Do You Believe in Rock and Roll? Musical Cults of the Sacred Popular

"Traditional religions are thus much like vinyl recordings, being replaced by new technologies“ (Till 2010, 186). Traditional religions are in decrease because young people found their own places of worship within music culture. This pop cults become an important place for belief and identity. For example popular music plays a major role at virtualized moments in people’s lives like at weddings or funerals. But the traditional church hold on hymn of Victorian religious practise. Because of this New Religious Movements (NRM) have arised through the pop cults due to the fact that they get in touch with youth people. This "cult is based on practises rather than beliefs“ (172) and a result of the culture changing.

Fowler describes in his book Stages of Faith (1981) six stages. The first stage is a naive and immature fashion. The next two stages including the pop cult, on the one hand the teen pop cult, which is an uncontrolled uncritical belief and on the other hand the synthetic- conventional faith. There is also the individuative-reflective stage, in this station is a mid-life crise anchored. But pop cults could be a bridge or an escape of this crises.

According to Till the religious tradition cannot fit tot he contemporary culture and for that reason a pop cult arises.  For young people it is soften a sign of rebellion and an attempted escape of the reality. During the time several pop cults come into being for example pop drug cults, pop death cults, virtual cults and local cults. A consequence of this development is the decline of communicating and interactivity.

Music is the key element of popular culture and with this element they have an enormous power like on charity festivals. At the same moment it is associated with religion. Pop cults are religions. “Saints and religious figures have been replaced in pop cults by pop stars“ (184). Popular music become to a social force because traditional religions couldn’t help their members anymore. But religion is still a social technology, which "has lost conncetion with the culture of contemporary society“ (178).

Reference:

Till, R. 2010. Pop Cult: Religion and Popular Music. London: Continuum International Publishing, Ch. 9, Do You Believe in Rock and Roll. Musical Cults of the Sacred Popular. 168-192 

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