Theology, Religion, and Dystopia

Theology, Religion, and Dystopia PDF Author: Scott Donahue-Martens
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1978713304
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Dystopia, from the Greek dus and topos “bad place,” is a revelatory genre and concept that has experienced a meteoric rise in popularity at the start of the twenty-first century. This book addresses approaches to the study of dystopia from the academic fields of theology and religious studies. Following a co-written chapter where Scott Donahue-Martens and Brandon Simonson argue that dystopia can be understood as demythologized apocalyptic, ten unique contributions each engage a work of popular culture, such as a book, movie, or television show. Topics across chapters range from the critical function of dystopia, social location and identity, violence, apocalypse and the end of everything, sacrifice, catharsis, and dystopian existentialism. This volume responds to the need for theological and religious reflection on dystopia in a world increasingly threatened by climate change, pandemics, and global war.

Theology, Religion, and Dystopia

Theology, Religion, and Dystopia PDF Author: Scott Donahue-Martens
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1978713304
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book Here

Book Description
Dystopia, from the Greek dus and topos “bad place,” is a revelatory genre and concept that has experienced a meteoric rise in popularity at the start of the twenty-first century. This book addresses approaches to the study of dystopia from the academic fields of theology and religious studies. Following a co-written chapter where Scott Donahue-Martens and Brandon Simonson argue that dystopia can be understood as demythologized apocalyptic, ten unique contributions each engage a work of popular culture, such as a book, movie, or television show. Topics across chapters range from the critical function of dystopia, social location and identity, violence, apocalypse and the end of everything, sacrifice, catharsis, and dystopian existentialism. This volume responds to the need for theological and religious reflection on dystopia in a world increasingly threatened by climate change, pandemics, and global war.

The Last of Us and Theology

The Last of Us and Theology PDF Author: Peter Admirand
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1978716362
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
With a catastrophic fungal pandemic, the post-apocalypse, a moral quest despite societal breakdowns, humans hunting humans or morphed into grotesque infected, The Last of Us video games and HBO series have exhilarated, frightened, and broken the hearts of millions of gamers and viewers. The Last of Us and Theology: Violence, Ethics, Redemption? is a richly diverse and probing edited volume featuring essays from academics across the world to examine theological and ethical themes from The Last of Us universe. Divided into three groupings—Violence, Ethics, and Redemption?—these chapters will especially appeal to The Last of Us fans and those interested in Theology and Pop Culture more broadly. Chapters not only grapple with theologians, ethicists, and novelists like Cormac McCarthy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Martin Buber, and Paul Tillich; and theological issues from forgiveness and theodicy to soteriology and eschatology; but will help readers become experts on all things fireflies, clickers, Cordyceps, and Seraphites. “Save who you can save” and “Look for the Light.”

Sports and Play in Christian Theology

Sports and Play in Christian Theology PDF Author: Philip Halstead
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1978711441
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Sport is a major preoccupation of the modern world. It consumes the time and energies of millions of people around the globe. In fact, for many participants, it operates much like a functional equivalent of religion, giving them a way to interpret and understand the world. Sports stadiums are the cathedrals of our time. Sports stars are the saints or demi-gods through whom we access the transcendent. Members of the sports media serve as religious scribes, and sports fans are the worshiping faithful. What is true of sport is also true, more generally, of play. Nevertheless, and quite remarkably, Christian theologians and religious historians have been surprisingly slow to recognize the spiritual and cultural significance of sport and play, or to engage in the study of these concepts. This book attempts to redress that neglect by integrating sport and play with Christian faith and practice. In Sports and Play in Christian Theology, ten Christian scholars and practitioners explore sport and play from theological, biblical, historical, and pastoral perspectives. This rich collection of wide-ranging reflections and focused case studies will help readers locate sport and play within Christian faith and practice.

The Spirit and the Screen

The Spirit and the Screen PDF Author: Chris E. W. Green
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1978714653
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
The Spirit and the Screen engages contemporary films from the perspective of pneumatology to give theologies of culture fruitful new perspectives that begin with the Spirit rather than other common theological contact points (Christology, anthropology, theological ethics, creation, eschatology, etc.). This book explores pertinent pneumatological issues that arise in film, as well as literary devices that draw allusions to the Spirit. It offers three main contributions: first, it explores how Christian understandings of the person and work of the Spirit illuminate the nature of film and film-making; second, it shows that there are in fact “Spirit figures” in film (as distinct from but inseparable from Christ-figures), even if sometimes they’re not intended as such, “Spirit-led” characters, are moved to act “prophetically,” against their inclinations and in excess of their skill or knowledge and with eccentric, life-giving creativity; third, it identifies subtle and explicit symbolizations of the Spirit in pop culture, symbolizations that requires deep, careful thinking about the Christian doctrine of the Spirit and generate new horizons for cultural analysis. The contributors of this book explore these issues, asking how Christian convictions and experiences of the Spirit might shape the way one thinks about films and film-making.

Theology and Spider-Man

Theology and Spider-Man PDF Author: George Tsakiridis
Publisher: Fortress Academic
ISBN: 9781978710894
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Engaging themes of sin, salvation, and creedal theology, the contributors to Theology and Spider-Man create a systematic and constructive theology of one of Marvel's most popular heroes.

Animated Parables

Animated Parables PDF Author: Terry Lindvall
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1978715048
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
A 2024 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Generally neglected for their rhetorical power, animated cartoons provide a treasure chest of provocative and comic gems that teach about the seven deadly sins. After a brief history of parables and fables, icons and visual communication, this book explores each of the seven deadly sins as represented in short animated films from Disney, Pixar, the Warner Brothers, and international animators. Terry Lindvall argues that attending to the tropes of the cartoons leads to exemplary and revelatory discoveries, to seeing more of what pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust mean across cultures and historical eras.

Devotion

Devotion PDF Author: Constance M. Furey
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226816125
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
"What brings religious scholars Constance Furey, Sarah Hammerschlag, and Amy Hollywood together in Devotion is a shared conviction that "reading helps us live with and through the unknown." For them, the nature of reading raises questions fundamental to how we think about our political futures and modes of human relation. Each essay suggests different ways to characterize the object of devotion and the stance of the devout subject before it. Furey writes about devotion in terms of vivification, energy, and artifice; Hammerschlag in terms of commentary, mimicry, and fetishism; and Hollywood in terms of anarchy, antinomianism, and atopia. They are interested in literature not as providing models for ethical, political, or religious life, but as creating the site in which the possible-and the impossible-transport the reader, enabling new forms of thought, habits of mind, and modes of life. Ranging from German theologian Martin Luther to French-Jewish philosopher Sarah Kofman to American poet Susan Howe, this volume is not just a reflection on forms of devotion, it is also an enactment of devotion itself"--

Utopia/Dystopia

Utopia/Dystopia PDF Author: Michael D. Gordin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400834953
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
The concepts of utopia and dystopia have received much historical attention. Utopias have traditionally signified the ideal future: large-scale social, political, ethical, and religious spaces that have yet to be realized. Utopia/Dystopia offers a fresh approach to these ideas. Rather than locate utopias in grandiose programs of future totality, the book treats these concepts as historically grounded categories and examines how individuals and groups throughout time have interpreted utopian visions in their daily present, with an eye toward the future. From colonial and postcolonial Africa to pre-Marxist and Stalinist Eastern Europe, from the social life of fossil fuels to dreams of nuclear power, and from everyday politics in contemporary India to imagined architectures of postwar Britain, this interdisciplinary collection provides new understandings of the utopian/dystopian experience. The essays look at such issues as imaginary utopian perspectives leading to the 1856-57 Xhosa Cattle Killing in South Africa, the functioning racist utopia behind the Rhodesian independence movement, the utopia of the peaceful atom and its global dissemination in the mid-1950s, the possibilities for an everyday utopia in modern cities, and how the Stalinist purges of the 1930s served as an extension of the utopian/dystopian relationship. The contributors are Dipesh Chakrabarty, Igal Halfin, Fredric Jameson, John Krige, Timothy Mitchell, Aditya Nigam, David Pinder, Marci Shore, Jennifer Wenzel, and Luise White.

Religion in The Handmaid's Tale

Religion in The Handmaid's Tale PDF Author: Colette Tennant
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506456316
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale captivates readers with its disturbingly prescient vision of the future and haunting insights into the world as we know it. Religion--especially elements of the Christian faith--pervades every inch of the world as Atwood imagines it. Gilead's leaders use perverse forms of Christianity to sustain their authority and privilege, making understanding religion an integral part of understanding Gilead. In the face of the inextricable role of religion in the novel, readers are left to puzzle out religious references and allusions on their own. From the significance of names to twisted uses of religion to the origins of the Ceremony, this book answers all the questions you might have about religion in this prophetic novel. For anyone who's ever googled a biblical precedent or religious phrase after encountering Atwood's dystopia, this essential guide explains it all and gives readers a fascinating look into the novel and its world. Read it and understand The Handmaid's Tale like never before.

Bob Dylan and the Spheres of Existence

Bob Dylan and the Spheres of Existence PDF Author: Christopher B. Barnett
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1978710690
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Bob Dylan and the Spheres of Existence shows that existential questions lie at the heart of Bob Dylan’s songwriting—a point that will developed with the help of renowned Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. One of the focal points of Kierkegaard’s authorship is the journey towards authentic selfhood. Famously, he thematizes this journey in terms of existential “spheres”—the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Whereas the aesthetic involves a preference for immediacy, the ethical has to do with achieving a sense of personal identity by way of living for enduring commitments and values. Yet, higher than both of these stages is the religious, which initially concerns the immanent human quest for eternal life but, for Kierkegaard, ultimately comes to rest in God’s transcendent self-revelation in Jesus Christ. This book argues that Kierkegaard's theory can help us deepen our understanding of and relation to Dylan’s art. Just as Kierkegaard presupposes existential “movement” and transformation, so is Dylan celebrated for his shifting personae and philosophical variance. But this is not mere aesthetic dabbling on Dylan’s part. On the contrary, his diverse “masks” and voices encourage his audience to engage the worldview being presented, albeit in such a way that religious faith is identified as humanity’s source of ultimate meaning.