Greenflame

Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand

Category: Religion and Media

  • Videogaming Theology

    Over at Awkward Asian Theologian, my friend Matthew Tan links to a book review he wrote recently on Frank G. Bosman’s Gaming and the Divine for Humanum Review. Tan, Matthew John Paul. “Playing for Eternity.” Humanum Review, no. 2. (2022): np. https://humanumreview.com/articles/playing-for-eternity. In it, Tan comments on how gaming connects in many ways to the…

  • American Jesus: A Graphic Apocalypse in Three Parts

    Reading Mark Millar’s American Jesus comic series.

  • Sacrament: Exorcists in Space

    Billed as “The Exorcist meets Alien” by AWA Studios, the five-part comic book series Sacrament wrapped up recently. Set in a future where religion of any sort has been made illegal, replaced by a form of militant scientism that requires a “pure faith” in science and human reason, the story centres on a case of…

  • Religion and Comics: The Golem

    As well as all the angels and nephilim in comics, I’ve also been reading a number of titles based around the golem – the creature in Jewish folklore created from clay or mud who typically then becomes a helper or protector. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem Here’s a small selection of some of the graphic representations of the golem…

  • Comics and Religion: Recent Reading

    Recently there have been a bunch of comics either engaging with religion or taking religious elements and reworking them into their stories. Here’s the list of what I’ve been reading recently. (There will be a follow-up post on Golem-related comics)

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer – 25 years on

    I came lately to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) when I started watching it on DVD while preparing material for the Bible in Popular Culture course back in 2009-2010. Somehow, I missed its arrival on television here in the early 2000s, had no idea there was an original film back in 2002, and sort of…

  • Jesus and Time-travel Stories (2)

    I had some follow up comments and emails from the Jesus and Time-travel Stories post with some further suggestions, so I’ve listed those below. I’m also wondering if there might be some stories in comics like 2000AD that I might be missing too.

  • Dystopias, science fiction and comics

    This week I had a chance to talk with some colleagues in Australia around theological and religious reflection on science fiction, dystopias, and popular culture. One of the questions that came up were what comics I’d suggest might engage with that topic, so I’ve put together a selection of recent (and some not so recent)…

  • Comics, Social Change, and the Public Good

    A few years back I started thinking about the relationship between popular culture and contextual and public theologies. Firstly, how popular culture might serve as a site for doing contextual theology and, secondly, how popular culture might provide avenue for for public theological engagement. My initial thinking in this area can be found in the…

  • Jesus films

    Easter is the central point of the Christian calendar and religious and secular broadcasters often put on Jesus films at this time. Most commonly these include Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, the 1977 TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth with Robert Powell starring as Jesus, or one of the many versions of the musical…