If we are exploring religion in culture, then how and what do we talk about as religion?

This  is a question that goes across much of the contemporary study of  religion, and impacts on it in various ways — not only in particular  religious and culture contexts, but also very noticeably in the  idea/approach of ‘material religion’. In short, if we want to explore ‘religion’ within particular cultural locations — such as religion in a book (e.g., Harry Potter) or a film/s (e.g., Star Wars) — then can we say that religion is a thing to find or a ‘manifestation’ of something (such as ‘the sacred’)? My straightforward answer to this is a definite ‘no’: religion is not a thing, it is not an it.

A text version of this episode, together with the links mentioned, can be found at the link below. (The episode was recorded a while ago, when I was still  teaching at the University of Glasgow — that explains why I talk about  teaching a class, when of course at present such face to face teaching  is not possible due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020!).

https://medium.com/religion-bites-podcast/023-what-are-we-looking-for-when-we-look-at-religion-and-popularculture-66f5f1d50214