Interfaith Encounters in Popular Culture

Popular culture in the context of the United States provides an important social “space” for exploring interfaith encounters that shape attitudes and behaviours with respect to how people understand religious difference and diversity. The article examines ways that popular culture functions as this formative space through its on-screen exploration of interfaith encounters and its mediation of interfaith encounters through a celebrity-endorsed and market-driven spirituality that coordinates America’s particular brand of religious pluralism by commodifying and thereby including diverse religious values, practices, and beliefs.