Essay
America
Church and state
Conspiracy theory
Culture
6 min read

Disney at 100: The Magic Kingdom's simulation of modern life

Disney is more than a mouse and entertainment. Theologian Jared Stacy dissects how the Liturgy of Disney reflects modern America in all its contradictions.

Jared holds a Theological Ethics PhD from the University of Aberdeen. His research focuses conspiracy theory, politics, and evangelicalism.

A statue of Walt Disney holding hands with Mickey Mouse in front of Cinderella's Castle
The Magic Kingdom of Disney.

Walt Disney once said, “remember, it all started with a Mouse.” An incredible fact considering that after a century of Disney, it is impossible to describe and interpret our modern world without mentioning Disney, the Christian church included. Once, Disney came up during an interview I took for a pastoral role at an American megachurch. Those with experience in low church American contexts won’t be surprised at what comes next.

During the interview, the church’s creative director casually mentioned taking his entire creative team to Disney World. It hadn’t been a pleasure trip; church employees toured Disney’s backstage creative department for inspiration they could bring back to the church. For this church, the Disney company – its vision and practices – was an index for its own. 

Now, my hunch is this little anecdote will offend the sensibilities of readers who are practicing Christians in high church traditions. I might also guess it will equally offend secular readers who see Disney as the archetype of corporate greed, pushing glib, crass sentimentalism as art. Christian readers might share some of these criticisms as well. Together this is what, back in 2001, sociologist Alan Bryman recognized as the ‘Disneyization’ of society.

Disney... is not a purveyor of morality, but of product that must (like any good neoliberal agent) sail with the prevailing winds of market-based morality.

Disney In the crosshairs  

Bryman’s work demonstrates how most criticism of Disney tends to expand into criticism of modern life itself. . Walt Disney himself dedicated Disneyland at its opening in 1955 with the words: 

 “this park is dedicated to the hard facts that made America.”  

To talk about Disney and the modern world is ironically enough to talk Walt at his word. It means reflecting on modern America and globalization, and the economics, aesthetics, ethics, and politics which characterize it. 

I have more to say about this. But first, we need to tackle just where Disney sits today in the social and political moment.  

Disney today finds itself in a familiar position: fixed in the crosshairs of US conservatives waging the culture war. (Ironically, both culture war and Disney are some of America’s prime exports.) But Disney today is as wise to the market as it’s ever been. It is not a purveyor of morality, but of products that must (like any good neoliberal agent) sail with the prevailing winds of market-based morality. 

Disney promotes prevailing values domestically and does the same for values of the Chinese Communist Party internationally. For example, in its Stateside parks, Disney recently decolonized or altered some of its attractions. It re-themed Splash Mountain attraction, a water ride based on Walt Disney’s Song of the South film. The 1949 film is banned on Disney’s streaming platform. It traded in racist tropes and revisionist historical propaganda (often called the 'Lost Cause') which originated in the American South after the Civil War. Disney also altered a scene from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride which depicted women as victims of sex trafficking.  

These are surely good changes. But conservatives tend to categorize these changes, together with LGBTQ inclusivity efforts, under the appropriated phrase ‘woke’. Armed with a weaponized slogan, vapid reactionaries continue to influence popular sentiment on Disney. Meanwhile, Disney CEO Bob Iger met with the US Government’s House select committee on China. To discuss Disney’s censorship practices and production in the Chinese market.  

To talk about Disney in the present, immediate sense is to (among other things) grapple with the political power of corporations, the moralities that sustain market practices, and the formative power of binge-watching on human beings. But what about Disney in the broader sense? The Disney that is a window into the (failed) promises of modernity? These are promises and possibilities that continue to haunt us as well as shape us.

I can find no better word to describe Disney’s parks. Liturgy, both in the Greek and Christian sense, speaks to how the parks provide a public service and fuel a religious experience.

The “Liturgy” of Walt Disney  

At the end of his life, Walt Disney had more in common with Elon Musk than JK Rowling. He was more obsessed with harnessing technology in service of “progress”. His ultimate dream (called EPCOT or Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow) was envisioned as the sum total expression of his theme parks. Disney wanted to take all the lessons of Disneyland and redirect them towards the construction of a permanent, liveable World’s Fair expo in the backwater of Florida’s swamps.  

But EPCOT today is something of a simulacrum. It houses a World Showcase where you can stroll the streets of Paris, Piazza San Marco, or a Mayan pyramid that houses a water ride. Disney even hosts student worker programs to ensure that if you order fish and chips in its England, you will be served by someone from York, Surrey, or Manchester. But this is not what EPCOT was supposed to be. Walt envisioned it as a real time, fully functioning “city of tomorrow” where all the best and brightest of American Post-War technological might and efficiency would make the human society something called “better”. In short, EPCOT was Disney’s public works project.  

The ancient Greeks had a word for projects like this: “liturgy”. The English word comes to us from combining the Greek noun for “people” leitos or laos with the Greek verb for “working” ergos. Nowadays, we tend to associate liturgy with Christian tradition, particularly the external rites and forms of worship for the church. But the idea of Christian liturgy emerged from this Ancient Greek practice of private financing of public projects. George Tridimas  shows how these “works for the people” were originally a Greek form of politics. To the Athenians, liturgies were a symbiotic practice: the wealthy elite competing for the honor and power associated with a project, while each project served everyday citizens of Athens.  

I can find no better word to describe Disney’s parks. Liturgy, both in the Greek and Christian sense, speaks to how the parks provide a public service and fuel a religious experience. They are a public works project that continue to shape the American consciousness, directing its worship, which is inevitably exported too, through the medium of culture. If you doubt the religious factor of the parks, ask again why a church might find itself believing a tour of Disney serves its task of Christian proclamation and formation. This isn’t just crass entertainment, but a profound (yet often uninterrogated) influence.  

The parks exist as an inhabitable space that suspends the contradictions of modern life and actually resolves them in a simulated fashion. 

This is why I think Disney biography Neal Gabler puts his finger on the essence of Disney’s parks. He argued that the parks aren’t successful because they provide an 'escape' from reality, but because they provide a ‘better' reality than the one outside. In this sense, the Disney imagineers don’t just tell good stories, they master physical space. The parks continue to attract guests the world over not because of popular franchises, but because,as a public works project, the entire parks experience is a high-control, surveiled effort to provide public efficiency, thematic immersion, crowd control, transportation—all of it.  

The parks exist as an inhabitable space that suspends the contradictions of modern life and actually resolves them in a simulated fashion. To treat the parks as a tasteless venture into plastic sentimentalism obscures how the parks attempt to satisfy, at nearly every turn, the modern contradictions that shape our human experience. To say this experience is a religious one would not be far from the truth, the Athenian liturgy and Christian liturgy converging into one.  

This is one reason why, however tragic it may be, churches in America continue to emulate Imagineers. The architecure of churches constructed within and without Christendom have communicated transcendence. And in spite of America’s embrace of Protestantism, we should not be surprised that American Christian traditions continue to emulate Disney’s mastery of physical space in the key of modernity. I understand criticisms of all things Disney, from parks and art to economics and adult Disney fans. But the parks are a liturgical experience, both in a religious sense and in a public sense. To understanding the staying power and influence of Disney means grappling, at a human level, with the park experience as a simulated resolution of modern life, rather than an escape. 

Review
Culture
Eating
Film & TV
Hospitality
3 min read

The hidden messages in Meghan Markle’s new Netflix show

How With Love, Meghan taps into ancient rituals

Jessica is a Formation Tutor at St Mellitus College, and completing a PhD in Pauline anthropology, 

A woman stands at a kitchen island with a chopping board on it.
Netflix.

It seems Netflix is ‘optimising its content for background viewing’. I rolled my eyes.  How depressing. Media companies know we are distracted, and they are altering the content of their shows to accommodate. It is true that “watching TV” no longer means “watching TV.” According to a 2023 YouGov study, 91 per cent of Americans check their phone at least once while watching TV. And now we are learning that TV content is being made so that viewers who have this playing on their screens in the background can actually follow along. Simple story lines, easy dialogue, you name it. I must admit, this is the context that led me to watch Meghan Markle’s new Netflix series, With Love, Meghan. While cooking dinner or tidying the house, I am prone to pop a TV show in the background. This is usually re-watching shows I know well - 24, Desperate Housewives, or Friends – but I thought I would give this new Netflix show a whirl.  

I’d seen some of the controversy about this show online and wanted to see what it was like. However, I didn’t want to give my own time to watch it, so it would be the perfect thing to partner with another task, in my case, cooking dinner. As I listened to it in the background, one thing struck me. The language sounded strangely familiar. 

I began to overhear terms familiar to me from church. Our time, Meghan told us, was “sacred,” our practices were “rituals,” we give an “offering” to those we love and care about, and we are “blessed” by their presence with us. Had I accidentally clicked on a YouTube sermon from [insert church name here]?   

The show kept drawing on language and themes deeply rooted in religion and spiritual traditions—particularly ritual. Frank Gorman once said, 

 “Ritual … becomes a means by which humans participate in the ongoing order of creation. Their existence is made meaningful as they participate in the never-ending drama of creation in ritual.”  

That’s exactly what seemed to be happening in With Love, Meghan. The show wasn’t just about hospitality or relationships but about finding meaning in the everyday through repeated, sacred actions. 

The language of sacred time, offerings, and blessings taps into something ancient and profound. In the Bible, God teaches people about His goodness through rituals—structured, embodied practices designed to help them understand who He is and who they are. The Israelites were not just learning ideas; they were instructed in these routine, regular practices that improved and enriched their lives.  

Rituals take what is ordinary and transform it into something sacred. They link our memory to the past, present, and future... 

Now in our modern world, we’ve largely lost this understanding of the power of ritual. Modern life is often fragmented and distracted—we chase peace but rarely stop long enough to experience it. Yet, in a strange way, shows like Love, Meghan seem to be reclaiming some of that language of ritual, even if unintentionally. Everything we do every day is, in some sense, a ritual. It is sacred. The way we make coffee in the morning, sit down with a friend, and even watch a show while preparing a meal are all embodied practices that shape our inner attitudes toward life. We know that our time is precious, so celebrating and savouring the everyday moments might be key in this deep pursuit of peace. We are returning to rituals.  

Rituals take what is ordinary and transform it into something sacred. They link our memory to the past, present, and future, and for Christians, re-orientate us towards God. They make us pause and participate in something bigger than ourselves. Perhaps that’s why the language in With Love, Meghan stood out so much. It wasn’t just talking about hospitality—it was using the language of sacred connection, of a theology rooted in everyday life. 

It resonated with me, even as background noise. How can you teach people ritual? You do it through action. Embodied practices—living out meaning with our bodies—have always been central to faith and human connection. Even modern media, designed for distracted consumption, can’t help but borrow from these ancient patterns. If we seek true connection, we have to return to the rituals that shape our everyday lives and, ultimately, remind us that we are a part of something much bigger than ourselves. This is what is truly sacred.  

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