Exploring pop culture, religion

The religious toy and game business is booming as a result of an increasingly common mix of consumerism and religious tradition, says Maynard author Rebecca Sachs Norris. And that mix isn’t unique to the holiday gift season.

As fun and play become American cultural imperatives, religious practices follow suit, according to the chairwoman of the religious and theological studies department at Merrimack College. The study of religious toys is the study of “embodied, lived religion,’’ she says.

Norris is the coauthor, with Iowa State religion professor Nikki Bado-Fralick, of “Toying With God: The World of Religious Games and Dolls,’’ scheduled for publication early in the new year by Baylor University Press.

In her North Andover office, Norris has accumulated hundreds of artifacts; some funny and charming, others strange and even disturbing.

One standout is the “Looking Good for Jesus’’ makeup compact, part of a cosmetic line for adolescent girls. It was pulled from some store shelves in Singapore last holiday season after complaints that the products trivialized Christianity, and that its marketing slogans had too much sexual innuendo.

Another, “Chutes and Ladders,’’ is a game beloved by generations of American families, in which children make progress by climbing ladders and lose it by falling down a slide.

The game is actually an adaptation of “Snakes and Ladders,’’ created in ancient India to teach children about moving toward salvation through good deeds, or facing rebirth as a lower form of life as a consequence of sliding into sin or evildoing.

Norris and Bado-Fralick also examine the wide spectrum of dolls marketed to little girls in religious cultures around the world, including a Diwali Barbie for Hindu children issued by toy-making giant Mattel in 2006. In what the book calls “Iran’s answer to Ken and Barbie,’’ Dara and Sara are Muslim dolls in modest clothing that were created by a government agency to promote traditional values.

“Toying With God’’ is filled with academic research but written in a down-to-earth humorous style, meant to engage all readers - religious or not - at the contemporary intersection of spiritual and popular cultures.

“We really wanted it to be accessible to everyone,’’ said Norris. “It’s fascinating to talk about and examine actual lived religion, expressions of faith that aren’t just in a book.’’

Matters of Faith is a series of occasional articles exploring religious life in our local communities. Erica Noonan can be reached at enoonan@globe.com.