By Danny Anderson As a consumer of art, I generally agree with Franz Kafka when he wrote “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us.” I don’t take this to mean that we should avoid books we like. Rather, we should learn to appreciate art that challenges us…
WANDAVISION and a Biblical Approach to Processing Grief
By Christopher Cummings Appearances are deceiving in the new Disney+ drama WANDAVISION. Set in the aftermath of the latest Avengers movie, Wanda Maximoff and her android beaux Vision enjoy domestic life in the suburbs of New Jersey… despite Vision’s heroic death several years prior. Unbeknownst to Wanda, she’s using her supernatural gifts to avoid her grief…
Book Review: Theology and Prince
Recently, my friend Dr. Jeremy Perigo agreed to review Theology and Prince (part of the Theology and Pop Culture book series) for the American Academy of Religion‘s Reading Religion book review site. Here is a snippet of Dr. Perigo’s review: “This collection of essays will quickly become an essential starting point for future Prince scholars….
We Need Monsters to Understand God: Godzilla vs. Kong and the Theological Use of Kaiju Films
By David Armstrong The main distinction between gods and monsters in ancient mythology was how they used their power. Marduk is a descendant of Tiamat, and Zeus of Kronos (and therefore a brother of Typhoios), and yet both gods are gods rather than monsters precisely because they use their abnormally excessive power to preserve, defend,…
Theology and Horror: Answering the Concerns of the Critics
Guest post by John W. Morehead As a co-editor with Brandon Grafius of the new volume Theology and Horror: Explorations of the Dark Religious Imagination, I was asked to submit a post to help bring attention to our new work. I will use the opportunity to respond to tendencies that at times see a disconnect between…
Analyzing Religion in Jonathan Hickman’s Powers of X #3
As many of you who follow this website know, I have sporadically been linking up to a blog series (by David Canham) from our friends at Sequart about Jonathan Hickman’s House of X/Powers of X series that launched the current X-Men era at Marvel Comics. The series is full of religious ideas and symbolism, and…
WandaVision and Toxic Self-Care
By Danny Anderson [Spoilers (if that’s even still possible)]. Over the last two months, I was sucked into Wanda Maximoff’s hex like everyone else. Many other people have, or will, write about the gripping meditation on grief that WandaVision provides. Still others (with far more patience than me) will spin out of Wanda’s alternate reality into…
Integral Ecology, Wisdom, and Faith: Raya and the Last Dragon on Radical Solidarity
By David Armstrong Western society seems to be skeptical about our collective ability to find common cause just now. Yet this disbelief also comes at a time when a united human phronema is most needed to address global threats to our human flourishing and even existence. The coronavirus pandemic, climate change, and the devastating inequality of wealth and…
Anti-Life Justifies My Ignorance: Evangelicalism and the Pandemic
By Matthew Brake Grant Morrison’s Final Crisis billed itself as “The Day Evil Won.” The evil New God Darkseid had finally attained the long sought for Anti-Life Equation, a macguffin that gave him the power to control and subjugate the minds of others. In Morrison’s story, Darkseid’s coming is heralded by a “Religion of Crime”…
Grief, Loss, and Love Persevering in WandaVision
By Rev. Sam Blair [SPOILERS!!!!] If 2020 taught us anything, it was to expect the unexpected, and then to have those expectations shattered as well. Even so, I would not have guessed that a Marvel series would begin a national discussion about grief and grieving. And yet, here we are, memes and all. I work…
Call for Papers: Theology and Protest Music
Editors: Dr. Heidi M. Altman (haltman@georgiasouthern.edu) & Jonathan H. Harwell (jharwell@rollins.edu) Theology and Pop Culture is currently seeking contributions for a potential edited volume of essays on theology from various faiths connected with protest music of various popular genres. Essays should be written for academics, but avoid jargon in order to be accessible for the layperson. Women…
IT’S A SIN and the Church’s Response to Shame and Suffering
By Rev. Christopher West “He lies there all day, dying of shame.” So runs one of the most startling lines in Russell T. Davies’ latest television drama, It’s a Sin. The series is based on his own experiences and losses, and it follows three eighteen-year-olds – Ritchie, Roscoe, and Colin – as they move to London…
Religion and Ethnicity in Antiquity, The Mandalorian, and Today
By David Armstrong The emerging consensus in studies of the historical Jesus, Paul, his letters, the Gospel, and the New Testament more generally is that these figures and texts belong squarely within first-century Judaism, and that our notion of “Judaism” in antiquity cannot be reduced to the modern concept of “religion.” For all ancient peoples,…
Shameless: The Poverty of Sin in the Absence of God
By Andrew D. Thrasher Shameless. Such an apt title. Running eleven seasons spanning over ten years, Shameless has captured aptly the habitus of American poverty. It is marked by systemic poverty and the struggle to survive. It is marked by manipulation of the system, the brokenness of love, and the habitual dispositions of sin. Shameless captures the…
Analyzing Religion in Jonathan Hickman’s POWERS OF X #2
Those of you who follow this blog regularly know that I’ve been providing links to a series of blogs by David Canham over at Sequart analyzing religious themes in Jonathan Hickman’s House of X/Powers of X series. The following is an excerpt from the latest entry in the blog series: “X-Men stories often deal with…
V for Vendetta and Abraham Joshua Heschel in a Post-Trump America
By Matthew Brake When an immoral leader leaves office, it’s too easy for his detractors to breath a sigh of relief in the hopes of “going back to the way things were.” And for the moment, that’s fine, but we must do the hard work of asking about the conditions that allow such a leader…
The Pastor of Cobra Kai
As she often does, our friend Rev. Leah D. Schade at the EcoPreacher blog has written another great blog on a piece of pop culture–the hit series Cobra Kai! Rev. Schade specifically points out how the series does an excellent job of accurately portraying a mainline Protestant pastor: “He didn’t turn into a Bible-beating, gay-hating,…
Analyzing Religion in Jonathan Hickman’s HOUSE OF X #2
David Canham has been working on a series for our friends at Sequart analyzing the religious ideas and symbolism in Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men run. David has a really great piece looking at the theme of reincarnation in the character of Moira MacTaggert. David does an excellent job analyzing the characters and comparing the form of…
2020: Top Five Posts
2020 was certainly a tumultuous year. I’m proud of all of the contributors to the blog, especially those who contributed something timely to the circumstances we found ourselves in, whether concerning the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, or the rise of of conspiracy theories in our national discourse. I wanted to highlight the most…
Matisyahu’s “One Day” and the Burden of Hope: An Advent Reflection
By Danny Anderson This semester, I taught Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, the story of young, Hasidic Jew, Danny Saunders, and his journey to an orthodoxy that still engages the world outside his Hasidic community. In an attempt to explain that dynamic to my mostly Catholic students, I brought up the example of Matisyahu, the hip-hop-reggae-human beatbox…
The Code of the Elves: A Primer for Joy
By Jake Doberenz In the 2003 Christmas classic Elf (I think I can call it a classic now), the elves have about perfected a recipe for joy. Elf, directed by Jon Favreau and starring Will Ferrell and Zoey Deschanel, depicts the elf-raised human Buddy as he ventures into the wild world of New York City. Buddy, raised…
35% Holiday Discount on Theology and Pop Culture Series
Happy Holidays everyone! Rowman and Littlefield is running at 35% discount on its books during the holiday season, and that includes in-stock print titles and ebooks for the Theology and Pop Culture series. I’m not sure if it works with pre-orders (like with our upcoming Theology and Horror title), but it definitely is good for…
Call for Papers: Theology and Dystopia
Call for Abstracts: Theology and Dystopia Edited by Scott Donahue-Martens and Brandon Simonson From the Greek dus- (“bad”) and topos (“place”), dystopia as a genre is often characterized by its use of post-apocalyptic and totalitarian imagery. Dystopia stands in contrast with its counterpart utopia, an equally far-off yet disparately ideal world. Both dystopian and utopian worlds abound with…
Sports and Play in Christian Theology
By John Tucker Sport is a major preoccupation of the modern world. It consumes the time and energies of millions of people around the globe. It shapes the identity of individuals, communities, and nations.[1] For many participants, it operates much like a functional equivalent of religion, giving them a way to interpret and understand the…
Conspiracy as Evangelical Liturgy
By Danny Anderson An Opening Salvo Though too few media outlets cover it, there is in fact a sober and intellectually serious strain of Christianity in America. Revenue imperatives will probably always drive the media to focus on what historian John Fea refers to as the “Court Evangelicals” and other bizarre artifacts from the fringes of…
The Films of Wes Anderson and a Time for Everything
By Joshua Hollmann and Honor Students of Concordia College New York Wes Anderson is a designer of cinematic worlds of meaning. I recently taught the seminar “The Movies and Meanings of Wes Anderson” for the Fellows Honor Program at Concordia College New York. The course is related to my forthcoming book Theology and Wes Anderson for the…
LUCIFER and the Female God
By Princess O’Nika Auguste Lucifer is one of my favorite current television shows. It has everything that someone could want: humor, horror, magic, romance, and action. Lucifer focuses on Lucifer Morningstar, the Devil himself, who has abandoned his role as Ruler of Hell because he is bored and unhappy. He also leaves Hell to defy his father, God….
Avatar The Last Airbender: Neutrality, the Sacred, and Political Responsibility
By Corey Patterson Few television shows stand the test of time as eternal icons. Rarely do people across all age groups connect with a story that reflects our deepest fears and most extravagant hopes. But Avatar: The Last Airbender is no ordinary production; it’s a modern mythology that speaks to the need for political responsibility…
Watchmen and 2020 Politics
Hello everyone! Recently, I was invited by John Anthony Dunne to join him on The Two Cities podcast to discuss HBO’s Watchmen series. The podcast is about 48 minutes. We discuss the original Watchmen graphic novel and the politics of the Cold War, the Watchmen TV show’s intersection with our current political climate, and we…
Halloween (2018) in the Age of #MeToo
By JR. Forasteros Is there a more-maligned genre than horror? When master of horror fiction Stephen King won the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a Yale professor complained, He is a man who writes what used to be called penny dreadfuls. That they could believe that there is any literary value…
Calling All Saints: We Need a Lent for Halloween
By Danny Anderson Growing up a low-church Protestant, I had a tragically shallow liturgical education. When I moved to New York City in my mid 20s and first saw Catholics with ash on their foreheads on that particular Wednesday, I was utterly confused and thought I had wandered into an episode of The Twilight Zone. For…
Sometimes Dead is Better: Pet Sematary and Some Halloween Easter Reflections
By Danny Anderson Is it going too far to call Pet Sematary an Easter movie? Hear me out. First, let’s admit up front that Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s 2019 adaptation of Pet Sematary doesn’t explore the depths of human grief that it’s source material does. Stephen King’s 1983 novel is a classic work of…
Who Has a Problem with Evil? Halloween, Fascism, and Theodicy
By Danny Anderson Ted Bundy is once again having a moment. The current interest in his story can be traced to two new productions: Netflix’s four-part documentary series Conversations with a Killer, and the film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile which recently premiered at Sundance and stars Zac Efron. The critical conversation around the Efron…
Analyzing Religion in Jonathan Hickman’s POWERS OF X #1
Hello Everyone! Our friends over at Sequart are doing a blog series analyzing Jonathan Hickman’s current run on Marvel Comics’ X-Men, starting with the House of X/Powers of X series that kicked it off. We previously posted a link to the analysis of House of X #1 here. The writer, David Canham, gives a thorough…
An Investigation of Character: 12 REASONS WHY I LOVE HER and Bahá’í Dating Culture
By Ron Lapitan “This is a good one. I read it before I started dating the girlfriend I’m seeing now,” said the cashier at the comic store as he rang me up for the romance graphic novel, 12 Reasons Why I Love Her by Jamie Rich and Joëlle Jones. People often think of things as…
Blade Runner, Ex Machina, and the Moral Circle
By Haruo Gomes To put it simply, the moral circle is the people we care about. Our understanding of it is usually based on William Lecky’s History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne. William observes that “at one time the benevolent affections embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class,…
Proselytizing Skateboarding through a Videogame: Possibility Models & Lifestyle Religion
By Paul O’Connor In 2020, Skateboarding is a paid-up part of popular culture. If not for the Covid-19 pandemic, it would have made a debut as an Olympic sport at the Tokyo games. Despite this setback, its popularity has continued to grow throughout the year as many people have picked up boards as a way to…
Call for Papers: Religion and Horror Comics
While many genres offer the potential for theological reflection and exploration of religious issues, the nature of horror provides unique ways to wrestle with these questions. Since the EC Comics of the 1950s, horror comics have performed theological work in ways that are sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, but frequently surprising and provocative. This volume will…
Rape and Consent in Genesis 34 and RED TENT: Part Two
By Princess O’Nika Auguste [Click here to read Part One] Was Dinah Raped? Alice Ogden Bellis, in her book Helpmates, Harlots and Heroes: Women’s Stories in the Hebrew Bible, discusses a debate between three scholars: Meir Sternburg, Danna Fewell and David Gunn. These scholars debated about whether or not Dinah was raped. Gunn and Fewell…
THEOCON Goes Virtual! Sept. 19!
Hello friends! If you follow this site, then you may have seen some posts about an event called TheoCon in the past. TheoCon is an all day event where people come to discuss the intersection between faith, philosophy, and popular culture! Founded by Rev. Shayna Watson in 2018, this is TheoCon’s third year in existence….
THE BOYS and the Gods of Mass Media
By Camilo Lehnebach Bravo Stories are part of human nature. We tell them because that’s the way we can share our experiences and knowledge, and honestly, it’s the easiest way to communicate with each other. When you don’t know what to talk about with someone, you tell them what you did during the day, how…
Call for Papers: Fantasy, Theology, and the Imagination
Call for Papers: Fantasy, Theology, and the Imagination Edited by Austin M. Freeman, Andrew D. Thrasher, and Fotini Toso In the world of High Fantasy, authors create fictional worlds that often reflect human religiosity and theological themes in new and creative ways. Through theological and religious analyses of high fantasy and fantasy series, the editors…
Who Watches the Watchmen: A Discussion with Church of the Geek Podcast
Hello everyone! As my friend Chris Maverick sometimes jokes, my goal is to be on every podcast ever. Not really, but I do enjoy getting invited on to be a part of various conversations. A few weeks ago, my friends at the Church of the Geek podcast invited me to participate in a discussion of…
DARK (Netflix) – Duality, Trinity, and Time
By Manon C. James Dark is a Netflix drama, produced in Germany and dubbed into several languages, including English. It is based in a fictional (but recognisable) town of Winden in Germany. As the title suggests, it is a dreary place, with a nuclear plant and a threatening forest (Forests are sinister places in German mythology)….
Help A. David Lewis Write KISMET, MAN OF FATE, Vol. 2
In 2014, writer A. David Lewis brought the first Muslim superhero in comic books back from oblivion. He produced, along with Noel Tuazon, Rob Croonenborghs, and Taylor Esposito, the first volume of KISMET, MAN OF FATE, a character not seen in print for over 70 years. Setting the story in the present, Kismet transitions from…
Analyzing Religion in Jonathan Hickman’s HOUSE OF X #1
Recently, I received an email from one David Canham, informing me that he was beginning to write an ongoing series for the website Sequart analyzing religious themes in Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men run. As a fan of Hickman’s work, and as someone who is writing his own ongoing series for Sequart about Hickman’s Avengers run, I was…
Jesus, Four Gospels, and the Reign of the Supermen
Back in June, I (Matthew Brake) began writing comic reviews for the website Monkeys Fighting Robots. I have very much enjoyed the experience, and through it, I’ve gotten to get to know some of my fellow reviewers. One in particular, Zac Owens, wrote a piece that I wanted to share with you all, looking at…
Matthew Brake Discusses Animal Man on Deconstructing Comics
Hello everyone! Recently, Tim Young of the Deconstructing Comics podcast had me on to talk about Grant Morrison’s Animal Man comics run from DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint (now Black Label). Those of you who know me know that I love Morrison as a writer, and I often use him comics in my Religion and Literature class….
Moira Rose: Learning to Pray from an Unexpected Teacher
By Christopher West Frustration, we might say, is part of the human condition; it is one aspect of our experience that never truly goes away—a rather frustrating fact(!)—but lingers on into the present. Several years ago, Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury, was quick to point this out, while delivering his homily during the eucharistic…
Evil and the Bat, Part Three: The Meaning of THE RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE
By Raymond Lam (Read Part Two of this blog series here) In this third and final exploration of Batman and the “theology” constructed by Grant Morrison over the decade of 2008–18, we dive into The Return of Bruce Wayne (RBW) (2010), one of Morrison’s finest Batman works and one that elevated the idea of Bruce Wayne to…
