On their recent album Dark Adrenaline, the Italian band Lacuna Coil covered REM’s well-known “Losing My Religion” from 1991′s Out of Time record. Here is the cover:

And here is the original REM tune and famous video:

In my 1998 book Virtual Faith, I argued that “Losing My Religion” (song and video) was a rich theological symbol insofar as it represented the story of a common spiritual quest of those born in the 1960s and 1970s. The title lyric is key, with religion as an accessory that can be lost and found, and the Jesus image in the video is crucial: a savior figure tired and old, who can’t even get back up on the cross to keep doing what he is, exhaustedly, supposed to be doing. (You can read part of my analysis, beginning on page 65, at Amazon here.) Those “on the ground” are left with post-Christian pieces to reassemble.

Some religion scholars, including (my friend) Gordon Lynch (now of the University of Kent, UK), criticized my theological reading of that video for not taking into account actual fan interpretations of it. In many ways, that criticism is apt, and so apt in

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