Page - 193 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/01

Book Review: Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion & Popular Music | 193www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/1, 193–196 Anna-Katharina Höpflinger Book Review Christopher Partridge / Marcus Moberg (eds.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music London / New York: Bloomsbury, 2018, xiv + 425 pages, ISBN: 978-1-350-08262-5 Elvis Presley, with nimbus and royal crown, a winged and flamed heart on his chest, his hand raised in a gesture of blessing and his initials to the left and right of his head – this depiction by illustrator Jim Starr appears on the cover of the Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music, edited by Christo- pher Partridge and Marcus Moberg. The aim of the handbook is to provide a broad overview of the research field of religion and popular music. The task is not easy. The field of popular music and religion is multi-layered and touches not only on definitions of popular music but also on demarcations between religious and secular – or on the blurring of this boundary. A secular song can arouse religious feelings, just as a song created in a religious context can be- come a viral hit; a star can become a kind of saint, as Jim Starr demonstrated with his Elvis image. The book opens with an introduction by the editors, who first emphasise that the field of religion and popular music has gained less attention than the empirically observable (or listen-able) interrelations of religion and popular culture more broadly. How true! All the more important, then, is a publication such as the Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music. As always for such broad topics, the editors were faced with identifying a useful approach to a complex field. They decided to divide the book into an introduction and three parts. In the introduction, the editors situate the contributions to the handbook, especially those in Parts II and III, according to a typology proposed by B. D. DOI: 10.25364/05.7:2021.1.10