Sign Up for Our Bi-Weekly Email

Expand your perspective with thought-provoking insights, quotes, and videos hand-picked by our editors—along with the occasional update about the world of EnlightenNext.

Privacy statement

Your email address is kept confidential, and will never be published, sold or given away without your explicit consent. Thank you for joining our mailing list!

 

The Gospel According to Pop Culture 


Buffy, Neo, and Dr. Seuss bring Christian morals to the mainstream
 

Recently the book What Would Buffy Do? The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide turned up at the offices of WIE asking politely to be reviewed. For those who missed the fun, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a tremendously popular TV series that aired from 1997 to 2003 and starred Sarah Michelle Gellar as a teenager whose life revolved around homework, hanging out, and combating the gruesome undead. But running beneath all the comedy and action was a strong moral and spiritual undercurrent, as Buffy confronted questions of love and hate, and life and death, and also took frequent metaphysical sojourns into matters of life after death. So perhaps it was inevitable that a theologian (author Jana Riess) would write a book highlighting its spiritual significance. After all, illuminating the religious themes hidden in popular entertainment has been a favorite activity among many of the theologically inclined for at least four decades.

It began in 1964 with the publication of Robert L. Short's classic treatise The Gospel According to Peanuts, which introduced millions to the Christian parables hidden within a popular, and seemingly secular, comic strip. Forty years later, this genre is more prevalent than ever, with "The Gospel According to . . ." titles spanning the worlds of Tolkien, Harry Potter, the Simpsons, and Dr. Seuss. There's even The Gospel Reloaded: Exploring Spirituality and Faith in the Matrix, which contains such passages as: "Our own introduction to a life of faith, like that of Neo, revolves around seeing ourselves in a new way: redeemed, transformed. Once we grasp our new identity, we become ready to walk the path of faith."

As I read through these books, it became clear that religious messages might potentially be found pervading all of pop culture, if one simply had the eyes to glean the spiritual truths from the secular dross. But then I began to wonder: Is this spiritualization of popular movies and literature actually revealing a spiritual depth inherent within them? Or is it simply using pop culture's voice to help elevate traditional religious principles in the eyes of millions of disaffected Gen-Y and -Xers, for whom pop culture is indeed the new religion of choice? Somehow, as with many mysteries of the postmodern age, it seems to be a strange blend of both-with actual moral themes shining through as they would with any good story, but the story's parallels to a particular religious tradition often being drawn through bizarre leaps of imagination.

"The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel reminds me of Sam-I-am," writes former Methodist pastor James W. Kemp in The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss. "He is handed a plate of green eggs and ham in the form of a scroll 'with words of lamentation and mourning and woe' (Ezekiel 2:10). The scroll symbolizes the entrée-the message-that Ezekiel is to offer to the children of Israel. . . . Yet it is not surprising that the children of Israel might not agree with his tastes in cuisine."

The moral of this story? Sunday school ain't what it used to be.

Tom Huston



 

Subscribe to What Is Enlightenment? magazine today and get 40% off the cover price.

Subscribe Give a gift Renew
Subscribe
 

This article is from...

 

October–December 2004