Foreword: The Study of Fandom and Religion Carole M. Cusack and Venetia Laura Delano Robertson Introduction This project was originally conceived by John Morehead as an academic yet accessible anthology of papers that explore the sacred aspects of “fantastic” fandoms, those communities and personal engagements that celebrate texts of the fantasy and science fiction genres. When we, Carole Cusack and Venetia Robertson, were invited by John and McFarland to contribute to the volume and complete the project as the editors we were excited to see the breadth and depth of the contributions. The essays that have been selected for this volume represent innovative intellectual engagements with the relationship of religion to fandom. A considerable portion of the authors are early career researchers and, with the field being emergent and quickly evolving, the studies here are appositely fresh. While some of the fandoms and their media sources that feature in these pages have been subject to much academic assessment over the years, the following essays offers an insightful take on what these cultures can tell us about spirituality in the contemporary world. Employing fieldwork, discourse analysis, digital ethnography, and theory from film studies, religious studies, and cultural studies amongst other disciplines, each essay demonstrates yet another layer of the imbrication of the religious and the fannish in participatory cultures and textual devotion. The case studies discussed in this collection will be of interest to many—consumers, scholars, fans and aca-fans— but we are proud to say that, both independently and as a whole, this work provides valuable voices in the conversation between Religious Studies and Fandom Studies on how meaning is mediated in the modern world. The recent but blossoming field of Fandom Studies explores and interrogates the interactions between creators and purveyors of texts, texts themselves, and their consumers. Here “text” takes on its widest possible meaning; not only the written iteration of a story, but its visual, theatrical, filmic, and ludic manifestations all become “readable” and subject to analysis, discursive and beyond. 1 This analytical take is not as new as the arena of Fandom Studies but under this heading scholars bring together diverse multidisciplinary strategies, from classic forms of literary criticism, anthropological method, and theological exegesis, to the modern and postmodern realms of inquiry that focus on identity, performativity, authenticity, and the disruption of metanarratives. With increasing vigor, Religious Studies has opened its own key terms up for deconstruction and redefinition. “Religion” is today studied as not exclusively a tradition-based or faith-based practice, but a rationale, an experience, a framework that is implicitly and explicitly present in a variety of cultural contexts. A spate of recent studies into the dual processes of secularization and sacralisation in the contemporary Western world have produced new methodologies for interpreting shifts in our religious thinking and doing. Thus, Yves Lambert has posited that in the encounter of modernity and religion, there are four possible futures: “decline, adaptation or reinterpretation, conservation, and innovation.” 2 Reinterpretation and innovation are most relevant to religions and spiritualities based on popular culture. The core characteristics of these phenomena are: “this-worldliness, self-spirituality, immanent divinity, dehierarchization, parascientific or science fiction-based beliefs, [and] loose organizational structures.” 3