Now we all know how the
majority and the media in this country view the Catholic church. They think of
us as a passe, archaic institution. People find the Bible obtuse... even hokey.
Now, in an effort to disprove all that, the church has appointed this year as a
time of renewal, both of faith and of style. For example, the crucifix. While
it has been a time honored symbol of our faith, Holy Mother Church has decided
to retire this highly recognizable, yet wholly depressing image of our Lord
crucified. Christ didn't come to Earth to give us the willies... He came to
help us out. He was a booster. And it is with that take on our Lord in mind
that we've come up with a new, more inspiring sigil. So it is with great
pleasure that I present you with the first of many revamps the
"Catholicism WOW" campaign will unveil over the next year. I give
you... The Buddy Christ.
- Cardinal Glick
(George Carlin), Dogma
Since his image first graced movie
screens in the 1999 film “Dogma” starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, the Buddy
Christ has taken on something like a cult following. From clothing to action figures to
bobble-headed car accessories, Buddy Christ is present in multiple social
spheres. Perhaps the most widely known
representation of Buddy Christ is his user-generated form as a religious meme
online. An example Buddy Christ meme is pictured above; the common features of
the Buddy Christ image are a winking eye, wide smile, pointing finger, and
“thumbs up” hand symbol. According to
the meme creation website MemeGenerator.net, the Buddy Christ meme has
undergone 901 separate iterations since the establishment of the site; a
similar website, QuickMeme.com, stores 456 original user-created Buddy Christ
memes within its database. After a quick
search on Twitter, I located multiple user tweets incorporating the Buddy
Christ meme on each day over the past month. Furthermore, using the Google Trends tool to map
interest in the Buddy Christ meme over time reveals consistent internet usage
of the meme since it peaked in online interest in 2004. Due to the steady popularity and prominence
of the Buddy Christ meme, I believe it makes for an excellent case study subject
when considering the ways users generate meme content to express or perform
religious practice online.
The Buddy Christ meme itself is a
parodic representation (or intentional misrepresentation) of Jesus of Nazareth,
a central figure in traditional Christian religious practice. While the meme has been used in a variety of
ways, Buddy Christ is most commonly used to sarcastically comment on
traditional Christian practices and beliefs that are derived directly from the
narrative and teachings of Jesus Christ. As an organizational scholar, I would like to
study the how the meme is used to caricaturize institutional religious practice
and thereby indirectly question the authority of Christian institutions. I argue that while on the surface users of the
Buddy Christ meme appear to be mocking Jesus of Nazareth and his teachings,
their underlying objective is to reject the claimed spiritual authority of
organized Christian churches. By
generating content that derides traditional perspectives of Jesus of Nazareth
as a spiritual authority, meme users also attempt to undermine the authority of
the organized church due to the centrality of Jesus to the authority of
traditional Christian practice. This
case study is of particular interest to me as it coincides with my previous
research on the ways in which Christian churches are managing and modifying
organizational identities by transferring traditional religious meanings to new
symbols.
The following are links to the Buddy Christ content collections at MemeGenerator and QuickMeme.
1. http://memegenerator.net/Buddy-Christ
2. http://www.quickmeme.com/Buddy-Christ/?upcoming
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