The origins of our postsecular present, revealed in a vivid, groundbreaking account of the moment when popular culture became the site of religious conflict.The 1980s are usually seen as a slick, shrill decade. The Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers urged and “Death to America and “; Ronald Reagan was in the White House, backed by the Moral Majority; John Paul II was asserting Catholic traditionalism and denouncing homosexuality, as were the televangelists on cable TV. And yet and “crypto-religious and ” artists pushed back against the spirit of the age, venturing into vexed areas where politicians and clergy were loath to go–and anticipating the postsecular age we are living in today.That is the story Paul Elie tells in this enthralling group portrait. Here’s Leonard Cohen writing and “Hallelujah and ” in a Times Square hotel room; Andy Warhol adapting Leonardo’s The Last Supper in response to the AIDS crisis; Prince making the cross and altar into and “signs of the times. and ” Through Toni Morrison the spirits of the enslaved speak from the grave; Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen deepen the tent-revival intensity of their work; U2, Morrissey, and Sinead O’Connor give voice to the anguish of young people who were raised religious; Wim Wenders offers an angel’s-eye view of Berlin. And Martin Scorsese overcomes fundamentalist opposition to make The Last Temptation of Christ–a struggle that anticipates Salman Rushdie’s struggle with Islam in The Satanic Verses.

The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s PDF

The list of books you might like