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My God Morpheus: 'Matrix' Gospel

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Seay — a pastor of Ecclesia, a progressive Christian church in Houston — has taken some hits from colleagues for integrating pop culture into faith. In an earlier book, The Gospel According to Tony Soprano, he gleaned Christian lessons from the Bada Bing crew, comparing Tony Soprano to King Solomon — a man of great wealth who inwardly feels weak and empty.

Seay refers to Soprano family turncoat Big Pussy as "the Judas Iscariot of the New Jersey mob" for betraying Tony and becoming an FBI informant.

But if you lack faith in The Matrix or The Sopranos, here are some other diversions that have inspired worshipful devotion.

Entertaining Spiritual Thoughts

Force Strong in Britain: Was it the dark side of The Force that led some 390,000 Britons to declare Jedi as their religion in the 2001 United Kingdom census? Actually, it was the Internet.

An Internet campaign urged folks to help get the spiritual practice that guides Luke Skywalker listed by the British government as an official religion.

A widely circulated e-mail mistakenly claimed that officials would be obligated to recognize Jedi if 10,000 British citizens identified it as their religion.

Even the most gullible science-fiction fan wouldn't have bet on the overwhelming response. In any event, 0.7 of the population embraced Star Wars — which would make Jedi the United Kingdom's fourth-largest religion, ahead of Judaism or Buddhism.

However, the Bureau of National Statistics claimed that Jedi-ism still didn't meet the criteria to be considered a religion. Those who declared that on their census form were marked as having no religion. The president of the country's Star Wars fan club declared it persecution.

The Final Frontier: As Capt. Kirk finds in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, "You can't appreciate Shakespeare until you've read him in the original Klingon."

Now, thanks to groups like the Klingon Shakespeare Restoration Project, you can read the good book in a way that would shock even Dr. McCoy.

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