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…
Author: matthewbrake84
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….
Pop Culture and Theology 