Zoomers are making gay fancams about the Bible

Ahoy! Welcome back to Modern Relics, the newsletter that examines the artefacts found at the crossroads of religion, pop culture and the internet. First, some news.

I am a guest on another podcast! This time it’s for ABC’s Quick Smart, a new podcast of weekly, 10-minute episodes featuring ABC producers and presenters as guests, talking about their subject matter specialty. I was asked to talk about the Disney and religion story again, which I produced for Soul Search and then wrote into a digital article.

It’s very wild to me how this particular story has gotten so much traction. I have never had as much interest in a program I’ve made as this thing about Disney adults lol. Anyway, it’s a yarn that I originally developed here on Modern Relics.

Also, please subscribe to Jodi Eichler-Levine’s Substack, because she’s the one who has actually done the work on the intersection of Disney and religion. I just saw her post on Twitter.

What is #bibletwt

Remember a few months ago when I posted a few panels of an autobiographical webcomic that was about liking Catholic mythology without being religious and being “attracted to Jesus in a gay way”?

Last week this tweet about “bibletwt” by Twitter user @oddpriest came across my feed.

Please click through and look at the screenshotted posts, they are all great. Here’s more.

I confess I don’t really know what’s going on here, but it looks like bibletwt is a group of Zoomers who are into the Bible in a fandom way rather than a religious way. They sexualise and queer the text, run fan accounts, ship characters (Jesus/Judas is a favourite) and make memes and fancams. Just like any other fandom you’d find on Twitter or Tumblr.

In terms of style only, bibletwt fancams actually remind me a lot of the (now deleted) #ChristPilled Christofascist content that was running through TikTok this time last year, which also used the fancam trope. Except bibletwt is playful and queer and not at all terrifying. Sorry to readers who can’t watch video on Twitter anymore — this content isn’t mirrored anywhere else.

I don’t know if the comic I mentioned at the top is technically bibletwt (or if it and bibletwt are both part of some larger Bible posting fandom) but calling religious paraphernalia like icons “merch” fits nicely into what I’ve observed. I think making fandom material about the Bible like you’d find in K-Pop Twitter is very funny. Is it satire? Is it sincere? I’d say, yeah.

I don’t want to make a bigger deal out of it than it really is, but I was tickled to discover this fandom because it aligns almost exactly with the conversation I had with Ange Levoipierre on Schmeitgeist about weird Catholic aesthetics online. It’s only a matter of time until the visual language of fandom is adopted by truly religious Christians to express their faith online.

How to find halal food

Twitter user Yasmin has a good tip for finding halal food: Go to the Boycott Halal in Australia Facebook group.

Other Muslims in Australia confirm that, yes, “every snack and restaurant [is] on there”. But my favourite part is the page has a song.

“I’m buggered how me cat can tell he’s turned into a Muslim now”. Sir, we have been over this: All cats are Muslim.

Hyrule’s depressing demonology

I didn’t have space to include this in last week’s edition, but I really enjoyed this video from Religion for Breakfast, analysing the religious systems observable in the Zelda video games.

In the video Andrew Mark Henry argues that religion in the land of Hyrule is inherently pessimistic, and that the gods do not have ultimate control over the fate of the universe due to objects of great power. As such, the land is caught in a cycle of destruction and reincarnation.

The comments on the video are worth reading too — they contain some corrections and other interpretations by viewers (Zant is not a demon, Zelda is a reincarnation of the goddess Hylia, etc). Also, “This is why the Koroks died on the cross for our sins.”

In my first ever edition of Relics I wrote about Dr Henry’s first video on this subject, and why you might apply the tools of religion studies to fictional texts like the Zelda games.

On superstition

The greatest crossover event in history

Did you manage to get Taylor Swift tickets? Oh well. Here’s a video of Taylor Swift and Switchfoot lead singer Jon Foreman performing “Meant To Live” together 11 years ago.

(h/t Tyler Huckabee for posting this on Twitter). Here’s Jon Foreman on TikTok explaining the backstory of how it happened.

Oh and here’s Katy Perry stage diving at a Relient K show in 2003.

I’m on Bluesky now

Thanks to Shanti for the invite code!!

A lot of the Weird Christian crowd I follow on Twitter is also there, but it’s difficult to track down your own likes unless you’ve reskeeted the post or have responded to it in some way.

This is also true of Meta’s Twitter competitor Threads. So, if I become an annoying reply guy to your good posts on either platform, know that it’s for bookmarking reasons so I can repost here.

Lastly, a song about Pope Pius XII exploding

@itskeyesListening to fireworks and thinking of another kind of explosion that made history: The Exploding Pope, of course! #history #church #comedy

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Thanks to Travis for sending me this one. I had no idea about this! It’s true, Pope Pius XII did not want his organs removed during embalming, which leads to explosive results if you die in summer.

If you have a post you think I should see, or some feedback you want me to hear, just leave a comment or send me an email! See you next week.