The Karma tornado circling Taylor Swift and Kanye West

December is such a weird time – with warmer weather and getting to the end of the year, part of me always thinks “Time to slow down!” But it is never slow. November/December means getting everything ready ahead of time so I actually can take some time off over Christmas/New Year. It also (usually) means doing extra work at my job for Christmas Day broadcasting (more info on that later) and then on top of that, participating in end-of-year functions and other silly season activities.

All this to say, Relics is once again a few days later than my arbitrary, self-imposed schedule, but I have my excuses and I hope you forgive me lol. I’m planning a bit of an end-of-year summary before taking a week or two off to relax and hopefully play some video games.

Speaking of video games…

Ye, Karma, Taylor and Musk

Last week my friend Jono messaged me on Twitter saying, “Sorry but you’re going to have to write about Elon again next week too,” attaching this tweet where he admonishes Ye (aka Kanye West) for his recent appalling antisemitism.

I’ve already written about the strangely religious flourishes Elon Musk employs online in his role as Twitter CEO (not to mention the fanaticism of his fans online). I gather that for Elon, religious traditions of many kinds do, in fact, influence how he imagines the future — like this allusion to Noah’s Ark he tweeted this week about his ambition to colonise Mars.

Elon’s tweet to Ye made me reflect on the over 13 year-long feud between Ye and Taylor Swift, which has recently provoked a response inspired by a radically different religious tradition.

Taylor’s 2022 album, Midnights, includes the song ‘Karma’, which relishes in the misfortune of people who have wronged her in the past. It’s my favourite from the album, and it hits different now that Ye has publicly declared a soft spot for Adolf Hitler. Seventeen Magazine gives all the context and speculates the song is also about Scooter Braun, who bought the masters of all Taylor’s early albums (“my pennies made your crown”).

I wondered how much of the song is just a Western idea of karma, desiring some sort of cosmic justice without actually engaging with the tradition, but this (really fun) article from Vulture, “Grading Taylor Swift’s ‘Karma’ With a Buddhist-Studies Professor” generally approves of the metaphors she uses.

“Terminator 2 in the style of ecclesiastical stained glass”

Thanks to Marty for sending me this artwork by Twitter user @Jimllpaintit

Irreverent

Most weeks, friend of the newsletter Jim McDermott includes a section in called ‘I Bet It’s Good Though’, where he includes articles he wants to read but hasn’t got around to yet. Honestly, huge mood.

My IBIGT this week is Netflix’s new Australian drama Irreverent, about an American criminal investigator who steals the identity of a US reverend and winds up in Far North Queensland.

The Sydney Morning Herald has this review. I grew up in Darwin in the Northern Territory, so a show about religion and crocodiles looks like extremely my thing! But I haven’t watched it yet. But I will! (Probably with a glass of wine in the bath immediately after I publish this).

“A biblical verse in the style of the King James Bible explaining how to remove a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR”

I know AI-generated chats are becoming naff but please read this.

Twitter user @tqbf writes, “I’m sorry, I simply cannot be cynical about a technology that can accomplish this.”

Reading list

Here are some articles that will swell your brain with thoughts.

Muslims in the Metaverse

By Christiane Gruber (New Lines Magazine)

From New Lines:

Mosques, museums and the metaverse are now crisscrossing in an increasingly virtual world. … The recent blurring of these spheres reveals that the supposedly distinct divide between material reality and digital artifice is wilting away, spurring inventions on the one hand and injunctions on the other. Beyond technological and doctrinal issues, one question that remains is: How does one account for the place of the imaginary or nonreal within Islamic emic traditions, and what is its potential future trajectory? This query can set into motion some “meta” musings.

The untidiness of Marie Kondo’s eclectic spirituality

By Kaitlyn Ugoretz (RNS)

From RNS:

Some Western commentators have dismissed Kondo’s approach to decluttering as “woo-woo nonsense.” Others have defended it as rooted in Japanese cultural tradition glossed as “Shinto animism.”

…

If we can’t reduce Kondo to a “monster,” out of touch with reality, or an Asian sage come to save us from consumerism, then what is she?

The answer, like the history of religion in Japan, is complicated. Kondo is the latest successor in a long line of professionals in the “spiritual business.”

Mormon TikTok star debunks Bible conspiracies, misinformation

By Jana Riess (RNS)

(I just want to point out that I got this story first 😇)

From RNS:

McClellan … started his TikTok channel in the spring of 2021 to combat a sea of misinformation about the Bible and religion.

In just over a year and a half, the channel has attracted more than a quarter-million followers, drawn in by McClellan’s unique blend of fact-based nerdiness about the Bible and dry humor as he confronts other content creators’ dubious claims.

…

There was a point in his early adulthood when McClellan might have been the last person you’d imagine would one day become a biblical scholar. After flunking out of college in his first semester, he converted to Mormonism, and serving a mission turned his life around. He spent countless hours before and during his mission “learning about the Scriptures, the history, the languages.”

Andor's Funeral March Is the Kind of Spiritualism Star Wars Needs More Of

By James Whitbrook (Gizmodo)

From Gizmodo:

Andor asks us to consider what spirituality in the galaxy far, far away can look like beyond the idea of the Force itself—or if not beyond it, interpreting the Force in a language it is usually not considered in, and through the lens of material connections rather than metaphysical ones. … [It] is a story of community spirit and unity in the wake of authoritarian diktat, the story of not Empire versus Rebellion at least in the organizational sense, but what happens when Imperial might attempts to extinguish belief systems the same way it attempted to purge the Jedi from the galaxy’s collective consciousness.

A Christmas misunderstanding

Lastly, we have found the Christian tweet of the year

Matthew Pierce’s annual Christian tweet of the year competition has been won! After several rounds of voting, the 2022 champion is Jennifer Greenberg.

There was stiff competition this year, with entries from Franklin Graham, Beth Moore, Timothy Keller and Michael Gungor, among others.

Notable to me was Australian scholar Michael Bird whose Australianism “nutting out” hasn’t translated well to an American audience.