By Matthew Brake I grew up in the 1990s (a time, which I’ve come to realize, is as long ago now as the 1960s were for me back then. I’m struggling to deal with that). And I was raised in the heart of conservative evangelical culture war country. After I became passionate about the Christianity…
Call for Papers: Theology and Religion in Daredevil
Title: Faith, Morality, and the Man without Fear: Theology and Religion in Daredevil Editors: Taylor Thomas and Regan Hardeman Abstract, CV, and Proposal due: July 30, 2023 Initial Final Paper due: November 15, 2023 Created by Stan Lee, Bill Everett, and Jack Kirby in 1964, Daredevil is a triumph in comic book writing that provocatively…
Symbols of Excess: Ozark and the Idolatry of Our Times
By Arthur Aghajanian “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it has its foundation on…
“The Trip” as a Christian Pilgrimage
By David Armstrong I’ve done a relatively terrible job at keeping up with popular culture recently. I suppose that’s a strange way to put the matter, because it is not really a major thing to keep up with, ordinarily speaking, and my reasons for being out of the loop are traditionally respectable ones: marriage, fatherhood,…
Extended Call for Papers: Theology, Religion, and Watchmen
Editors: Matthew Brake and David K. Goodin Alan Moore is considered one of the greatest modern writers of comics and graphic novels, and he is perhaps best well-known for the celebrated comic series Watchmen, along with artist Dave Gibbons. Watchmen is not only one of the most celebrated comics series of all time, but in…
Call for Paper: Theology, Religion, and the Last of Us
Call for Papers The Last of Us: Violence, Ethics, Redemption? Series: Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture Editor: Dr Peter Admirand, Dublin City University The Last of Us, The Last of Us: Left Behind (DLC) and The Last of Us Part II video games embody sustained critical and commercial success, and are some of the most…
Grant Morrison, Batman, and (Re)Cycles of Pain: More from a Post-Traumatic Christian
By Matthew Brake As I’ve written before, I have not given up on my Christian faith. In many ways, at least creedally, I think many of my friends and colleagues would find me surprisingly orthodox. But emotionally and spiritually, I have described myself as a “post-traumatic” Christian, riffing on Grant Morrison’s notion of Batman as…
Why Should Theologians Read H.P. Lovecraft?
By Austin Freeman The eldritch fingerprints of H.P. Lovecraft seem to be everywhere–tentacles, myriad eyes, regressive cults, and ancient names excavated from prehistoric monuments, bearing knowledge of forces greater and more terrifying than the soft anthropomorphic gods of the civilized world. From tabletop gaming to young adult comics to flagship television programs, Lovecraft’s great old…
All-Star Superman as Religious Creed
By Matthew Brake All-Star Superman recently began to trend when James Gunn announced that the upcoming DC movie slate would be inspired by many of the works of comics writer Grant Morrison. While not taking place in DC Comics’ “main continuity,” the story of All-Star Superman is a quintessential Superman tale, combining all the elements…
Extended Call for Papers: Theology, Religion, and Watchmen
Editors: Matthew Brake and David K. Goodin Alan Moore is considered one of the greatest modern writers of comics and graphic novels, and he is perhaps best well-known for the celebrated comic series Watchmen, along with artist Dave Gibbons. Watchmen is not only one of the most celebrated comics series of all time, but in…
Black Mirror and the Virtue of Constructive Boredom
By John Anthony Donne Technology is making us bored. Andy Crouch supposes that the English word ‘bored’ came into existence in recent centuries in tandem with a new disposition that we experience with the advent of new technologies, especially digital technologies.[1] And boredom begets boredom. It is a recurring internal trigger that causes us to…
Conference: Theology, Religion, and D&D
A few weeks ago, our site published a Call for Papers for a Dungeons and Dragons volume. For fans of that franchise, we also want to let you know about a virtual graduate conference being held on March 25 hosted by the editors of the D&D volume, Scott Donahue-Martens and Brandon Simonson (you should also…
Sympathy for the Devil: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Tension of Redemption
By Jake Doberenz Most people can appreciate a good redemption story—as long as it is told in fiction. Real life redemption stories tend to make us quite uneasy. When we begin to see one pattern in a person, it becomes very hard to rewire our brains to see them in a new, different light. We…
Let the Truth Have its Day: The Dark Knight, Anthea Butler, and White Evangelical Racism
By Matthew Brake It’s dangerous to build a cause based on a lie because the lie may come back and bite you. This is certainly the case in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. In the second movie, The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne believes that he can end his war on crime with the help of…
2022: Top Five Posts
Every year, we post links to the top five original posts for the year (check out our lists from previous years: 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021). Blogs from previous years and calls for papers certainly get a lot of views, but this list focuses specifically on the top views for this year’s original posts. If you…
Call for Papers: Theology, Religion, and Dungeons & Dragons
Call for Abstracts: Theology, Religion, and Dungeons & Dragons Edited by Scott Donahue-Martens and Brandon Simonson Dungeons & Dragons is a tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) that was created in 1974 and popularized in the 1970’s and 1980’s, though it has found a renaissance in contemporary popular culture due in part to its prominent role in…
A Beautiful Pattern: The Aesthetics of Virtue in Knives Out
By Colin Toffelmire Rian Johnson’s celebrated murder-mystery Knives Out is intricate, fun, and funny. The plot always leans forward, the acting is excellent, and it is relentlessly clever. What’s more, for the persistent viewer, the film rewards multiple viewings. First come the various hints and clues in the dialogue, and then more subtle hints and…
Virtue Ethics and Moral Transformation in A Christmas Carol
By Jake Doberenz “Spirit!” he cried, tight clutching at its robe, “hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse.” -Dickens, A Christmas Carol Personal change is a major theme in both religion and literature. We can recognize that in any…
What About Second Advent? Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy as Seasonal Inspiration
By Danny Anderson For the past several years, my family and I have made a tradition of watching through Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy in the Thanksgiving window. In all honesty, the tradition wasn’t born out of an intentional act of religious devotion. Thanksgiving break simply provided ample free-time to luxuriate in the…
Advent, Twelvetide, and the Unreasonable Hope of Christmas
By Katherine Billotte-Kelaidis It is a little bit awkward for me to sit down to write about “pop culture and Advent,” because a) I am from a tradition in which Advent as such does not exist (and I promise to explain below) and b) it seems to me that popular culture has, over the past…
Call for Papers: Theology, Religion, and the Office
Call For Papers: Title: Theology and The Office Volume Editors: Daniel J. Cameron & John W. McCormack Abstract and CV Due: January 31, 2023 Initial Final Paper Due: June 30, 2023 In 2020, seven years after the show officially ended, the hit NBC series The Office was the number 1 streamed tv show with over…
Unveiling the Secret of the “Seductive Stare”: Saint Teresa, Santiago Cabrera, and Desire – Part Two
By Loraine Haywood ***Click Here to read Part One! The Musketeers, Season 1, Episode 9: “Knight Takes Queen” In this episode, Aramis, the virile romantic hero, (Santiago Cabrera), Queen Ann (Alexandra Dowling), and Athos (Tom Burke) seek shelter in a monastery as Porthos (Howard Charles) and D’Artagnan (Luke Pasqualino) go for reinforcements. Under siege by…
Unveiling the Secret of “The Seductive Stare”: Saint Teresa, Santiago Cabrera, and Desire – Part One
By Loraine Haywood Abstract In a theological fantasy, Saint Teresa testifies to her piercing by an angel while in the convent in Avila. Film viewers would be familiar with Bernini’s statue, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, as a representation of this encounter, from the film, Angels and Demons (Howard 2009). This sculptural orgasm is a representation…
John Carpenter and the Origins of Evil
By Danny Anderson Let there be no doubt about my position. John Carpenter is a great artist. And critics, many of whom seemingly made careers out of missing this point, have largely come around to acknowledge this fact. If there was any remaining doubt about Carpenter’s artistic achievements, Jordan Peele, the director of three modern…
Horror, Theology, and the Fragmented World
By Brandon R. Grafius Every prophet in the Hebrew Bible has a call narrative, a story where God speaks to them directly and commissions them to be a prophet. Think of Moses at the burning bush, the young Samuel being woken by a voice in the middle of the night, or Jeremiah being touched on…
When Christians are Evil and Black Sabbath are “Moralists”: A Heavy Metal Theology of Retribution
By Jack Holloway Day of judgment, God is calling On their knees, the war pigs crawling Begging mercy for their sins Satan laughing, spreads his wings Oh lord, yeah! The United States had been bombing Indochina relentlessly for years, American troops were burning homes and villages belonging to Vietnamese noncombatants, and were raping Vietnamese women….
Religion, Consumerism, and Absurdism: Modernity and the Quest for Meaning
By Cole DeSantis Popular culture is not known for being the most self-aware phenomena in human society. Many of the trends that constitute “pop culture” are considered fashionable because they are taken to be cool, novel, or because they appeal to us on some visceral level. Pop culture is something to be enjoyed, not really…
Isaac Brock, the Unreliable Narrator: Holy Fury in Modest Mouse’s “Cowboy Dan”
Modest Mouse’s classic album “The Lonesome Crowded West” turned 25 this year. And yet, barely any writing about the band’s peculiar theology exists. It’s time to change that.
We Don’t Talk About Burnout: What Disney’s Encanto Can Teach Us About Having a Vocation
By Dr. Jennie Riley A gift bestowed upon an individual by an ephemeral divine being. A gift which gives the recipient purpose and a place in a community. A gift which becomes central to that person’s identity. Take that premise, give it a Disney twist, inject Lin Manuel Miranda’s song-writing, and you’ve got the ingredients…
Contemplatives in Conversation: The Theology of Cinema, Part 2
By Arthur Aghajanian ***Before continuing, read Part One here… AA: In the context of theology, we might note that film has a special ability to represent things that other art forms can’t. The hypnotic affects achieved through temporal dislocation, the camera’s ability to concentrate attention while being everywhere at once, and the use of montage…
Contemplatives in Conversation: The Theology of Cinema, Part 1
By Arthur Aghajanian Going to the movies may not seem like religious action, but it’s one of the most common ways we experience spiritual insight. Film impacts how we interpret life, and its mechanical apparatus is uniquely suited to provide glimpses of the divine in the signs and symbols of the everyday. Like religion, film…
Doom Theology: Black Sabbath’s Relentless Vision of Good and Evil
By Jack Holloway The 1960s was a decade brimming with hopes of revolution, an electric time for a zealous counterculture. The Vietnam War loomed in the background, a fraught international situation which fueled the counterculture’s pursuit of radical societal transformation. But 1969 would prove to be a decisive year, as the tide was turned by…
Harrowings of Hell in Sandman and Christianity
By David Armstrong Caveat Lector: Spoilers follow for Netflix’s The Sandman Season One. In The Sandman, Season One, Episode 4, “A Hope in Hell,” Morpheus, aka Dream of the Endless, Lord of the Dreaming, embarks on a harrowing of hell to retrieve his helm, one of three magical objects which contain and channel his creative…
Call for Papers: Religion and James Bond
Call for Papers: Religion and James Bond Volume Editor: George Tsakiridis, PhD Abstract and CV Due: November 30, 2022 Initial Final Paper Due: June 1, 2023 Click this link, and close your eyes…wait a few seconds and start reading… It’s hard to imagine a more iconic action hero from the past 60 years than James…
Saul Goodman (James McGill) finds a God of his Understanding: A Theological Reflection on Better Call Saul
By David K. Goodin The narrative world of the Breaking Bad has reached its conclusion. The original series (2008-2013) centered on the pyrrhic ascendency and tragic final days of drug kingpin Walter White. The follow-up movie El Camino (2019) added a postscript for the one seemingly redeemable character, Jesse Pinkman. Whereas the final episode of…
30% Discount on the Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture Series!
Up through May 04, 2023, Lexington/Fortress Press is offering a 30% discount on all books in the Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture series with discount code LXFANDF30. This discount includes not only hardcovers but ebooks and paperbacks as well (so definitely worth looking at the paperbacks for Theology and Prince and Theology and the Marvel…
Extended Call for Papers: Theology, Religion, and the Witcher
Title: Theology, Religion, and The WitcherEditor: Yael Cameron, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand Andrzej Sapkowski is author of the Polish fantasy novels and short stories following protagonist Geralt of Rivia, better known as The Witcher. Since the early days of publication The Witcher has had a remarkable reception. The Witcher and its lore came…
Theology, Religion, and Margaret Atwood: Contributors Needed!
We are once again extending the call for papers for the Theology, Religion, and Margaret Atwood volume. The editors are interested in theological and religious analyses of Atwood’s works, which includes her famous A Handmaid’s Tale, but also includes her other short stories, essays, and poetry. Of particular interest would be a critical essay dealing…
A Response to McGrath and Brake: Batman, Joker, and Nietzsche’s Overman
By John MacDonald On episode 36 of the Religion Prof Podcast, Dr. James McGrath and Matthew Brake shared their interpretations of Nietzsche’s overman in relation to the Batman mythos in popular culture. McGrath raises the point that it is young Bruce Wayne’s response to his family tragedy that raises him from the level of the…
Puss-in-Boots: An Allegorical Reading
By Daniel Bookman It is no secret that many tales that we read and enjoyed as children were oftentimes allegorical in nature. Who doesn’t know of Aesops fables or the Brothers Grimm and their many tales of morality? Likewise, there is a strong literary tradition of tales serving as Biblical allegories. Perhaps the most famous…
Morality and Power in Spider-Man: No Way Home
By George Tsakiridis WARNING: SPOILERS (but come on, it’s been 2 months!) “Three is a magic number.” The catchy tune by De La Soul that plays during the animated credits of Spider-Man: No Way Home rings in the ears of all attendees and represents the best-worst kept secret of the past year – there are…
Call for Papers: Theology, Religion, and the Witcher
Title: Theology, Religion, and The WitcherEditor: Yael Cameron, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand Andrzej Sapkowski is author of the Polish fantasy novels and short stories following protagonist Geralt of Rivia, better known as The Witcher. Since the early days of publication The Witcher has had a remarkable reception. The Witcher and its lore came…
Grant Morrison, Superheroes, and The Post-Traumatic Christian
By Matthew Brake I was talking the other day to a friend, and the topic of our spiritual journeys came up. This person told me about the burnout and discouragement they felt, not only being involved in different churches, but in the whole “Jesus thing” in general. I then relayed my own story: involvement in…
Cobra Kai and the Fluidity of Religion
By David Armstrong There are certain ideas that, once you have them, it is excessively difficult to un-have them. Here are two. The first is that religions–treated as self-sufficient, insulated systems of belief, behavior, and belonging that are discrete from other such systems and that can be identified through zoning in on some sort of…
Call for Papers: Theology, Religion, and Dune
Title: Theology, Religion, and Dune Editor: Christopher A. Porter, Trinity College, University of Divinity A mention of Frank Herbert’s Dune conjures up visions of warring houses, giant spice worms, mysterious Fremen, and the crucial ‘spice’ melange. But within Herbert’s broad world building enterprise, his universe unashamedly embeds religious themes and theological frameworks in the narrative….
Jimmy Eat World’s 555 and the Lament Tradition of Prayer
By Thomas M. Fuerst As a white United Methodist pastor living in the American South, I have grieved for two years as Covid-19 has run through my city, my region, my nation, and our world. Fortunately, I pastor a congregation that largely takes masks and vaccines seriously, but I lament that I live in an…
A Last Blood Benediction: Anne Rice, Type O Negative, and Religious Imagery in Vampire Lore
By Lillah Lawson Many have explored the relationship between vampires and Christianity – scratch the surface of any well-written piece of vampire fiction, from Dracula to The Vampire Chronicles, from Salem’s Lotto Twilight, and you’ll find no shortage of vampiric characters bemoaning the fact that they are damned by God, drinking blood as an act…
2021: Top Five Posts
When I did this post last year, I stated that it had been a tumultuous year (a bit of an understatement). 2021 brought it’s own share of ups and downs and the world continues to struggle with the Covid-19 pandemic, the rise of authoritarianism, and the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories. I hope everyone is finding…
Call for Papers: Anime, Religion, and Theology
Call for Papers: Anime, Religion, and Theology Proposal Due Date: February 15th, 2022 First Submission Date for Contributors: August 15th, 2022 Editors: Roberto J. De La Noval and David Armstrong Today it is impossible to overlook the presence of Japanese animation, ‘anime’ for short, in the Western entertainment ecosystem. Since the 1990s, when many landmark…
Extended Call for Papers: Theology, Religion, and Wes Craven
Call for Proposals Title: Theology and Wes Craven Editor: David K. Goodin, McGill University Wesley Earl Craven (1939-2015), popularly known as simply Wes Craven, redefined the horror genre with such landmark and notorious films as The Hills Have Eyes (1977), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), The People…
Pop Culture and Theology 