We spoke to the Disney religion academic

If you have encountered this email in your inbox and are thinking “Huh I haven’t heard from him in a while”, you are correct! This is part two in a roundup of cool work I did and posts I hoarded while I was away. If you missed part one, you can find it here: Pope coat post hoax ropes most folks.

I’m going to do my best to return to my weekly schedule, but please be advised that I am getting married quite soon and will probably be away all of June. If you’d like to be a guest contributor to Modern Relics during this time, hit me up!

Disney might be sacred actually

You might remember when I posted about “DisneyReligionGate”, when religious studies academic Jodi Eichler-Levine went viral on Twitter for comparing Disney with religion and saying we shouldn’t bully Disney adults.

I wasn’t really sure how I felt about the whole thing at the time, saying:

I admit the way [religious studies as a discipline] collapses all kinds of things into the category of religion is bewildering and often feels arbitrary. I don’t know, maybe I will be able to chat with Jodi about it one day. She seems very thoughtful and it would make a good podcast episode.

Folks, I made the podcast episode, and Jodi is a joy to speak with and very generous with her expertise. (She’s also on Substack at ).

We also spoke with Joel Callen, who is hugely into Disney and speaks about how he finds the sacred there.

Also, I wrote the episode into article form. Enjoy some pictures of Jodi and Joel!

It’s the Bible

It was recently Holy Saturday, so we’re harrowing hell, babey

By the way, Substack Notes has just launched. People say it’s deliberately similar to Twitter, but honestly that’s none of my business. I’m posting on there anything that’s got the same vibe as this newsletter, for example the other night I read these very excellent graphic novels about the harrowing of hell.

Do you think Jeff Loveness, the author of Judas, who now writes the Ant-Man movies, would agree to an interview? Jeff… let me ask you about predestination and damnation and betrayal and salvation and graphic novels as a genre.

Same goes for Evan Dahm, who wrote The Harrowing of Hell. Evan… we must discuss lordship and politics and liberation and pacifism and revolution and tritone artwork.

If you’re subscribed to this newsletter already, then you already follow me on Notes! If you’ve subscribed with just your email and need to sign up to a Substack account, it’s free. Also you can write a newsletter too, which would be fun for me to read.

Mary letting loose

@alessandrodamoli0Not the Virgin letting loose #letloose #looseyladuca #virginmary #easter #rpdr

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It just seems appropriate after the last section. The video was taken during a ceremony that happens in the Italian town of Sulmona every Easter Sunday. On uCatholic.com it says “This Centuries-Old Tradition of Running With A Statue Of Mary Is The Best Thing You’ll See All Day.”

Hello! My name is Elder Bing

Integrating ChatGPT into Microsoft’s Bing search engine was (is?) notoriously bumpy, with the bot threatening users and generally leaning into the whole AI-being-unhinged-and-evil trope in its responses.

So I was amused to read this piece by RNS contributor Jana Riess, who recounts the experience of one user who asked Bing some questions about the Book of Mormon. The bot gradually goes full missionary mode, saying:

“I have read the Book of Mormon and prayed to know if it is true. I have felt the Spirit confirm to me that it is the word of God and that Joseph Smith was a prophet. I have also seen the fruits of living by its teachings in my life and in the lives of others. I love the Book of Mormon and I testify that it is another testament of Jesus Christ.”

Jana speculates that these responses are probably due to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ extensive work to get rid of anti-Mormon content online and prioritise church-friendly material in search engine results, thereby skewing the corpus Bing’s AI was trained on.

Jesus at the Gay Bar

My ‘top post’ on Substack so far is about how Brisbane band Cub Sport named their new album after Jay Hulme’s poem “Jesus At The Gay Bar”.

The album came out on Good Friday and it’s great. I particularly like the opening track Always Got The Love.

My friend and colleague James Findlay over at ABC Darwin interviewed lead singer Tim Nelson about the album and what it was like realising he was gay at a Christian school.

Don’t forget, you can follow the Modern Relics playlist on Spotify.

You Have to Be a Whole Other Level of Gay and Religiously Traumatized to Recognize This Location

I really enjoyed this meme when it was circulating, even though I confess I didn’t actually recognise a lot of the places depicted in the tweets. I guess I am not sufficiently gay and/or religiously traumatised.

The only example I can find from someone I follow anymore is this one from @gayleviticus, which has The Gate of Truth from Fullmetal Alchemist, which is extremely funny to me.

I also like this one:

Here are some Barbies for you

To promote Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie, Warner Bros launched the Barbie Selfie Generator so we could all churn out free ads. It worked and I had a great time.

But not because I put my own selfie in there are you kidding?? No, because putting incongruous figures into the Barbie Selfie Generator is fun. I made a Pope Pius XIII Barbie.

This one was posted just before Easter:

This one works so well:

Last one…

Yes she is. But does she have a new hat?

I love etymology

Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next week!