Sacred Matters: Celebrity Worship, Sexual Ecstasies, the Living Dead, and Other Signs of Religious Life in the United States

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A powerful case to embrace a broad view of religion as genuinely religious practices can be found in the unlikeliest of places - science labs, sports games, cinemas and concerts. Religion scholar Laderman shows readers how pilgrimages to Graceland, for example, don't just seem religious, they are religious - enacting traditional, ritualistic patterns of Christianity. In a dramatic reframing of the sacred and the secular, an American landscape blooming with devotions and mythologies is exposed.

Author Bio

Gary Laderman is a professor of American Religious History and Cultures at Emory University. He is the author of two books on death in America: The Sacred Remains and Rest in Peace. Laderman is also the director and co-editor of the new online religion magazine, ReligionDispatches.org. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.