Comics, Culture, and Religion - by Kees de Groot

About the Book

Offers a systematic overview of the relations between comics and religion from the perspective of cultural sociology, including examples from across the globe.

Book Synopsis

This open access book offers an overview of the relations between comics and religion from the perspective of cultural sociology. How do comics function in religions and how does religion appear in comics? And how do graphic narratives inform us about contemporary society and the changing role of religion?

Contributing scholars use international examples to explore the diversity of religions, spirituality, and dispersed notions of the sacred, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Indian, and Japanese religions. In addition, the rituals, ethics, and worldviews that surface in the comics milieu are discussed.

With the growing popularity and influence of comics and graphic novels in contemporary culture, this book provides a valuable addition to the discussion of the medium, focusing on religious and sociological aspects. A rich resource for both students and scholars in popular culture, media studies, and religion.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Faculty for Humanities and Education and the University Library at the University of Agder, Norway.

Review Quotes

Kees de Groot's entertaining edited volume explores the complex interplay between religion as portrayed in comics and comics as received and used by religious communities. Seeking to understand the worlds created by comics as potentially religious or spiritual, and as having the capacity to embody ultimate concerns for some readers is an emergent subfield in religious studies, one that reveals the extent to which popular cultural art forms dominate late modernity.
Carole M. Cusack, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Sydney, Australia

Various studies on comics have made progress in popular culture, youth culture, and media studies, but research on them has yet to progress in the sociology of religion and religious studies. For this reason, this book is of outstanding academic significance .... it reveals not only the use of comics by religions and the appropriation of religions in the popular culture of comics, but also the reading and production of comics as practices of "lived religion".
Takahashi Norihito, Professor of Sociology, Toyo University, Japan

This broad collection of essays will move readers to understand religion and comics in more expansive and exciting ways. Finally we have a book that speaks powerfully about religion and comics as culturally intertwined in ways that highlight what religion does with comics and, perhaps more significantly, what comics do with and for religion.
Ken Koltun-Fromm, Professor of Religion, Haverford College, USA

About the Author

Kees de Groot is the KSGV Professor of Sociology of Worldviews and Public Mental Health at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. His research is on religion in liquid modernity and has covered Catholicism, spiritual care, religion in the public domain, theater, events, and Tintin. His latest monograph in the English language is The Liquidation of the Church (2018).