I had the privilege of meeting David Williams (follow him on Twitter as @BelovedSpear) when we were both on a panel at the 2018 annual Religion News Association conference with the title “Close Encounters of the God Kind: Religion in Science Fiction.” I’ll include the video of that panel, which also featured John Scalzi and Farah Rishi, at the end of this post. David published a book recently with the title Christ in the Multiverse: Following Jesus in Our Wild, Infinite Creation.... Read more
A really important work in the history of music, never mind the musical reception of the Bible, is Arnold Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron. In my class on the Bible and music, it provides an opportunity for us to talk about one of the most significant shifts in the history of music, namely the serial approach to music that Schoenberg developed. That Schoenberg was Jewish but converted to Protestantism provides an opportunity to talk about antisemitism with students. Before getting to Exodus, we... Read more
This post was sparked by a blog post by Ivy Helman focused on the example of a wooden chair and whether it is “natural.” I wrestle with this question about what is “natural” since human beings are natural and so in one sense anything human is “natural.” I think the big problem is in assuming that the natural must be good or better. Pandemics, cancers, and wildfires are all natural. Human actions and ways of life can make them worse, to... Read more
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 bring together essays covering the history of horror comics, with a focus on their engagement with religious and theological issues. Essays have been accepted on... Read more
Here’s a round up of my blogging about Tom Baker’s era as the Doctor, the most episodes from any one actor in the role in the show’s history…at least so far! Robot The Ark in Space The Sontaran Experiment Genesis of the Daleks Revenge of the Cybermen Terror of the Zygons Planet of Evil Pyramids of Mars The Android Invasion The Brain of Morbius The Seeds of Doom The Masque of Mandragora The Hand of Fear The Deadly Assassin The... Read more
Video Games and Religion: Apocalypse and Utopia: Thursday 19 November 2020 Call for Papers: Submission Deadline: Friday 30 October 2020 With the growth of scholarly interest in the religious and theological tropes encountered in video games, there is a developing awareness of the special valence of apocalypticism, millenarianism, and associated themes in video game narratives and gameplay. This virtual symposium invites academic explorations of the role of apocalypse and utopia in video games. We welcome discussions of a wide-range of... Read more
I did not plan it to reach its finale in precisely this manner, when I began blogging the entire classic series. I started two parallel sets of postings mainly because I was listening to many very early episodes in the car as audiobooks, since they do not exist any longer in their original aired form in their entirety but the audio track does and has been turned into audiobooks with added narration to describe on-screen events that cannot be heard.... Read more
I’m going to get to a collection of links related to three areas of interest of mine, all of which start with the letter “M” and have something to do with Jesus, but are not directly linked to one another in most other ways. But first, here are some things I wrote on Facebook in comments responding to a person who made the not merely false but ludicrous claim that ‘”Jesus Christ” was also a title that meant “anointed one.”‘... Read more
This episode, the penultimate of the Tom Baker era, introduced two new characters: Nyssa, who would become the companion of the Doctor for some time thereafter, and a new actor playing the Master who would appear quite frequently from that point onward. After Roger Delgado’s death, he having played the role since its introduction during the Jon Pertwee era, there had clearly been a desire to bring him back, and there had been a couple of appearances of a deteriorating... Read more
I started one session of my Religion and Science Fiction class this past week with music. Here is the playlist I had lined up in advance: Sydney Carter, “Every Star Shall Sing A Carol” Chris DeBurgh, “A Spaceman Came Traveling” Larry Norman, “UFO” Styx, “Come Sail Away” There is also a video with a reading of the poem “Christ in the Universe” by Alice Meynell which is among the texts students read for today. Students agreed with me that a... Read more
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