ABSTRACT
A post-modern approach to enlivening and sustaining religion requires a systematic critique of the ways in which the drama of the holy are used to advance or impair human endeavor. The Christ of Easter reflects the alienation of humanity in a world defective in significant ways. The typifications of sin in Christmas and Christmas carols tend to help reproduce existing structures of social order by locating the source of sin in the failing individual. To fully understand how ideological fields are constituted and used, one must go beyond semantics, information theory, and the spoken language to include typifications and semiotics. Easter can be trivialized by egg-rolls on the White House lawn, by tiny chicks squeezed tightly by tiny hands, and by melting chocolate rabbits. It is central to a critical dramaturgy to identify the ideological field from which this dramatization of Christ is created and helps recreate.
