here, I located an image of a
memorial stone to Sheppard, which announces that he “entered Hell on October
12, 1998, at age 21, in defiance of God’s Warning: ‘Thou Shalt Not Lie With
Mankind as with womankind; it is abomination.’” With Chidester in mind, we may conclude that
Landover—a “real fake”—is doing “real religious work” by mimicking,
mocking, and criticizing the sexual theology of Phelps and others. Indeed, Authentic Fakes both provokes interest in religion and popular
culture, and provides a vocabulary for talking about it. In doing so, Chidester has made a
significant contribution to this fascinating field.
Arthur Remillard
St. Francis University
(Loretto, PA)
aremillard@francis.edu
