Page - 10 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/02

10 | Natalie Fritz and Anna-Katharina Höpflinger www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/2, 7–20 evident, however, this song is not just concerned with the feeling of being unloved; it has to do with women, with (female) strength and with religion and a transcendence we may not initially recognise. Meaning, we are all well aware, is not permanent and fixed; it is process that will depend, for example, on the artist’s background and its impact on a specific artwork and on the receiver’s context.3 Knowing that Florence + The Machine tend to compose complex and polysemous songs, we want to explore some of the possibilities “Big God” offers the willing interpreter with a particular interest in exploring interactions between popular music and re- ligion. But first let us look briefly at relevant research on religion and popular music and define some of the terms we will use in this Prelude. Over the past 20 years, much insightful research has been published on the interrelation of religion and popular music.4 These include studies providing an overview of the field, as well as investigations of specific musical genres or religious traditions.5 The Issue at hand fits into this growing tradition of research. But how can we systematise studies in the broad field of religion and popular music? John C. Lyden argues with a focus on popular culture that the conjunction and in this constellation marks a variety of perspectives on the links between religion and popular culture.6 Lyden explains these in- terrelations on the basis of four interrelated categories in research that were established by Bruce David Forbes:7 “religion in popular culture”, “popular culture in religion”, “popular culture as religion” and “religion and popular culture in dialogue”. In the first category he places the investigation of the use of religious symbols and motifs in popular culture, while, conversely, the second perspective starts with religion and investigates how popular cultural 3 “Producing meaning depends on the practice of interpretation, and interpretation is sustained by us actively using the code – encoding, putting things into the code – and by the person at the other end interpreting or decoding the meaning […] But note that, because meanings are always changing and slipping, codes operate more like social conventions than like fixed laws or unbreakable rules. As meanings shift and slide, so inevitably the codes of a culture imperceptibly change” (Hall 2013, 45). 4 Recent examples include, with a broad view: Moberg/Partridge 2017a; Schlegelmilch 2017; Bossius/Häger/Kahn-Harris 2011, with case studies: Heinen 2017; Nava 2017; Barzel 2015; Miller/Pinn/Freeman 2015; Moberg 2015. 5 Bloomsbury has a series on this topic: the Bloomsbury Studies in Religion and Popular Music. 6 Lyden 2015, 15–17. 7 Forbes 2000. For these categories adapted to religion and popular music: Moberg/Partridge 2017b, 1–3.