I have long wanted to go through all 22 (or 24?) James Bond films and compile a list of the various religious references therein (the hollowed-out Bible in Diamonds Are Forever, the priest who crosses himself as the helicopter takes off in For Your Eyes Only, the rescued ancient church in The World Is Not Enough, etc., etc.). But for now, that’s just another item on my to-do list.
In the meantime, it seems that someone named Benjamin Pratt has written a book on the spiritual and religious themes of the James Bond novels, called Ian Fleming’s Seven Deadlier Sins and 007’s Moral Compass: A Bible Study with James Bond. And at least one church has already begun to base a class on this book.
I have no idea what the merits of this particular book might be, but I don’t doubt that there could be a lot of what blogger Carmen Andres refers to as “God-talk” in Fleming’s novels. The first one, Casino Royale, devoted an entire chapter to ‘The Nature of Evil‘ and Bond’s idea that we needed an “Evil Book” to complement the “Good Book”, i.e. the Bible. And I would be surprised if that was the only novel to have pondered some of the bigger questions.
Hat tip to Anthony Sacramone.
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