241. Elzey, Wayne. "Liminality and Symbiosis in Popular American Protestantism." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 43, December 1975: 741-56.
Popular Protestantism is little studied, because it is, according to Elzey, diffuse, not clearly defined. Since its primary tenet is justification by faith, religion is omnipresent in every aspect of life. Its "diagnostic" attributes are community outside the church, a clear and developed symbolic tradition, individualism, devotion, dualism, concrete imagery reflecting dogma, the "sacralization of the ordinary" (p. 742), little emphasis on the sacred, and ritual moral behavior. All these can be found in extreme form in revivals. The artifacts of this popular religion are primarily mnemonic in function: Jesus T-shirts, key chains and other sacralized schlock. There is a tendency to democratize Scripture in "symbiotic" fashion [this seems to mean nothing more than that the symbols are multivocalic] in works which make biblical puns, e.g.; this demands both acceptance of biblical inerrancy and a recognition of the Bible's inadequacy to the modern situation, according to Elzey.