I’ve got a Godfather 3 type relationship with the church. Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in. Communities and people of faith have serendipitously entered my life–or I theirs–at moments when I was just about to give up on the whole thing. Tony Jones is one of those people and his new book, did God Kill Jesus: Looking for Love in History’s Most Famous Execution, is one of those rare texts that is both informative and inspirational. It’s... Read more
The recent Oscar-nominated foreign language film, Timbuktu, is the most important film of the decade. I know that such comments often sound like grandstanding, but I’m actually tempering my praise. It could be one of the most important films of any decade. With the rise of radical Islamic fundamentalism in ISIL, Timbuktu‘s story couldn’t be more timely, but the ways in which writer/director Abderrahmane Sissako tells his story give it a timelessness that only the most talented of directors can achieve. (more…) Read more
I still don’t believe what I witnessed this past weekend. Blinking my eyes in the daylight, I can conjure memories of feathers, explosions of confetti and lights sweeping a bouncing crowd of revelers. There was royalty—kings and queens decked out from tiara to toes in glitter. There was pounding, dance-inducing music. And drag—what drag! Maybe more queens in red carpet gowns and gravity-defying wigs than I have ever seen in one room, even having lived in the gay Meccas of... Read more
Ryan Parker had the chance to talk with cast members from Selma, including David Oyelowo, Wendell Pierce, and Common, as well as director Ava Duvernay. Here’s David Oyelowo on his sense of calling to play Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma: “My wife and I had moved to L.A. from the U.K. in May of 2007. In July of 2007, I first read the script [for Selma]. To be perfectly honest, in moving here—we had two kids at the time—we asked,... Read more
If one stores a collection of images of a particular literary figure, or setting, or style of costume, that collection is not stored mentally in chronological order. It does not matter whether I have seen Rita Hayworth’s Salome before viewing Gustave Moreau’s painting or after reading the version in the Gospel of Mark. All the representations collide and coalesce in my construction of the figure of Salome. In our postmodern image culture, readers are also spectators. — Alice Bach* This... Read more
Ryan Parker already has an excellent review of this film, which actually involves interviews with Christian Bale and Ridley Scott. Not being able to add much to that by way of review, let me just mention a few points of observation on viewing Exodus: Gods and Kings: 1.) There are predictable cries of ‘foul’ from some evangelical Christians for this film. The fact that the film follows the highlights of the Exodus story and shows the destruction of pagan gods... Read more
It’s been a long time since I’ve had a productive streak of quiet times: portions of the day devoted to scripture reading and prayer. From a young age, I was indoctrinated into the importance of said practices. We even had to check off boxes on the outside of our offering envelopes to let the world know we had been faithful stewards of our time. I feel a little guilty…sometimes. (more…) Read more
Far too many of us are well aware of the tension between science and religion, or at least between the passionate devotees of each realm. However, there are occasions when these diverse adherents fall into conversations that result in members of each camp seeing the world around them in richer, more holistic ways. The new biopic about cosmologist Stephen Hawking and his wife Jane, The Theory of Everything, illustrates this better way, which might best be described not as a conversation,... Read more
Left Behind is an awful movie. I expected it to be awful on the theological level; I was hoping it wouldn’t be awful on an entertainment level. Unfortunately it is both. First, the film. If you have lived on the East or West Coast for the last 20 years, or are Roman Catholic, you may not know how the Left Behind story goes. But unfortunately for the rest of us, many of the details have trickled down even if we... Read more
Within the genre of war films lies a sub-genre devoted to anti-war war films, films that are so honest and earnest in their depiction of battle that they make us question our own sanity for ever sending women and men into such conditions. David Ayer‘s latest film, Fury, falls into that category. (more…) Read more
Pop Theology
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In