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…
Tag: Eschatology
Vision: Altered Carbon and Westworld
By Stephen Garner ***A version of this article previously appeared in Stimulus: The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice, 25, 1 (18 July 2018), and is used here with permission from the author and the journal. “We aren’t meant to live forever. It corrupts even the best of us.” – Quellcrist Falconer, Altered Carbon (Season…
The Apocalypse and Pop Culture
Hello friends! As many of you who have followed the site know, there are a number of really cool books in the queue for the Theology and Pop Culture series (as George R.R. Martin tells his fans, I promise you, those books are coming!). One of the forthcoming books is on the topic of Eschatology…
Fan Theories, Eschatological Anxiety, and Avengers: Endgame
By Rev. Samuel Blair Our popular culture has had a long love affair with the end of the world. The word “apocalyptic” is commonly used in reference to something being cataclysmic and destructive, but in Biblical literature it referred not to “end of the world” doomsday scenarios, but to revelatory passages where the veil of…
Call for Abstracts: Theology and Westworld
Call for Abstracts – Theology and Westworld Edited by Juli Gittinger and Shayna Sheinfeld The television series Westworld has garnered significant interest from academics as well as from wide audiences. While many of its themes and plot motifs represent longstanding focuses in science fiction, the treatment of them has stood out as especially creative in a…
Grant Morrison, Final Crisis, and the Power of Apocalyptic Storytelling
By Julie Rivera Anyone that has heard a Grant Morrison interview can deduce that he has some interesting ideas about the world, which he portrays using metafiction, unique storytelling, and spirituality. While Morrison does not identify as a Christian, some of his works reflect Christian themes. His graphic novel Final Crisis uses the idea of…
When God Leaves It Unresolved: The Problem with Cliffhangers
From the good people over at Mockingbird. This seemed fitting in light of Jack Holloway’s piece on Fantasia 2000 earlier this week about waiting for the unresolved redemption of creation for which we groan. “And, in the Romans 8 passage, Paul describes a world living in the hope that Jesus Christ did do something. The cross,…
Man of Steel and a Theology of Hope
In Man of Steel, Zack Snyder’s 2013 Superman reboot, there is a scene where Superman and Lois Lane are in an interrogation room and discuss the emblem on his chest: Lois Lane: What’s the ‘S’ stand for? Superman: It’s not an ‘S.’ On my world it means ‘hope.’ I’ve always had a soft spot for heroes like…
Pop Culture and Theology 