Memes From Television and Movies Used for Ministry

My sample: The memes I have chosen are from the past six months, and are all related to television or movies from popular culture that @HoodJesusYo uses for ministry. I have provided screenshots to all of the Memes I will be using and the Twitter account, @HoodJesusYo's twitter, where I collected all of the memes is linked below. The reason I chose these examples was because I felt that these memes specifically related to the popular culture audience. I thought it was interesting, because all of these memes are secular and none of them are originally about religion at all. @HoodJesusYo spins these secular memes for an evangelical purpose. The general population could find these Memes funny, but @HoodJesusYo has chosen to use them in a religious way by using the captions that he has.

@HoodJesusYo actually has a blog that explains the entire story of how the account began. According to HoodJesusYo.tumblr.com in the article "Who is @HoodJesusYo?" the creators state that they are from College Station, Texas and it all started out as a few roommates who wanted to make a cool Twitter account.  The roommates all "Love Jesus," and wanted to make an account that they could contribute to in a way that they would all feel passionate about and know enough about, therefore @HoodJesusYo was born.

"The best messages we get are the ones when people say anything along the lines of, 'wow I needed to hear this,' 'Hood Jesus is actually really speaking to me,' 'Thank you.'"

-Creators of @HoodJesusYo

This being said, the mission that the creators have make the Memes that they use are all for the purpose of glorifying their Savior, Jesus Christ, and not to belittle Christianity, but to uplift it. They want to reach an audience, of over 300K people, with the purpose of encouragement. This makes them unique because so often Memes are meant to make fun of in a malicious way, religions or the topic which they are speaking on.

The examples that I would like to give are the first three below. Two of which were posted on my original blog post, but I would like to go more in depth:

To the right is Meme of Steve Carell where he is staring as Michael Scott in The Office. This Tweet states "Readin tha King James Version like," then with the caption of "I understand nothing." To understand this Meme, one has to understand the idea of the King James Version. The King James Version of the Bible was finished in 1611, and therefor the language is hard to read and interpret. The newer age Bibles including NIV, ESV, NLT, and other versions are easier for the reader to understand in modern day language. The other side aspect of this Meme is the understanding of the show the Office, and if one watches the show they understand the humor that Michael Scott has. That is what makes this Meme funny and uplifting for those who are Christians and read the Bible.

To the Left is a Meme that I previously used in the blogpost before, to give an example of what kind of Tweets @HoodJesusYo puts out. Shown here is a picture of Dobby the House Elf from the book series of Harry Potter. Harry Potter is huge in todays culture, and has sold a massive amount of books and has become a movie franchise. @HoodJesusYo mentions Satan who in Christianity is considered "The Enemy," of God and people. Christians believe they belong to God, and not Satan. So to understand both Harry Potter, and the Christian belief of belonging to God and not Satan, this Meme makes sense and is funny to the Christian that would be following @HoodJesusYo.

Above is another that was on the previous blog. This example is from Napoleon Dynamite the movie. Here the character is talking about a girlfriend he met online. Christians believe that Jesus Christ, who was fully son and fully God, came down to earth to die on a cross and raise again three days later. In doing so, they believe that Christ paid for their sins, or the bad things they have done. So this Meme makes sense to the Christian audience and is funny, because of this context that Christ died for their sins so "I guess you could say things are getting pretty serious," is comical because of their belief in Jesus and what he has done.

To find these Memes, visit https://twitter.com/HoodJesusYo.