Illegally holy Hamilton
Also, Hieronymus Bosch’s butt music from hell
The religion rundown from last week was pretty popular, but all the links make these posts too big for email (again, please click the title above to read this whole post). This style of link soup is obviously inspired by Today in Tabs, which I highly recommend.
Anticlericalist hero Justin Bieber denounces celebrity pastors. Satanic Panic enthusiast (?) Russell Moore becomes new editor of CT. Dissident Central American bishop criticises the government and is put under house arrest — no, obviously not that bishop. Marjorie Taylor Greene performatively prays for person performing imprisonment. New York Times calls Catholic Church “New York’s Hottest Club”, which is news to Catholics.
Who lives, who dies, who plagiarises your story
You may recall when YouTuber Jenny Nicholson reviewed the many parody plays performed at Easter by The Church of the Rock in Alberta. She ran into copyright trouble on Twitter for including a clip of dancing Storm Troopers rapping to a song owned by Sony. Tbh, depending on how the lyrics are changed and how much the source material is transformed, I think these plays could well be fair use by way of parody — but I don’t know if that defence exists in Canada.
Anyway, this week The Door McAllen church in Texas ran afoul of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s people by staging an adapted production of Hamilton (using the original music) in which the American Founding Father gives his life to Jesus.
This excellent RNS article has a great summary and analysis of the phenomenon of church plays. It includes the greatest hits of theatrical copyright breaches including the “Re-Sound of Music” staged by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-Day Saints which “turns a song called ‘You Two,’ originally sung by a father to his children in the movie version of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” into a polygamist anthem.”
Exvangelical TikTok and musical theatre TikTok found out about The Door Church’s copyright woes and is taking huge delight in the controversy.
@phoenixerikaIllegal Texas church production of Hamilton!! Someone, quick, CALL THEATER TIKTOK! Please say there will be damages! #theater #musicaltheatre #fyp #idk #copyright #illegalproduction #trash #linmanuelmiranda
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Recordings of other pop culture plays put on by the church have been made private on YouTube, which is a shame because one of them almost certainly has Minions in it.
Complete and unabridged
What would Jesus do? Now you decide
You’ve been waiting with bated breath since the trailer was released in 2019, and now you can finally play the Jesus simulator I am Jesus Christ.
Is it any good? Motherboard contributor Matteo Lupetti has his doubts. Despite there being plenty of successful adaptations of the story of Jesus to film and other media, video games present unique challenges.
I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t something profoundly incompatible between Christianity and gaming. … The teachings of Jesus tell us that whoever has the lowest score in life … will be the first to receive a reward in the Kingdom of Heaven. That’s not really compatible with many video games’ objectives – Jesus certainly wouldn’t want you to selfishly amass resources, kill your enemies or collect money from people to buy better weapons, for instance.
Thanks to Moose for posting this in the Modern Relics Discord.
Built different
Muslim cat memes for International Cat Day
I’ve long been on record that it’s my beliefs that all cats are Muslims. On International Cat Day user @BaytAlFann posted a long thread about the special place cats hold in many Islamic cultures.
It reminds me of this TikTok channel that keeps coming up on my For You page, where user @zainah.mb makes little skits with her Scottish Fold cat called Sister Minnie.
@zainah.mbSister Minnie is studying wudu engineering all the time on my prayer rug #arabtiktok #scottishfold #muslimcat #muslimfunny #arabfunny #arabhumor #muslimtiktok #muslimjokes
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Before the cat videos the channel was dedicated to hijab style videos.
Hieronymus Bosch’s butt music from hell
My boyfriend sent this to me saying, “Spoiler alert: not a banger :(”
Some kids made a “cult” that worships a gender fluid willow elm
I have no way of knowing if it’s true, but here’s a super-interesting thread by @ellen_perleberg about a cult called The Tree Empire run by her coworker’s nine-year-old child.
“Founded as a eco-friendly club at their elementary school but quickly morphed into a cult centred on worship of one specific willow elm named Spirit”. The willow elm changes pronouns frequently, and the cult’s holy text appears to be a Google doc called The Manual. There has been at least one schism.
Upon hearing about The Tree Empire, Twitter user Shannon Weeks generated some art of the cult’s “truly gorgeous combination of Irish Celtic and high tech” aesthetics and symbolism using Midjourney.